Roughly what percentage of same-product sales are made on eBay as compared to Amazon?
I ask because it would be trivial to “add eBay”, and let Amazon fulfill those sales, so the only question is the “extra eyeballs” one would reach with the same offer as one makes on Amazon.
I find ebay and Amazon have different eyeballs looking at different things.
Amazon is shipping, I need every day items that are needed, things I can also go down to my standard hard/soft lines store for.
eBay is I’m looking for a deal (aka Amazon warehouse/resale), need a rare item, looking for a collectable item or looking for a NoS/discontinued item.
At least this is how my sales fall, others may see different. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve sold plenty of new in box (Amazon grade new) items on eBay too
Hi @ZaphodBeeblebrox I moved your good question to its own thread for visibility. Thank you for posting!
I am selling my items to collectors. I have no clue what you sell.
I abandoned Amazon when Amazon made it too hard to sell the items I sell,
Only idiots expect to buy New products with a manufacturer’s warranty on Ebay, so do not expect to add many buyers who are not idiots when you list on Ebay. Knowledgeable Ebay buyers will assume what they are buying was either liquidation or looks NEW stock you bought at a thrift or yard sale.
There are some buyers on Ebay who are active Amazon haters, and anything which ties you to Amazon risks active hostility from them.
Ebay’s earnings reports reflect a continuous decrease in sales in the categories where Amazon has its strength, Ebay management has resigned itself to that trend. It is focused on enhanced sales in the categories where Amazon is weakest.
I have 2 kinds of items listed on ebay: My best selling items, because volume is my friend, and items I can’t or don’t want to list on Amazon/Walmart. This includes anything from discontinued items, to items a buyer opened but never used before returning for a bogus return reason, to items a nonsensical ama-bot blocked.
In my industry, the slower selling items aren’t worth posting on ebay. I have listed fewer than 1% of my listings on Amazon to ebay.
I sell consumer products, I need volume so I sell anywhere I can
eBay adds volume, and has many advantages in communication, how easy of a platform it is, etc, not to mention feedback… you get feedback on an actual significant number of orders
While I move decent volume on eBay (both in $s and units), it may be that a month of eBay represents 3 days of Amazon (2 if I have a good Amazon day and a bad eBay month)
My main thing with eBay, there’s a lot of fraud. I automatically cancel any order from buyers with 0 feedback. I love it when new accounts, created the very day, place orders for a few hundred dollars. Not suspicious at all! And very little protection
With all that said, many shoppers on eBay don’t like Amazon and may not take kindly to receiving Amazon packages from eBay.
On a personal level I use eBay for toys or collectibles, whatever you want to call it, trinkets more than anything. Many times they come in re-used Amazon boxes, simply because many of the sellers don’t have to deal with the professional restrictions that Amazon or Walmart impose.
Many times they come in Amazon or Walmart boxes because there are thousands of offshore sellers who are using Amazon or Walmart as dropshippers to buyers who don’t know what items should cost or hate Amazon or Walmart.
Often they come from Ebay sellers who could not afford the cost of new box and make any profit. Or from Ebay sellers who think they are doing something to support the environment.
How do you see that the order is from a buyer with 0 feedback, and how do you get away with cancelling an order without retribution from eBay?
Amazon claims to be able to fulfill orders with “plain packaging”, which is something Walmart demands of sellers, as they do not want their orders being delivered in Amazon boxes or the STUPID PAPER BAGS. I guess they don’t mind the delivery person wearing an Amazon vest and driving an Amazon truck, but more and more Amazon deliveries are being made by very sketchy-looking people in beat-up Honda and Toyota passenger cars.
While I commend the employment of people with neck tattoos by major corporations, as it shows that they are truly interested only in job performance, one wonders if this will not lead to a completely integrated service model, where the same person who delivers your package immediately turns “porch pirate” and steal it because you were dumb enough to not select “ship in Amazon packaging”, and the delivery driver decided that they wanted to sell that power tool or whatever on fleaBay. They might go further, and also steal your catalytic converter.
And while I also commend Amazon on their hiring of the handicapped, I wish that they would not staff the entire seller support ranks exclusively with the mentally handicapped.
If you click the username of the buyer you will see when the account was set and the number of feedbacks they have
eBay’s cancellation policy is significantly more seller friendly than Amazon’s
Perfect!
I remember a thread on the OSFE where an idiot kept telling me that it was ok to ship to Walmart with AMF and I kept showing him the Walmart page clearly claiming that it wasn’t. Interesting that Amazon found the workaround with the plain boxes. Smart, still don’t know if I would risk using AMF for Wally, even if it is tried and tested by now.
That’s also USPS and Ubereats. If people are willing to let the sketchy car/drivers handle their food… why not their eBay stuff (never have I ever used ubereats, and no, I don’t have to take a shot, and happy and proud about that!)
Personally I don’t have anything per se against or for tattoos, but I grew up with the notion that tattoos were things that sailors got on their trips to the far east. It surprises me that it has become such a distinctive part of modern day culture and have become so naturalized. I (maybe mistakenly, but I doubt it) believe that it can’t be good for the body to do a permanent modification where you eternally attack your immune system and have your white blood cells locked in battle against the ink until you die (or laser it out to your lymphatic system), but that’s neither here nor there.
It’s an argument for drone deliveries. But hey, instead of risking a potential human bad actor showing at your door, you just surrender even more information to the data-gathering AI machinery. Welcome to the Matrix.
Warehouse Billy smashes package!
I’m not sure how much different this is than the cases where people follow a block behind Amazon branded vans taking the packages off porches. Thieves gonna thieve.
eBay sells in a month what Amazon does in a day or two under new. Items that have been refurbished or returns go to eBay, which sell better because it is a deal. Things I can’t sell on Amazon go on eBay, though I also list new items on eBay. I get more questions on eBay (better customer interaction) and it actually increases traffic to my website. With 250 free listings, it is like free advertising with the chance of sales.
