For Newbies: eBay is 100X Better Than Amazon For Small Sellers
The company I helped build was closing so I semi-retired in June of last year. I took my SS and looked at what I was making monthly in eBay and said to myself, "Oh, let's just go for it." I only had about $10k saved.
It gets insanely scary, especially from "Black Friday" through the entire first week of December, but it always does, every year, so I'm used to it. All that "Cyber Monday" nonsense doesn't apply unless you're selling, I don't know, new iPhones and video game systems. I've done eBay for 27 years, mostly out-of-production toys and vintage magazines. I like offering cool stuff and I love finding it. I'm deathly afraid of heights, but if I'm in a barn at an estate sale and the guy says "I think there are a few boxes in the loft," and there's no real way to get to the loft except to balance myself on a sawhorse that's sitting on top of a rickety old table, yeah, I'll be there. I love every second of it. Once I found a hand-colored world atlas from 1828 in a trunk and sold it on eBay to a Michigan museum for $400. That stuff jazzes me all the way.
Anyway, this time of year I'm mostly listing as much stuff on eBay as I can, so I forget that I've got 30-odd things on Etsy (someone wake me when they get rid of those stupid 20-cent listing fees, good lord) and around 700 on Amazon, mostly CDs I get for free for having written a music column in the local alternative paper since 2004. Over the years, I've come to dread it when an Amazon order comes in.
Here's why: Every time it's the same: The customer buys the item for $7 or so with $4.99 shipping. After fees and shipping, I literally always end up with no more than a dollar. You read that right. It's an insult. Every time. This year I started moving the CDs over to my spare eBay account and they've been selling very steadily (I know, this too shall pass); I have about 200 of them up there. If I sell one of the lower-end ones for $7, I usually walk away with around $4 or $5. See the difference?
I've only kept my Amazon account open in case of emergency but I should just dump it at this point. Amazon is for people who do massive, massive bulk with tons of turnaround, big bags going to the PO every day, guys who have a few employees and a postage meter. Other than that you're totally wasting your time.
I have a friend on Twitter whose pinned tweet is a video about why Jeff Bezos should be brought to the Hague. I totally agree with that. Last I knew, Italian courts were going to stop his predatory practices against small sellers but I don't know if they ever did. The guy has helped destroy mom and pop businesses all over the country, and he always makes sure he's going to win big no matter what. I think he's criminally psychotic.
tldr; Yes, eBay's fees have gotten high over the last few years, and they've never had any legitimate challengers, which is too bad for us. I hate that every CyBeR mOnDaY wEeK, eBay fiddles with the algorithm to favor brand new sellers and leaves us veterans to starve until the 2 weeks before Xmas, when buyers have no choice but to pay us. And they always do.
Just stick with it, new guys. Keep piling stuff into your listings, it's all you have to do. If you love picking awesome stock, be relentless. You've got this.
lakefor94
·8 months agoStill going steady on AMZ though I have only averaged 1 sale per day over the last year. The kicker is some of the sales are over a grand and I get quite a lot in the $100-$500 range every month. Lot of small sales as well. Great extra income every month. I find AMZ easy peasy.
Was killing it over there in 2018, 19, 20 and 21 until AMZ got in with the main manufacturer I was using and undercut the pricing ridiculously.....
Now just 180 crosslisted there. In the process of adding perhaps 300 listings to eBay and I bet I can crosslist 40 or more of those on AMZ.
Can't turn the AMZ stuff down. It is too easy. Quick and streamlined to jump on an existing listing. And yes, I do create some listings from scratch if I am permitted to list that particular brand.
Just have to check account health daily and keep up with requirements. It ain't that hard.
cyberontix
OP8 months agoYes, Amazon is no-brainer-level for listing, just basically find the item, set a price and a ship-by window and you're done. I stopped selling my swag on there mostly because the profit is basically non-existent. I actually lose money if I price a CD under $5. What on earth sort of business model is that if not Marketplace Fraud? I have other fish to fry in life aside from picking stock, tossing it in bubble envelopes all day and jacking up my negative feedback numbers, you know?
cyberontix
OP8 months agoActually the right term for the crime Amazon pervasively commits against small sellers is antitrust. Per Google AI:
lakefor94
·8 months agoThe is no market fruad in your case. Selling CD's for $5 or under is a loser in just about any online marketplace in today's world. Perhaps 15 years ago you could make some viable cash with CD's.
Your business model is not a fit for AMZ.
mrbandanna
·8 months agoI wish I sold as much on ebay as I do on amazon, then I would leave amazon(it is in the works for 26). Ebay is sooooo much easier to list and fix listings. aaaannnnnnddddd the scammers on amazon are getting tiresome. The horror stories I have heard over on amazon are real and I know there are some here too. I just "feel" more comfortable on ebay.
cyberontix
OP8 months agoIf it works for you it works, it's all good. Owing to the almost non-existent profit margins the only things I was listing on Amazon were things I got for free, those promo CDs and concert DVDs I talked about in the OP, which were easy to list if there was already a listing (if not, forget it). But then again, I wasted a lot of time searching for albums that weren't listed, so it was all a wash and I've just written them off completely.
