New seller here - have I made a mistake!?
Hi Folks
Ive just signed up (took forever).
We have 1 product that we sell on ebay quite a lot but I wanted to expose it to Amazon. Its just a £9 part, so a very simple garage business.
Having just read many to f the current forum posts about how awful this place is - have I made a mistake and should I jump before I land?
Being lazy, I was hoping I could just send them a few hundred of these parts and they would sell and fulfil them for me.
Maybe I should think again.
Id very much appreciate your notes.
Many thanks
Simon
49 replies
Seller_BS5lg2keRs2QO
Any forum of this type is mainly going to concentrate on the negatives of the platform. I haven’t spent too much time on the ebay forum but when i looked a while back it was similar in nature.
I mean, there’s effort required to get sales and a cost to using FBA. Amazon’s website is massive and your listing could easily get lost without some work.
Seller_DROodOAYHftnc
That is only the first step - you are likely to have quite a long wait before your seller account is fully verified, as they will need to check your bank account details, your business registration with HMRC (have they asked for your UTR ?) etc.
You also need to be sure you understand all of the costs involved with FBA.
Check out Amazon’s own Seller University - link is at bottom of your seller homepage.
Will keep you straight with all you need to know about selling on Amazon.
Just be aware that Amazon is a TOTALLY different ball game than Ebay, with many policies that need to be adhered to, and metrics to meet, or your account can be suspended.
…in saying that though, many make a good living on here.
Seller_VqZd5BuSZClbc
I have made over £4000 since last month I have joined but my funds are hold. I dispatched all on time and my account health is 100%. over 180 orders I only had 2 late dispatches as I didn’t know how to set selling notification. I was told the fund will be available on 30.11.21 now being told 14.12.21. I am so upset to the point that I had to write their CEO but nobody cares. I am selling on ebay for the past 20 years and never had any issues such as. Its very selfish approach. If they care about customers than they should care about sellers too as we are also a customer for them. Once I get my money I will be thinking whether to sell here or not. I have requested a manager call back but no one bothered either. this is my experience anyway and I think Ebay has a better customer service .
Seller_B4VbHpnDLDLAU
Selling on amazon is like marmite, some days you can say great I had a great day of sales and others a new set of rules to follow or listing issues. Or you will get the idiotic buyers.
As people have said if you use amazon right it can be done successfully.
It’s defiantly nothing like eBay.
All I say is be prepared, if you need advise come On the forums but be hounest on here. Many visit here with only half the story and it’s difficult to assist.
Learn the seller university take your time first of all if it’s only 1 product that’s great and it can be built up.
Good luck
Seller_JVrK6emk6S3ur
Amazon is terrible, i definitely would not recommend this platform.
Seller_r1BWHFE9Q49m3
I signed up with Amazon (fulfilled by merchant) as a business experiment last Christmas and was selling so much stuff that I couldn’t keep up with demand. This November I’ve started a further experiment of signing up for FBA and again can’t send boxes to Amazon fast enough. So it’s been great from the money point of view.
The downside? Well, you’ve seen from the forum posts the many MANY ways that Amazon can make sellers miserable.
Amazon is a huge moneymaking beast of an organisation, and as sellers we are like tiny individual farmers who feed products to the monster because we know it can poo out solid gold nuggets for us to collect at the other end. But unfortunately the monster doesn’t care if it accidentally eats the tiny farmers, or if they lose fingers/hands/arms in the process. There are plenty more farmers willing to feed it.
This forum is basically for us poor product-farmers to report how the beast has bitten our fingers off, and to find the best way to stop the bleeding (and hopefully avoid getting more injuries). And I guess in this analogy Seller University is a guide to feeding the beast without getting your head bitten off, and Seller Support is a service where they either shrug and say it’s your own fault, or suggest taking a paracetamol to stop the bleeding.
All of which is a very weird and long-winded way of saying what @Demel said:
So welcome @BoilerPartsUK, and good luck!
Seller_ftMMn0UeA4IQP
the same one that you’ve been using for Ebay sales for the last 20 years?
Did the OP get all the information he needed before his thread was so effectively hi-jacked?
Seller_YXHKBubnB4rgo
Hi,
You might want to think again or dip your toe in very carefully and slowly so you can get a feel for how it works and allow enough time to discover ALL the costs. Amazon is what it is. It has pros and cons and other ways of selling online are available and often better suited. As a seller your relationship is more akin to a supplier to a supermarket, i.e. the terms will always be in their favour. Don’t consider that you’re buying a service and thus expect to be treated as a customer as you would in other situations. It is a business arrangement between 2 extremely unequal parties and that shouldn’t suprise you. However that doesn’t mean that you as one of those parties can’t make some money. Thousands do.
Seller_gSzao5tsKB0Ds
You may want to check there are no IP issues with your proposed product. Also, that you are not gated in that category, which will be likely as you’re a new seller. Cater in all costs, subsription fees etc.
Finally, you need to understand the FBA fees, S&L programme, there’s lots to know and learn.
It is not easy.
Seller_ZQyopdiwkUHOZ
There are a lot of potential pitfalls or problems you can encounter selling on Amazon, and they can be incredibly stressful to deal with.
Ultimately for all the difficulties people are having, and how ridiculously inept their seller support are, those of us on here are all still on here; so barring the odd person falling for the sunken cost fallacy, we all must at least think it’s worth the trouble to be on here.
