Selling on Amazon and selling to Amazon may sound a bit similar, but they are very different. So what is the difference between selling TO Amazon vs. selling ON Amazon?
Selling ON Amazon means you are selling your products on the Amazon platform and customers buy your product through the platform. You would take care of listing, pricing and marketing yourself.
Selling TO Amazon means you have your own product and you are selling it directly to Amazon. You are not selling directly to the customers. You sell the product to Amazon, and Amazon will take care of the listing, pricing and marketing. You could put it like:
Amazon Sellers vs. Vendor Sellers
Differences Between Selling on Amazon vs. Selling to Amazon
When you decide to sell on Amazon you have three steps to complete before you register.
Decide what you want to sell
Choose a selling plan
Register and start listing
After you register you have four steps to complete
List your products
Sell your products
Ship your products (or FBA)
Get paid
Selling on Amazon means you have to pay more fees than someone who is selling to Amazon. For instance, if you are sending your items to Amazon, they will store it for you for a fee. For those selling to Amazon, Amazon will become your full-time distributor for your products.
Before you think about getting into selling to Amazon, becoming a vendor for Amazon is an invite only program. There has been talk about people trying to sign up for it, but there is no clear answer to whether that worked or not.
Another big difference between selling to Amazon vs. selling on Amazon is that there is no room for any mistakes when it comes to selling to Amazon. Amazon has a reputation of providing products to customers in a timely matter, and if you interfere with that in any way, chances are you will be dropped even if you were invited to the platform.
When you are selling to Amazon, you have less flexibility with your product. Amazon will offer you a wholesale price and it’s up to them to determine how much they want to sell the product for, how the listing will look etc. When you are a 3p seller (selling on Amazon) you can choose all of those things yourself. So If you are thinking about which one is best for you, that is something to take into consideration.
Depending on your product, either option is a great way to get your product out there to millions of customers. The main differences are how much control you want to have over your product. If you don’t want to go through packaging, listing and shipping the product yourself, then selling to Amazon would be your best option, if you were to get invited to the program. If not, you always have to option to sell on Amazon which gives you more flexibility over your product. For more information of selling on Amazon, you can read a couple of our blog posts that will be helpful for you.
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