Bezos couldn't care less about people like me, so he can go bake himself in a pie. Dude should be in jail imo. He's the real life Lex Luthor as far as I'm concerned.
purchase1212
·8 months agoStarted on AZ around 2013 selling vintage NRFB Barbies and Hallmark ornaments with several hundred items listed (I was a crazy collector)
Did great for about 10 years
Now, they have 'gated' most categories so if you don't spend thousands for a toy 'account' and a stockpile of new, manufactured items, you are out.
No more 'collectibles'
I now have about 20 items over there
They have become the US alibaba
cyberontix
OP8 months agoThat "gating" doesn't even work to serve its original purpose either, blocking fakes. It tells me that Bezos only wants huge sellers. At this point they should be broken up or something, not that it'd ever happen. They've monopolized retail, it's monstrous.
gloryglorygifts
·8 months agoWhen we were looking into expanding into another marketplace (we already were on Sears and had our own website) we looked into Amazon and I said no thanks. The fact that Amazon stole ideas from some of their small businesses and ran with them was enough to put the brakes on it for me. Those stories were becoming more prevalent too. They started making the items at a cheaper cost and putting those small businesses out of business. That's horrible. I just couldn't work with a marketplace that does that.
Ebay hasn't brought us the growth that I was anticipating when we opened the store in 2016, but our sales did double the next year and continue to grow after that each year. So, it seems, we both made the right decision. I'm looking forward to 2026.
Continued growth to you and happy holidays!
cyberontix
OP8 months agoAmazon should be shut down entirely for all the bad things they've let happen. Several years ago I followed some (I think) Ecommercebytes story where some guy invented a cool product that really took off. He had to hire ten people and he bought a U.S. patent for the product, which is like $400 last I knew. Suddenly a Chinese company simply stole the design, started mass-manufacturing it and undercut his price by half or much worse. Amazon did literally nothing about it. He had to fire everyone and go back to work.
I honestly wouldn't recommend selling on Amazon to my worst enemy. But like I alluded earlier, if you do massive bulk/repeat resale business daily, yes, you have to add them as a platform, only because they're there. I've released a couple of books and sell them on Amazon only because they do everything in the areas of printing and shipping, but for doing a book it's essential that you also have Ingram sell it if you want to sell it worldwide and alert bookstores to it and such.
gloryglorygifts
·8 months agoYes! I remember reading that story too and that poor guy wasn't alone. They did that to a few of them. That's just an awful business plan and the only reason why I decided to open our store on here.
Good decision for us because between our website and this store, which has much lower volume of sales, I feel that my customers and I are safe.
I love that you are a writer! My mentor has published all of his books through there. It's like his 4th career. He's been doing it for years now so I'm sure that he knows all the tricks of the trade.
cyberontix
OP8 months agoYeah, eBay's been pretty reliable (if bumpy) over the years otherwise I couldn't have semi-retired.
Writing's a lot of fun but I haven't had a lot of time for it for many months, mostly Twitter and Facebook stuff.
tobaccocardyahoo
·8 months agoEtsy was the worst venue I ever sold in for my vintage paper ephemera. Other than a low fee if a rare sale occurs there is nothing positive I can point to.
My conflicts with Amazon related to my listings in their withering Fine Arts and Collectibles categories. I had listings taken down wanting me to be authorized by the brand owner. A 1930's Electrolux Vacuum Cleaner brochure need me to be an authorized reseller. Just one of many distractions. I had an Amazon employee who helped me deal with such problems when they allowed an appeal. But even my insider could not help when they stopped reading appeals. Way too much hassle.
When I started there in 2008, I priced higher than my own website and Ebay, and sold more per month than either. I concentrated my efforts there, shut down my website and stopped listing on Ebay, the money rolled in. On Christmas Eve, one year I was suspended for selling a promo LP. Was reinstated on boxing day. I had been reported by another seller who I offended on the Amazon forum.
By 2020, there was no price premium on Amazon that I could count on, and many more restrictions. Back to Ebay in the early days of the pandemic. It was almost a pleasure selling here. Far less stress. And the freedom to discourage high maintenance buyers with my listings. This would be the season on Amazon when all of my returns would have been sold.
Even though we know that there are no final sales with no refunds, it deters many of the PITA buyers. No extended returns periods where the early present buyers return those they found a better deal on or better fit for the recipient. There were days in December and January that I felt like I was working for free, and I was.
Since I neither love either Ebay or Amazon, I deal with them when it meets my needs. They run their businesses as is best for them, and I run mine as is best for me. I can live without either of them without disrupting my existence.
