Amazon takes 50% cut from small businesses

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-13/amazon-amzn-takes-half-of-each-sale-from-2-million-small-businesses

by onion2k • 3 years ago

29 7 3 years ago

I used to run a small business through Amazon selling specialty spices & rubs. They took 40% of my sales. The margins were too tight, even without Amazon taking all the gravy. I figured it was worth it because it would let me build a list of new customers. I quickly found out that they had restrictions on that, too. I didn't sell on Amazon very long because at the end of the day I was left with very little room for profit. If I wanted to build a customer list, I would have had to get creative by pulling customers off amazon, onto my own properties, and the conversions on that tactic were shit. I don't know if it has changed (this was back in 2010) but not giving you rights to customer email addresses and list building tools in-store was a real kick in the ass.

The hard lesson here was that you build your business on other people's platform at great peril, and it is almost never worth it over a long enough timeline.

ctvo2• 3 years ago

The hard lesson here was that you build your business on other people's platform at great peril, and it is almost never worth it over a long enough timeline.

I don't disagree with this, but for customers, this is a bonus: I don't have to give random small business my e-mail or any information. I, as the customer, tend to trust Amazon more than Small Co. with any personal and billing information.

I hate that when I buy things using Shopify's payment platform, there's an auto checkbox that says "Allow store to contact me with deals and offers" that I have to opt out of.

adave• 3 years ago

Keep paying 50% more than registering with a genuine seller.Shopify is on the same level as Amazon, they are just storing the info on their platform.

kderbyma• 3 years ago

Amazon is probably the single worst experience I have witnessed from a selling perspective. Might as well sell overpriced counterfeit goods on it just to push people to your own legitimate site lol where you get actual margins.

fancyfredbot• 3 years ago

"Amazon doubles the price consumers pay when buying from small businesses" would probably be more effective in getting people to complain?

morpheos137• 3 years ago

It is almost as if monopolies are bad.

Amazon takes 50% cut from small businesses

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