I’ve heard many merchants argue that you shouldn’t sell on Amazon.com because you’re essentially “feeding the beast” and helping your competition. As Amazon continues to grow, I don’t think this will be a winning strategy. I’ve compiled my top ten reasons why you should list your products on Amazon below:
1. More Money! This one is the most obvious. If you’re not selling on Amazon then you have no chance at those extra sales.
2. It’s most likely already on Amazon. If you won’t list a product on Amazon, chances are someone else will, or it’s already listed. So you’re not really withholding valuable data from Amazon or keeping a monopoly in most cases.
3. Larger overall market share. You may be competing with your own website in theory, but by selling on Amazon you are taking an overall larger market share, so in the end you’re better off.
4. Free Branding. Your seller name is listed and viewed by potentially thousands of shoppers. We’ve had plenty of people find our products on Amazon and then jump to our site to complete the purchase. Your seller name could also be included in Amazon promotional emails.
5. Limited Customer Service. Amazon customer’s are extremely low maintenance compared to Ebay or online stores.
6. Easy to Automate. With all the available tools out there (ahem, www.marketplacepartner.com), it’s easy to fully automate your entire operation. I maybe spend 45 minutes a day dealing with my store, and that’s typically more than I need to anyway.
7. Good way to liquidate. Before we launched our store we certain items we just couldn’t get rid of. Since Amazon is a different kind of customer than what our site attracts, a large chunk of it flew off the shelves as soon as we listed it.
8. Different Customers. Chances are that the person browsing Amazon.com will never be on your site, so this is a chance to be in front of a new customer that you otherwise wouldn’t have been.
9. Selling more inventory means great bulk discounts. The more you sell the more you can negotiate deals.
10. Test New Products. If you run a more curated site, Amazon Third Party Marketplace can be a great place to test out a new product to see how it does. Once you feel comfortable with it you can bring the products on to your own site.
