What’s the Long-Term Plan for Small Online Sellers?
Lately I keep wondering what the long-term plan is for small online sellers.
Not just on Amazon. Also eBay, Etsy, websites, and every other crowded platform where more and more people are chasing the same customers with thinner margins, higher costs, and less stability.
For many of us, this is not a hobby. It is not pocket money. It is our living, our independence, and sometimes our only realistic way of working around age, health, family duties, language barriers, or a very crowded job market.
But the marketplaces keep getting noisier. More sellers. More copied products. More price pressure. More fees. More automation. More rules. More stress. And less room to breathe.
Sometimes I think people say “just diversify” or “just get a job” far too easily, as if that is simple. It is not simple for everyone.
I would really like to hear honestly from other sellers:
What is your long-term plan?
Are you trying to stay and fight it out?
Build your own website?
Move to another platform?
Reduce stock and scale down?
Look for a job outside e-commerce?
Or are you also feeling stuck between overcrowded marketplaces and an overcrowded labour market?
I am asking because I think many sellers are carrying this worry quietly, and it would help to hear how others are thinking about the next few years.
What’s the Long-Term Plan for Small Online Sellers?
Lately I keep wondering what the long-term plan is for small online sellers.
Not just on Amazon. Also eBay, Etsy, websites, and every other crowded platform where more and more people are chasing the same customers with thinner margins, higher costs, and less stability.
For many of us, this is not a hobby. It is not pocket money. It is our living, our independence, and sometimes our only realistic way of working around age, health, family duties, language barriers, or a very crowded job market.
But the marketplaces keep getting noisier. More sellers. More copied products. More price pressure. More fees. More automation. More rules. More stress. And less room to breathe.
Sometimes I think people say “just diversify” or “just get a job” far too easily, as if that is simple. It is not simple for everyone.
I would really like to hear honestly from other sellers:
What is your long-term plan?
Are you trying to stay and fight it out?
Build your own website?
Move to another platform?
Reduce stock and scale down?
Look for a job outside e-commerce?
Or are you also feeling stuck between overcrowded marketplaces and an overcrowded labour market?
I am asking because I think many sellers are carrying this worry quietly, and it would help to hear how others are thinking about the next few years.
26 replies
Seller_OFjSrssNgD9RS
my plan is to leave ecommerce forever. I have been in retail. since before sunday opening laws were brought in. I have seen the whole retail industry change over and over again. I cannot deal with it anymore. The stress is eating me alive now. It is just not possible to offer people a nice useful well priced product and make a living anymore. you have to be churning rubbish in the hundreds of thousands or selling massively overpriced items to whales. I also fear for doing anything online now. AI will take all these jobs from us. all I do is work to pay money into uncaring corporations. It is so massively depressing.
Seller_kSZCywEhJQQ8J
I agree with Andy_P that relying only on Amazon is risky. I made that mistake myself. I did run my own website, but there was not enough traffic, and my products were not unique enough to pull customers away from the main platforms.
I also agree with pelican_storage that technology has changed how people shop and how retail businesses operate. Online selling has lower barriers to entry, but that also means much heavier competition. It is easy to start, but much harder to survive.
I do not think technology will necessarily take everyone’s job in a simple way. Sometimes it just changes where the labour and stress move.
Supermarkets introduced self-checkout partly to reduce labour costs, but now many stores need staff to watch the self-checkout area, deal with errors, check bags, approve restricted items, and police customer behaviour. Customers often prefer self-checkout, so supermarkets keep using it, even if it does not always create the extra profit or efficiency people expected.
That is what worries me about online retail too. Technology does not remove the work. It often pushes the cost, risk, and stress onto smaller sellers, while the platform keeps control of the rules.
Seller_l9DWGFvAaJQ2I
For us, one of our guiding principles is never to make Amazon our sole, or significant source of income, and not to become reliant on them. That would bring too much to lose when the 'bots decide for no good reason that your time is up. The temptation of greed is not for us.
Our own websites bring 90% of our revenue, as that's where we put our resources into SEO, good imaging and so on. (SEO really does work, if you stick at it and do it well!)
Since we went VAT registered during lock down Ebay dropped off a cliff as we became dearer than other people, so we simply don't bother with it now.
Amazon we do less and less but it is profitable, we really pick and choose our products for here, everything considered and costed.