I go back on Ebay to the days of Pierre, and my interactions with him were not cordial. He wanted to advertise on my website, and I wanted to keep my distance from him and Ebay. But I was not too proud, when I needed money, to sell on Ebay.
cyberontix
OP8 months agoThose 20-cents-per-listing fees on Etsy prevent me from taking it seriously. That's too risky for my blood, and it takes forever just to list things, filling out their stupid keywords and trying to "maximize exposure" by writing those super-long product titles. None of my 1800s-era print ephemera has ever sold there, let alone my antiquarian books. It does have its place, though, I suppose, if you want to attract certain kinds of customers, like if you mass-produce a handful items for fans of witchcraft, "goblin-core," "cottage-core" or whatever other type of community. Mid-century toys and stuff do nicely there but whenever I come across a honey-hole of that kind of stuff my eBay listings are ready to go up before I even remember I have an Etsy account. 🤣
tobaccocardyahoo
·8 months ago@cyberontix
My minimum price for any product on any site is $8.00 plus shipping. It yields. at least, a $5 profit.
The only way I know to make less is to sell items which you lose money on shipping. Do not lose money on shipping, other than this month when I did not adjust for the holiday surcharge, My shipping for the year is still in the black, so I guess it is my holiday gift to my buyers.
cyberontix
OP8 months agoAgree, I'll actually be going harder than that with my Amazon stuff, like I'm gonna go through everything and mark all of them up to at least $10. Otherwise I'm always bummed whenever I get an Amazon order, especially when the next lowest price for some CD that I just sold for $7 is $20 because it's sold out, you know? I just never bother going through all my Amazon listings, although yesterday I got an order for $7 for a Life magazine from 1964 and got enraged because no one else listed it at all, so I bumped them all up to a minimum of $12. Like, I can wait, big deal.
Actually the wife thinks I should put all my midcentury-era Life and whatnot magazines on Etsy as a "you choose" type listing. I might try it for laughs just to have more stuff on Etsy, I have tons of them and they don't take up all that much space really.
I have low-dollar comics on eBay to entice buyers to buy series runs in sets. Once in a while it actually works instead of leaving me with a whopping $1 profit! 😂
annetweekes
·8 months agoCertainly better than Etsy. I don't like the sneaky little "consequence" eked out if you bruise one of the rules. I am a one person entity from shopping to shipping. I have a store with a monthly subscription. I sell mostly smalls so cataloguing and storage can get confusing and a bit off from time to time. If you have to cancel a order because you have misplaced an item, even once, eBay drops you listing in SEO. How that makes sense is beyond me, eBay will still make $ off the next 20 items you do sell.
cyberontix
OP8 months agoI haven't listed anything new on Amazon for probably 2 years. Almost all the stuff I have listed there is new sealed CDs that are now super-old, mostly from obscure (but known) indie bands and jazz bands. Some have been sitting there since 2005, I'm not kidding.
My favorite is when I get a "We removed your listing" email from Amazon for a product I deleted 5 years or longer ago because I heeded the first warning. At least once a week I get one.
tobaccocardyahoo
·8 months agoMy Amazon listings have been on vacation since 2020 and I still get those messages, and other takedown notices. Including on items with no inventory, which were sold before 2020. I am pleased to know that they are thinking of me.
cyberontix
OP8 months ago🤣Lol, they can think of me all they want, I just don't have time for them. Making a dollar profit on an item that sells for $6 or $7 is an outrage.
adamcartwright
·8 months ago@cyberontix
How great to have found something valuable enough to be in a museum.
Thanks for the stories and pep talk. I wish you the best of success for December and into 2026.
cyberontix
OP8 months agoYou're very welcome. 😃
You just never know what you'll find at estate sales, you develop a sixth sense about weird items. I paid $5 for a big box of old "cowboys and Indians" dudes from the late 1950s once, mostly knockoffs, not Marx. Most of it was worthless but there was a metal cannon in there that simply no longer existed on the internet until I put it up there and it sold for $250 in like a day.
kibble-net
·8 months agoThank you OP for sharing your experiences. Ebay isn't perfect, but it's better than the alternatives at the moment for most of us, whether that be Amazon or your own website.
I would challenge anyone who's massively upset with ebay to try either of those alternatives for a month and report back with the results.
cyberontix
OP8 months agoTotally. Bonanza is such a joke, like they're usually good for three sales a year, always during the holidays, after you've already sold the stuff elsewhere. 😂 Same goes for Etsy, unless you contract-manufacture with an Asian company.
tobaccocardyahoo
·8 months agoSellers who get sick or injured and cannot fill their Amazon orders lose their accounts.
I put my Amazon account on vacation from the ER when I was admitted for Cardiac Bypass Surgery.
