Amazon Reveals It Shipped 1 Billion FBA Items for Sellers in 2015

by: sasikat9

I disagree.....AMAZON DELIVERED NEXT TO ZILTCH.

Thank You Employees of the USPS, UPS and FedEx.

Darts for Amazon or lying.

by: MJRock

Amazon, the new slave owners of the humble small time online seller . . . they make eBay look like a wonderful sales "venue" compared to Amazons draconian practices . . .  

by: Katie

One of my friends developed an application for football stuff and sold over $5,000 in 2013.  Took a loss on Amazon for all his work.  They are thieves.

by: Chicago48

We small merchant sellers are being squeezed by the FBA sellers.  AMZ is becoming more restrictive about what we can sell. Some items we try & list are now tagged "FBA restricted" meaning if we're not FBA we can't sell it.  I can understand the new&packaged, but when I have a slightly used electronic product, I sell on EC or EB.
FBA sellers have to pay to store & warehouse their merchandise, so that means you need thousands of items to sell.
We small sellers can't compete against FBA and Prime.

by: shut1968

Just another reason for them to justify screwing small sellers even more... they don't need them. Our Amazon sales were strong this X-mas.. and profit cut to the bone.. not by competition from other small sellers.. but from Amazon itself who were apparently content on making 25 cents or less in profit on the items sold. Our sales on eBay were on par with Amazon and the profit from eBay in some most cases was far more... it's a bullsh*t report from Amazon.. I am more interested in what their losses are going to be from offering free returns for any reason... now THAT'S a "REVEAL" I'm more interested in...  

by: Bidonmine

I am a small seller and use FBA for 80% of my Amazon items. For small items, the monthly storage fee is not very much. If you only have one sku of an item in FBA you are not charged the bi-yearly warehouse fee so all you pay is the monthly (for 516 items, in November, I paid only $17.11 for the monthly storage)

As a small seller, 95% of my items are just one to a sku.

As for sales, FBA sells over FBM 10 to 1... and... Amazon sells 10 to 1 over my Ebay items.

Yes, the selling fee is higher for the item when sold on Amazon or FBA, however, a higher fee is better than no sale at all (and with FBA, I can sell those heavy items without the associated higher shipping cost). FBA also does all the customer service, shipping and handles returns. A nice feature of FBA is that, when requested through the Amazon automatic system, negative feedback is removed for almost any reason.
A key to FBA is to sell only new or Like-New through that service. Anything in less condition I sell on Ebay.

So, yes, I am a fan of FBA.

by: Bidonmine

Katie Said:
''One of my friends developed an application for football stuff and sold over $5,000 in 2013.  Took a loss on Amazon for all his work.  They are thieves. ''

When I see a comment like that I can only wonder why someone would sell an item for less than its cost. I have to assume the person did not check all the associated fees and shipping costs (which include not only postage but packing supplies, paper and even time).

Due diligence in investigating your entire sales process is required to be a successful seller.

by: donald

Well I'll stick to me, myself and I. FBA is not for me, for now. Half of my items are drop shipped anyhow. I'm happy that I sell a lot more there then eBay and with less customer complains which brings more of ebay control and arm twisting practices.

by: RKTOYS

There are a few possible reasons.  Pockets of the country have abnormally high shipping (NC/SC for me).  Some mook could change the listing to reduce the shipping voucher.  Could just be a desperate plea to get some velocity going - Amazon's 25% take is a huge impediment to profitability.

by: Toledo Maude

For me online shopping has a new site.  After being a ''rewards member'' of a gas station chain for many years (free sodas, candies and gas), I started shopping through their website at afflilated stores.  100's and 100's of stores.

Plus every purchase adds to my rewards points.  Free gas even at $2.00 a gallon is nothing to sneeze at.

Today, for the first time I looked up stores selling movies which I have been exclusively buying on Amazon.

I do not wish to hurt the small sellers on Amazon, but neither do I wish to reward a huge company that has a long history of abusing their employees.  

by: Jester

It is a different game on Amazon but I have been treated fairly even when I have made some mistakes. And my business in the first year almost doubled my eBay business with the same amount of items listed.

For me eBay declined from last year by 45% even though I had more items listed than ever.

I will be focusing in on Amazon this year and expanding my business. Shape up or ship out eBay.

by: pace306

Amazon is MUCH tougher on sellers then eBay is .... but Amazon doesnt lie and eBay does.

If its on one of Amazons policy pages, they stick to it. If its on one of eBays policy pages, they ignore it and tell you to take it as a business loss.

Amazon has a longer returns period then eBay does, BUT as said above - the sheer amount of sales that you can make if you have a good (popular) item in FBA (or even FBM , but FBA is much much better in that regard) is unheard of. You can sell HUNDREDS of an item. The only thing on eBay that theres hundreds of are: lies, fake Chinese items, bumbling CS agents, and fake VERO takedowns.

In all honesty you need BOTH places - neither one is perfect - not by any means.

I implore everyone here who can to expand to Jet and Walmart .... it will make life just that much easier - thats my 2016 goal!