Is It Better To Sell On eBay Or Amazon? Let’s See The Numbers.

Online sellers don’t always brag about their earnings, so trying to compare the marketplaces to figure out how much you will earn selling on Amazon or eBay can be a challenge. If you are wondering is it better to sell on eBay or Amazon, we’ve dug up some really interesting data and thought we’d weigh in with some opinion.

According to a recent survey of eBay and Amazon sellers done by webretailer.com: A professional Amazon seller is four times more likely to break the 1 million in sales mark. Only 3.9% of eBay stores are selling at that volume. 16.7% of Amazon sellers. however reported sales clocking in at more than a million gross. Digging into the survey there are more interesting facts to be found.

72% of eBay or Amazon sellers don’t use a marketplace management tool. Indicating there are quite a few sellers only selling on one of the two marketplaces.

52% indicating they will be looking for channel management in the coming year.

I’ve been selling online now for about 7 years. Before starting to work on Kicksync, and still to this day, we are very active on both eBay and Amazon.  I built KickSync to best exploit the profit opportunities of each marketplace and to play them against each other. When we first started cross-posting items there were some valuable insights that came forward.

1. Amazon buyers are less concerned about price. They are much more concerned about the timeliness of the product arriving and a good quality product.
2. 81% of buyers ignore competing offers on Amazon and buy straight from the buy box. Lowest price does not always win the buy box, Seller reputation and a number of factors play into it. This allows you to push your pricing up higher as you build your store there. We frequently double or triple our profit margin on Amazon sales just by a winning the Buy Box.
3. Along with a direct from buy box purchase, however, comes the likelihood the buyer did not read your description comments. Due to this, we tend to post only our higher quality condition items. You will inevitably deal with a degree of returns based on the buyer not having seen the description. The higher margins more than compensate, though.
4. Amazon has no true filtering between different ASIN’s by price. They’ve developed a great buying culture where price is not the highest deciding factor. By keeping buyers more product focused, sellers reap a benefit of just being a trusted source for goods, rather than a slave to the lowest price.
5. Simply put an Amazon buyer want’s to buy it quick and easy. They are not going to competitively shop around. They will purchase and move on with their day. We frequently have items crossposted for 10’s or even 100’s more on Amazon vs. eBay and despite being easily searchable they sell at the higher price.

So, is it Better to sell on eBay or Amazon?

My own insights are these (bear in mind these revolve around used items mostly.) eBay stands as a more predictable sell through. Posting on eBay at a certain price will almost always result in a sale. We’ve all had the experience where we dropped a price down to what we know is the margin and boom it sells in minutes. Amazon is a little more finicky but when it hit’s it can hit big. In short, it’s harder to predict what will sell right away, but price doesn’t seem to be a huge factor. It’s less about learning whether it’s better to sell on eBay or Amazon, and instead figuring out when (and for how much) to sell your inventory on either marketplace.

Knowing this our standard selling model is to push prices higher to match up to Amazon and rely on eBay to clear out what’s left. Compound this with selling through your inventory twice as fast and the case to sell on both channels quickly becomes clear. In our first year of using Kicksync we doubled our sales and increased our margin from 22% to 29%, and that has only grown since.

Lastly, 55% percent of buyers across the internet start their product search at Amazon.

Not on google, and not on eBay. Amazon’s annual sales are many times over the volume sold on eBay. As sellers, we must go where the traffic is. Is it better to sell on eBay or Amazon? Taking advantage of both markets is no longer just a possibility. It is a must-do next step to growing your business, your brand, and your sales.

Read more on the statistics discovered in webretailer.com survey here.

Then learn more about what KickSync can do for your eBay business.

Sell more. Sell better.

JB