There's a nice round up of eBay and Amazon over on the Econsultancy website at the moment, it's worth a moment to read it if you are thinking about selling online via Amazon and eBay.

It offers an unbiased summary of the pros and cons of both platforms. In addition to what they talk about I'd also add a couple of things:

eBay

Although a lot of new products are sold on ebay, it grew up as a second hand market place. Some brands are therefore reluctant to see their products on eBay. If you are an authorised retailer you may find manufacturers breathing down your neck not to sell on eBay.

As the article also mentions, I think eBay offers a good platform for selling B Grade or distressed stock. Kind of like a factory outlet shop. 

Amazon

There is an emerging trend in online retail to offer a one stop shop and Amazon is leading the way here. Consumers are happy to take multiple deliveries as long as they can place their order all at once. The Amazon platform allows that to happen.

And as the article mentions, although Amazon's fees seem very high, by the time you remove transaction and card processing fees it looks fairly reasonable compared to other promotion channels.

Read the full article on the Econsultancy site:

http://econsultancy.com/blog/5918-selling-on-ebay-pros-and-cons-for-smes

The general advice with all opportunities is to:

  • research which of your competitors are already listed
  • can you compete at the prices that are listed? If not there will be little point in getting listed.
  • is there enough margin in the products you are selling - even if the commission will take up most of the margin it might be worth a try because customers often go to buy something else or something in addition.

If you've had a positive or negative experience with either eBay or Amazon please leave your story below.