The biggest difference between selling on Ebay and selling on Amazon is the requirement Amazon has for a seller to be a manufacturer authorized reseller before they can list specific brands and in specific categories. And this can affect used as well as new items.
Other differences Amazon enforces include
All items offered as NEW must have a full manufacturer's warranty.
All items offered as USED must be fully functional and complete.
USED Clothing cannot be offered on Amazon.
Collectible Cards must be third party graded.
and there are other requirements as well.
tools*
·8 months agoNew items sold on Amazon do not necessarily include a manufacturer's warranty. For example, no Milwaukee tools sold on Amazon include a factory warranty.
tobaccocardyahoo
·8 months agoAmazon rules require it have the warranty. Milwaukee tools does not honor its warranty on purchases from other than its authorized sellers.
Milwaukee tools used to send "may be inauthentic" complains to Amazon and get sellers taken down. It also will not allow its authorized sellers to sell on Amazon.
Buyers who buy the product on Amazon are taking a risk, which they more or may not be aware of.
Amazon practice, when it receives a complaint about the lack of the manufacturer's warranty, has been to require the seller to accept a return and issue a full refund if the warranty should be in effect.
For whatever reason, Amazon has not required authorization for this brand, probably because the brand wants none of its product on their site.
Sellers who sell Milwaukee on Amazon are of dubious reputation and the product may or may not be authentic.
cyberontix
OP8 months agoI picture foreign sellers changing the spelling of "Milwaukee" or whatever and harming small sellers of genuine goods. All Amazon accomplished by starting to "vet" sellers to "end counterfeiting" was surrender tons of markets to eBay sellers. For example most retired/out-of-production Lego sets on Amazon are way more expensive than on eBay, because the seller had to invest big bucks just to be allowed to sell on there. I really don't know why any independent sellers bother selling on Amazon except as a secondary platform. Bezos takes a predatory amount of the profits from every seller on there, plain and simple. Really hoping he's having fun with his stupid wannabe NASA.
cyberontix
OP8 months agoAbsolutely. And now you have to be a verified seller for Lego and all that stuff and show them receipts, which requires significant investment. It's like, jeez, if I had an extra $10k or whatever to open a Mattel account I'd open my own little store at the mega-mall, you know? I think that was to dissuade foreign fakes, but we all know those fakes get on there.
And besides, people hate buying on Amazon anyway. They know the massive amount of harm they've caused to small businesses and in fact the whole economy.
meme6253
·8 months agoLove some of your experiences!, It even helped you overcome your fear of heights, At least for the moment at hand!
cyberontix
OP8 months agoLol I get woozy going up a little step ladder, but if there's a chance that there's something cool up in the rafters all my fear is gone. I almost got kilt balancing 12 feet up on some rickety mess just to get at some boxes. There was nothing in them except for horrible nonsense like VCR owner's manuals from the 1980s, but I kept feeling around on the floor and there it was, an original "I Like Ike" campaign button. I still have it.
john_wade
·8 months agoNow if only eBay would promptly pay like they did as recently as only 2 years ago instead of being dependent on a lousy algorithm that destroys sellers because they get sick or injured. and can't deliver right away.
safan80
·8 months agocyberontix
OP8 months agoI haven't experienced mismanaged payments from eBay per se, but I've never really audited the payments to my accounts, like I get very suspicious when an international shipping charge suddenly appears that I that was already paid 2 weeks ago. The one thing that's really irritating is how they delay payment for my newest account, by like days, and my main account has a 2-day delay (because of my bank I assume). I have a third one that receives deposits like clockwork the next day to my credit union.
I'd say I miss Paypal, but I don't; they didn't forgive a fake (partial) charge to my Paypal credit card even though I showed them quite clearly that I was at my home in New Hampshire and couldn't have possibly bought $2000 worth of lumber in South Dakota. 😂 My bank refunded immediately. Paypal and I still aren't on speaking terms, put it that way. My Paypal cards got hacked at least four times.
duffy4444
·8 months ago@cyberontix:
Right on... I dumped my Amazon selling account entirely years ago when I realized that the exact same items I sold there were netting 5-10 times more sales here. Not to mention the insane hoops to have to go thru on Amazon, which were more onerous than the hoops here (which are still an impediment, but not as bad). Amazon was constantly coming up with more gotchas to interfere with listings and sales for the smaller eBay-type of seller.
eBay is still the better venue for the small to medium seller, IMO and based on my own apples-to-apples experience.
Cheers, Duffy
cyberontix
OP8 months agoI mean I suppose Amazon is definitely a thing if you do dozens or hundreds of sales every day, I just prefer finding weird and rare things and listing them individually, so it depends on your preference. Last year I bought a half-pallet of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books (some were pretty valuable) for almost nothing off a guy who did Amazon full-time. He had these huge, huge dump boxes full of CDs and DVDs, like 6x5 foot size. He was quitting to become a golf pro.