In recent years as eBay’s domination over the online retail world has waned, Amazon Marketplace has been eBay’s most-often-cited competitor. Amazon.com also offers sellers a ready buying public and a comission-based model with very low barriers to entry.
But which marketplace is right for you? What are the differences between the two?
If you’ve found yourself asking these questions each time yet another analyst cites Amazon.com as a reason for the latest eBay stock slide, rules change, or initiative, the simple comparison below should give you a little bit of guidance about which one to chosse for your selling and goods.
eBay vs. Amazon.com on Ease of Use
When it comes to the actual “listing” process, the difference between eBay and amazon is quite stark. Even after years of refinement and simplification, the eBay selling form remains quite complex, both online and on its mobile platform. You’ll be asked to make a variety of choices, set a number of policies, and fill in several boxes with your own text for things like the listing title and description.On eBay, failure to do these things or to use the listing form to its full potential means, in the most blunt of terms, that you will more often than not lose the battle for search placement or for buyers’ bids.
On this front the contrast with Amazon.com could not be more different. Whereas eBay’s marketplace creates a listing for each individual item for sale on eBay at a given time, Amazon’s marketplace maintains only one shared page per item (make and model). On Amazon.com, once you have created a seller account, selling is therefore a simple matter of:
- Searching Amazon.com for the product that you have to sell.
- Visiting that product page as if you were going to buy one.
- Clicking on the “Sell yours here” button at the upper-right of the product page.
- Choosing a price and submitting.
Even the last step is made easier on Amazon.com than it is on eBay; when you click “Sell yours yere,” the Amazon.com website shows you the current price range for all of the items of that type for sale on Amazon.com—from the lowest to the highest, used and new. You can then easily decide how to price your item in context, without doing additional research.
On eBay, text boxes and descriptions to enter. On Amazon.com, none—automatically done for you based on the product. On eBay, policies to set and forms to fill out. On Amazon.com, none—one policy for everyone. On eBay, photos to take. On Amazon.com, none—stock photo is always used. On eBay, lots of pricing research to do. On Amazon.com, none—pricing research is automatically done for you.
Ease of use win goes to: Amazon.com.