Ebay v Amazon - sellers and byers, can I pick your brains?

[ohtobemeagain]

I currently have a shop on Ebay selling craft stuff and was wondering if I should also sell on Amazon.

I've looked at the facts and figures and Amazon seems to be more expensive, but is it worth selling on there anyway to increase my market?

Amazon sellers: what do you like and dislike about selling on Amazon?

Those of you who sell on both platforms, which do you prefer and why?

If you predominantly buy, which would you look on first? Which do you buy from most?

Thanks in advance

I don't normally think to buy craft supplies from Amazon, to be honest. I do check both if I'm buying books, and will go with whichever is cheaper. I do buy quite a lot of craft stuff from Ebay, and I find that on Ebay it is easier to browse within a general category. With Amazon you have limited search options, so you either have to be very very specific, or trawl through pages and pages of irrelevant stuff to find what you're looking for. I suppose I think of Amazon as being very mainstream, and feel I have more chance of seeing something more unusual on Ebay.

This might be nonsense, but I'm sure I've read that when selling on Amazon, you have to agree that if you are selling the same item elsewhere, Amazon has to be the cheapest by a certain %.

Etsy is "the" place for craft stuff, I thought?

I agree with MrsPenny.
I buy mostly on eBay for the same reason. I browse on eBay, sometimes for hours but get frustrated on amazon very quickly because of the amount of totally irrellivent stuff that comes up.
i sometimes cheekily pop back on amazon to check customer reveiws though once I've decided what I want to buy.

Thanks for the comments so far.

I totally agree with the comments re searching. I love to pick a category and just browse down it on Ebay. You can also save searches (not sure if you can on Amazon) which I like (and waste hours of time on ).

Do any of you sell on Amazon? I'm more after the niggles you have - the facts and figures speak for themselves, but when you actually use something you get a much better feel for it.

MrsPenny - I really hope you're wrong with the cheapest thing

I sell on both Ebay and Amazon and I find that Ebay is the better of the two by far.

Amazon places high postage costs on my items. I could avoid this by paying a higher monthly fee to them and charge my own (proper) costs but I don't sell enough volume through them to make this option viable. I'd still be out of pocket on sales versus fees each month.

Amazon also only pays me out every 2 weeks for anythng sold and I can't change this which can mean that I can encounter cash flow issues paying for postage and being out on item value before I get recompensed.

Even with Ebay introducing fees on postage costs I still make more money from my sales there than on Amazon.

I have also had issues on Amazon when listing items - if a template for what I am selling doesn't exist it can be a pain to create one and often they have then rejected what I have created even though all the details are correct. They have said this is due to the manufacturer / supplier rejecting my listing but I have had no such issues on Ebay.

Of the two Ebay has always worked better for me and provided a better return even with all the fees included.
Admittedly that may be down to what I sell but I can only speak as I find.
Hope that helps a bit.