From a general point of view, eBay and Amazon might seem similar in their business but they are very different in reality. Their differences range from the revenue they make per year, the scale of their business and their business model, but they do not share a lot of similarities. The main one being they allow third party sellers to list products for sale on their site for the opportunity to make money.
Nowadays, almost everyone knows about eBay and Amazon, when you want to sell a used item, you head straight to eBay but when you think about the items you want to sell on Amazon you think of brand-new items. When in fact 90% of the products that are sold on eBay are also available on Amazon, there isn’t much difference in the type of items they both offer.
The only noticeable difference between Amazon and eBay is the fact that Amazon offer the Prime service, which allows sellers to buy inventory in bulk from a supplier, from there they can ship the inventory to local Amazon fulfilment centre, to which Amazon will be responsible to for packing, picking and shipping the orders to the customers, however eBay on the other hand does not offer this service, which leaves the fulfilment side of things to the seller. Due to this major difference, it has given Amazon a reputation for fast delivery.
Business Model & Operation
Both Amazon and eBay have a very different business models, eBay works as a third-party connector of service between the buyer and seller, while Amazon also offers brand new products for sale in addition to allowing third party sellers to list items on their site. eBay also has an auction style of selling services where users can list their products they want to sell for a certain number of days and can obtain bids from potential buyers and sell them to the highest bidder. You can find more information on how selling on eBay works by clicking here.
However, Amazon does not offer this feature and items are strictly available on a ‘buy it now’ basis.
Selling on Amazon vs eBay
When it comes to the potential as a seller on both platforms, both carry huge opportunity of sales and already have an established loyal consumer base in the millions. eBay has a good reputation and a significant consumer-base. On the other-hand, Amazon has an exceptional consumer base which is loyal, and they get visitors in the billions per month on their website.
When it comes to selling, Amazon does have more monthly visitors and has more money spend on their platform, but there is a catch! Amazon has significantly higher seller fees and services fees for each FBA or FBM selling domain. In the meantime, eBay does not charge its sellers as much as Amazon does, Amazon charges you a selling commission of 39.99$ every month just to list an item for sale (if you go with the professional plan). Whereas eBay allows you to list 200 free listings every month, and their seller account fees/shop subscription are also lower than Amazon fees. We go a little more in detail on how selling on Amazon works in this article.
Both platforms offer great potential to sellers and once you get a hold of the algorithms and the flow of work, both of their fees are insignificant compared to the potential of revenue you can generate through them.
Deliveries and Inventory Management
In terms of inventory management and deliveries, Amazon has the wider spectrum of options available to you as a seller, Amazon allows both FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) and FBM (Fulfilled by merchant) options, which you can choose and conduct your business. Regarding FBA, Amazon manages your entire inventory and deliveries with your consent and choosing and all you must do is to sit back and manage your orders and in-flow of inventory of Amazon.
When it comes to selling on eBay, it does not have any built-in option for inventory automation and deliveries, here you must follow a similar model to Amazon FBM where all inventories and deliveries are personally fulfilled by the merchant/seller. You would have to hold your own inventory and use your own resources to conduct deliveries when it comes to growing an eBay business.
Conclusion
When put into perspective and after analysing all the aspects of both platforms, there is no clear winner. Both the platforms are quite different from each other and do not share the same domain for them to be fairly compared. Both eBay and Amazon act as a facilitator between a buyer and seller.
Both platforms have a very good, loyal, and considerable consumer-base which amounts to billions of views each month to these platforms from around the world. eBay may not be available in as many countries as Amazon is, but eBay’s popularity is nonetheless the greatest in the countries that they do operate.
There is no clear winner, it all depends on which platform you feel more comfortable with at first, it would be advised to list products on one platform initially and once you start to get familiar with the first platform you can now shift and start listing products on the second one. The goal at the end of the day is build an e-commerce business and use both eBay and Amazon to help you reach your business goals!