Forum Moderators: buckworks
Anyone have any experience with Amazon as a partner? It may be that webmaster world is not the best place to post this question, as frankly I do not consider myself a webmaster, though the site I have is one I built on my own, and it sells very well (much, much better than my competitors). But, I am just a mom and pop ecommerce retailer, with limited webmaster knowledge. I am already listed well on Google for keywords pertinent to my business; and thereby, also for AOL and Yahoo.
To partner with Amazon will require a considerable outlay of time and money (time to data feed my site to them, and then manage the sales from there separately from my site's normal sales) and need to hire additional help. Also, there is the danger, if I am on Amazon, that the Amazon site will "steal" sales from my regular site, with me paying them x% for those sales that might otherwise have gone to my regular site.
Anyone with experience in the Yahoo! store" area or Amazon store area, please share their experience. Thanks.
Oddly enough, this may not be a problem for a smaller company. I would suggest reading the agreement very carefully and considering exactly how it will affect your business before making a final decision.
BTW, I don't think you will actually find many "webmasters" here. The field has evolved and while the site is named it, that's a throwback to a bygone era. I consider webmaster to be a term that applies to someone who runs a small personal site. Most of us are something else now, too. You are in good company. :}
Thanks, for the benefit of your experience, and your advice about how a mom and pop might differ from your situation, and the welcoming comments re "webmaster." I'll have to think on it some more, given your comments. It is going to take a bit of work, and some dollars. You have provided some insight.
The question I still remain with is: do they really bring anything to the table to make it worth that investment I and like situated companies would have to make? I can't figure out why people would shop there for anything other than their books and CDS. I really have not figured it out, having examined their site for competitor type sites, what they offer. Seems they are just getting their "Store" capabilities built, as I know I would not shop there, based on what I tried to shop for.
Thanks again very much.
Donny
The requirement is a 3 year agreement. Seems reasonable, but the Internet is still, even now, so young. I just started 4-5 years ago, when the Internet was mostly a guy, geek thing, and not that much Internet commerce then. But thanks for the advice.
I dont see that just because you partner with Amazon youll do better, id have the oppposite to be true - need to have t0eh site respidered etc
Stick to what you know works - you wont lose out that way.
While we are on this subject. I am looking for a service company that can provide me the service to add my products to a multiple of shopping portals and shopping engines like my simon, shopping.com, pricegrabber.com etc...automatically with a crawler service.
I own a website with approx 3k items which if I do not outsource the work to a company who can provide me with a crawler service that can get all this accomplished all at once. A network.
Can anyone provide me with a resource as to who might provide this service. I am having problems finding one.
Basically, you are locked in for 3 years as a partner with Amazon, whether the partnership makes money for you or not. You put a copy of your website on their website, and pay a percentage of sales for all sales coming off that copy. The percentage is reasonable, I think, but as noted in prior comments, there are some very stringent shipping requirements that I probably could not meet, and really do not need to meet as I am presently doing business. Also, for me at least, I would incur additional manpower costs to to install a dupe site and manage sales from there separately from other sales.
In the end I decided not to do it.
resource as to who might provide this service
Have you though about doing it inhouse? We do it inhouse, and it's very easy. We do a data dump of products listings and then uickly build the feeds from there. We are up to 7 feeds now to shopping sites and it takes 2-3 hours a week to do inhouse.
I will give it a try. thanks for your input.
Search on "amazon mailextractor" for a product recommended to me. At least your sales processing can be somewhat automated. I would also think about inventory counts. For example, you might send Amazon a data feed where only sent products with an availability of 5 or more.
> the Amazon site will "steal" sales from my regular site
That is possible. But you can also benefit by re-directing Amazon buyers to your regular site via e-mail or invoice.
> paying them x% for those sales that might otherwise have gone to my regular site.
You can use a different price on Amazon to account for Amazon commission and fixed s&h price. What is your total web store price? Then what would you need to sell it for on Amazon to make the same profit?
