Amazon reported their 2008 Q2 results last night confirming that sales are accelerating with what looks set to be a record breaking Christmas selling season.
Amazon sales are growing faster Internationally (47%) than North America (35%) and it’s not just traditional media products driving the growth. Whilst media grew 31% Amazon’s consumer electronics and general merchandise grew 58%. A third of items sold on Amazon are now not the media products Amazon are famous for.
Third party selling is growing on Amazon and almost 1 in 3 products sold is from a seller rather than Amazon themselves. Amazon emphasised in their investor conference call that many large sellers use Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) which keeps service levels high as Amazon themselves handle the shipping. Jeff Bezos said “When sellers move into fulfillment by Amazon they end up selling more…. a third party item can be married together and put in a box with an Amazon retail item”.
It’s also worth pointing out that if you use FBA then Amazon will also ship products to customers for off-Amazon sales, which can include your own website and even eBay sales.
If you’re already selling on Amazon have you seen the same increases on sales compared to last year? If you’re not an Amazon seller will you start selling on the platform by Christmas?
3 Responses
Does this not call into question Ebays growth over the last few years?
I personally would like Ebay to be one worldwide marketplace with minimal listing fees and no International Site Visibility fees, a worldwide marketplace that made it succesful. Not these splintered markets we currently have.
All the listing enhancements should go unless they are free in my opinion.
FVF could be 15% for private sellers and 10% for business sellers.
Now wouldn’t that be simple?
if we sell something for £500 there is no way we would be willing to give ebay £50 plus Paypal fees, there part in the sale simply does not warrant it,
that kind of marketplace is not viable for many sellers,
anyway back to the website and adding more items
#2 If you build the fee’s into your sale price I think it’s a justifiable expense, we regularly pay eBay/Paypal over £50 in fees on a single transaction but its no surprise as they told us upfront how much it would cost.
I agree it’s alot but the sale might not have ever occurred in the 1st place, our sales ratio against our website would be around 6-1 in eBays favour, I would much prefer to sell the 6 and pay £50 a pop than just sell 1 and not pay any fee’s, baring in mind of course my merchant account fee’s are not much different to Paypal these days so I only tend to look at the eBay fee’s anyway.