We never want to be busy fools, for us, high volume low margin simply isn't attractive. High volume also means increased admin, hassle, and stress etc so let's just not invite it into our lives.
Buy low, sell high, but make sure the in between bit is what you get to keep and not given to any large corporates instead.
Seller_2MDS66zdjPMUU
We survive because we have niche products and do not share the product with any other sellers. We own the brand .
We spend our effort on commissioning direct from small producers and have a few repeat ranges that we manufacture ourselves. Other ranges have limited numbers and change to a different product when the stock has gone.
This way we have products that are incredibly difficult to source and not profitable to copy.
We have recently moved our website hosting to a google supported platform and our website direct sales are considerably outperforming Amazon. We have slimmed down international sales on Amazon because of the cost of INR, free refunds , free returns and pre paid customs tax. We generally use F r u u g o for Europe.
Seller_58y2FhNkywdyp
retire from amazon asap other sites much more professional and helpful
Seller_RAXEWLxQ2dbmN
Yes, this is something I have raised here many times.
The ISBN system should have stabilised the catalogue but Amazon, for reasons unknown, allowed dodgy sellers to completely ruin it with the production of countless ISBN-less clones.
These clones undermine the entire Amaozn structure. They are pretty much immune to fair price policy and so enable price-gouging on a massive scale. Which is no doubt why they were created in the first place.
There was also a big fanfare several years ago when Amazon incorporated the British Library catalogue to stabilise the pre-ISBN part of the catalogue but that also appears to have gone out the window.
The (Amazon-owned) Abe books site doesn't have a catalogue as such, but it does have a search system that appears to acually work.
Seller_FQHkqHJI5SqTh
There have been umpteen attempts at this over the years, Tomfolio, Bookzangle, Ukusedbookworld,etc., none have managed to gain much traction. All have lacked the £s to properly get the site out there.
Even big sites like Alibris that 20 years ago was my and others most productive site has become a shadow of what is was.
Saying that many booksellers do very well through their own websites.
Seller_2MDS66zdjPMUU
We will continue to sell on platforms where the sales cover costs and produce a profit, albeit a small one on some sites.
Our own website fed by by copilot and google has now far surpassed Amazon and as the costs are low it is much much more profitable costing around 1.5% on each sale when calculated. It is also far less hassle, no ridiculous metrics and customers who are good quality and fair. How wonderful it is to sign in each day and not see more new rules, fraudulent claims and aggressive AZ claims.
Amazon is just about holding its own but we are clinical about our marketing so once it is costing rather than contributing it will be gone. We have shut down some international AMZ sites now including France because of the problem with Royal Mail and import duties, where Amazons IOSS codes are ignored by custome clearance and buyers were asked to pay in the doorstep.
Seller_kSZCywEhJQQ8J
I think I have now answered the question I asked when I started this thread three months ago.
I waited because I did not want to make an impulsive decision. I kept selling, watched what happened and tried to give Amazon another chance.
However, I have had three buyer disputes in the past two weeks, even though I stopped seller-fulfilled orders eight days ago. Compared with the small number of orders involved, the dispute rate is simply too high. It is no longer reasonable to believe that every case is an innocent mistake by either the seller, the buyer or the carrier.
Another buyer dispute this evening pushed me towards the final decision. I was angry at first, but I cannot really blame one person for it. The final outcome is probably the same decision I would have made three months ago. I have simply taken longer to accept it.
I also had a job interview today at a small local factory. The company is behind with production, and the owner showed me their planning problems and the number of orders they still need to fulfil.
Their customers include the NHS and large supermarkets. They have loyal, repeat business. Their future is not decided by an Amazon system glitch, a dishonest buyer, a suppressed listing or a competitor copying a product and undercutting the price.
What impressed me most was that the owner was open to my questions and willing to show me the real problems in the business. That felt more honest and transparent than dealing with Amazon’s systems and, sometimes, its customers.
Trust is the foundation of trading, but I no longer feel that trust exists on Amazon.
As more large technology companies enter online retail, there will be new opportunities as well as new risks. Sellers who can adapt may survive, but I do not think continuing exactly as before is an option.
I believe I will leave Amazon, although I will give myself another few months to test eBay and continue developing my own website.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to this thread. Your replies helped me think clearly rather than act only out of anger.
I wish all sellers the very best of luck.
