Amazon made roughly $19.52 billion in 2008, and has a lot of experience and power that has enabled them to create an excellent storefront service for entrepreneurs.
Amazon has several services that they can offer to entrepreneurs such as:
- Marketplace
- Pro Merchant
- WebStore
- aStore
Marketplace
This is the fastest way to make money with Amazon and this option is preferable if you plan on only selling a few items. There is no start up costs with Amazon marketplace and once registered you can immediately display and sell your products.
Amazon allows you to sell new and used products but whenever a user purchases your items, that individual will pay Amazon and Amazon will transfer money to you to ship the product.
Amazon allows you to list your products but they will get a small cut, out of each sale. The amount Amazon keeps from each sale can range from 6% to 20% depending on the product. It’s important to know how much Amazon will take away so you can better price your product. (The Amazon website will have information on what percentage they take depending on the product).
With a normal account your items will be kept up for 60 days after which Amazon will remove the product. There is no fee if your item doesn’t sell.
Pro Merchant
Pro merchant accounts are much like the EBay Power Seller program. A Pro Merchant is essentially an enhanced version of the normal merchant account. This account is ideal if you’re selling more than 40 items a month. One benefits of having a Pro Merchant account is that Amazon will not charge you transaction fees upon selling an item.
Aside from waiving the transaction fee the other benefits include:
- Mass listing importer and exporter that allows you to post 1000s of items quickly.
- Your postings won’t expire after 60 days.
- View reports on how much you’re selling and other account activity.
- Better security and fraud protection.
A Pro Merchant account costs $39.99 a month. But remember, Amazon may review you depending on the type of item you sell in order for your business to be approved.
Astores
aStores are entirely free. With an aStore, you don’t need you own products; instead you sell amazons pre-existing products. You can add the aStore to a website you already have or you can create a website entire for the aStore.
With an aStore you only make about 15% per sale. You can make a living with an aStore but don’t count on it; expect it to be secondary and supplemental to your main business.
WebStores
The Amazon WebStore is essentially the storefront that is based off of the platform that Amazon uses and is extremely powerful. You can sell your own products or you can sell products found on Amazon.
Having a WebStore will cost you about $59.99 a month but Amazon will still receive 7% per transaction.
One of the greatest benefits of the Amazon WebStore is that it’s well known, secure and it comes with automatic trust and security.