I get my GOFO deliveries from a well dressed gentleman in a late model BMW,
Walmart deliveries in my area are by middle-aged women in cars which are about half as old as they are.
The best Amazon drivers in our area are African immigrants.
Amazon MCF orders really are in plain packaging, and can easily be identified by long delivery times.
I’ve been getting this impression myself, but have nothing solid to back it up. I’ve had multiple occasions in the past year in which Amazon has lowered it’s price for a new book below my LN copy on eBay, but I - and apparently other eBay sellers - get the sale anyway.
It appears that we are making money off of hatred for Amazon. To my mind, this proves that the world is fair and well ordered.
Does anyone have anything more solid than this, such as survey results?
I have had a few customers (both on eBay and Wally) outright say that they don’t want/like Amazon. I’ve often wondered if they are disgruntled Amazon sellers.
With that said, and not doubting that there will always be a % of people who will feel one way or another about a company, eBay is also a multibillion corporation guilty of the same vices as Wally or Amzn
I believe in perfect competition, I hate the price bot, as it denies perfect competition
I have no problem how and where people buy, as long as they buy. My favorite is of course my store
100% agree, though I wish the market could correct itself as it should and it wasn’t forced by the oligopoly
On the Ebay forums, there are several threads per week from Ebay buyers who voice their dissatisfaction with drop ships from Amazon BECAUSE THEY HATE AMAZON. Still anecdotal, but unsolicited and they usually include their willingness to pay more to avoid Amazon.
I frankly, suspect this is an anti-big business bias.Since Amazon virtue signals with the best of those who engage in that behavior. My shopping on the site this morning brought my attention to what I think may be a new addition to listings, sustainability features for the product.
Ebay is a minor player in e-commerce, The general public does not lump it with Amazon and Walmart (though I do not have a position on whether they should). Many think of it as an online flea market. Seller attitudes toward Ebay, on the other hand, treat them like many people treat their landlords. One of the post unhealthy aspects of internet marketplaces is the negativity of seller attitudes to the sites they sell on.
Yes and no, it’s the third largest marketplace after Amazon and Wally. It’s only 3% of the ecommerce market, but still (eBay’s origin story is fascinating, started as a place to trade Pex dispensers!) 3% of a very large number remains a large number, particularly because Amazon is 1st with +30%, and then Walmart is second with 6%. The steps between platforms are too large
(Shopify as a whole has around 14% but it’s a million different stores. Apple funny enough is almost as large as eBay! Temu is growing fast at more than 2%)
It’s difficult to call eBay small. Is like saying that Uranus or Saturn are small planets because Jupiter and Saturn are so large.
I think that eBay is more accessible/relatable to many buyers, but sections of eBay are growing as a “professional” platform. For instance eBay motors. Now, I wouldn’t buy @ASV_Vites products on eBay (or food for that matter), or even clothing other than collectibles. That really caps ebay’s potential
I agree with this 100%, but in my case is because eBay does not come through when I report scammers.
Amazon would lead there too. Probably even by a bigger margin that what they have on the ecommerce marketshare. eBay is a lot more forgiving than Amazon or Wally. And that does make it more of a flea market indeed
Ebay does not act on reports at all, Its history is the reason.
I interacted with Pierre in the early days of Ebay. He wanted to advertise on my website.
I told him directly that I would not allow him on my site because Ebay was a sewer with no effort made to avoid getting covered with odoriferous effluent.
He told me that he was not going to spend any money cleaning it up. The feedback system was cheap and although ineffective gave him something to point to.
As well all know, the FB system in the early days of Ebay was full of malicious posts for both buyers and sellers. The initial system did not even require that a transaction had occurred.
Every Ebay CEO starting with Meg, worked on improving Ebay’s image and always had to balance that with driving away sellers who ran their businesses as close to the edge of what was appropriate behavior.
That is still the case today. And in some ways Ebay is tougher than Amazon, just not the ways that you or I might prefer. Seller defects for cancelling orders last longer on Ebay, for example.
Ebay’s smaller marketshare also has made them a leader in the use of automated enforcement with virtually no appeal process. Pierre would approve of this low cost method, though maybe not its goals.
Ebay has gotten tough on offshore sellers selling into the US. The BBE has driven many of the offshore sellers nuts with its restrictions on sales to US buyers based on their performance. It has shown no signs of broadening those standards to US sellers.
I am many sellers of collectible items have no real choice for a marketplace to sell on other than Ebay. Amazon’s Fine Arts and Collectibles categories really no longer exist. They are no longer protected from the IP infringement bots, and there are no longer any appeals granted for what are incorrect SIPV and other crimes. We are as irrelevant as handmade.
Ebay is requiring pre-approval for some brands and even subcategories, so it might become less forgiving, But they are taking baby steps.
Just trying to summarize a bit and refocus the thread. It definitely seems that ebay can be a complementary channel to Amazon but for several different reasons.
In terms of OP’s original question…
Anything I missed?
Those are awesome stories!
Thanks for sharing them, it’s really interesting to know what was happening on the back end!
It’s a shame that Amazon has limited the arts and collectibles sections. I fear that handmade may follow.
It just becomes too difficult to have the companies making 8 or 9 digits a year with the same playbook as the seller on the individual plan.
With that said, Amazon keeps adding terrible sellers with no entry barriers in sight. Same goes for eBay. Walmart was much more demanding 10 years ago when we joined. It asked for DnB, references, the whole 9 yards. From what I gather that’s not required anymore. I don’t really know how that is an advantage for a serious marketplace.