Should I build an eCommerce website or start as an Amazon Reseller?

You have decided to become an online seller but are still unsure whether to resell items on Amazon or to open up your own eCommerce website? Obviously, you will want to earn as much income as possible while not drowning in endless hours of work. So what do you do? Both approaches offer different pros and cons and you might even consider a hybrid approach to combine the best of both worlds. Before you can make an educated decision about which approach suits you best, it’s important to understand the details of each approach.

Amazon Reseller vs. Own eCommerce Website

On a marketplace such as Amazon, products are provided by different third-party sellers and then processed by Amazon. Examples for other online marketplaces are eBay and Walmart. An Amazon reseller buys products in bulk from wholesalers, distributors, and manufacturers and sells them individually to customers on Amazon’s marketplaces. Contrast this with your own eCommerce website, which is a self-hosted platform that is built and designed by yourself. You are responsible for driving traffic to the website and handling the shipping and sales of the products. When selling on Amazon, the setup process is quite easy and low-cost. If you use Amazon FBA, which is highly recommended, Amazon takes care of shipping and returns. Selling products on your own website is more complicated. After choosing a domain name and deciding for an eCommerce platform to sell on, such as Shopify or Magento, you need to get into the details of customizing and designing the theme for your website. So if you’re looking to get started quickly, becoming an Amazon reseller is probably the route to go. Generating sufficient traffic is another common struggle many eCommerce website owners face. There’s no automatic guarantee that people will actually visit your site. For best results, you need to work on optimizing the visibility of your website in search rankings. This can be done via SEO and paid advertising. If you’re tight on money, these might not be viable options for you. Amazon on the other hand already has more than enough traffic on its site so the chances of customers finding your products are generally much higher. But there are also two big upsides to building your own website. A disadvantage of Amazon is that when a customer is looking for a product, he or she will not only be shown your product but your competitor’s products as well. If you cannot keep up with price and good reviews, customers are likely to choose your competition. Compare this with your website, where you only display your products and have plenty of room to highlight the advantages of your product(s). A second issue with Amazon is that customers may not associating with buying the product from you but rather with buying the product on Amazon. This makes it difficult to build up a brand on Amazon. But if people are buying directly from your website, they will know that the product is coming from you and will associate it with your brand. In the end, there is no right or wrong to the question of whether you should resell on Amazon or build your own eCommerce website. Rather, it depends on your resources and your goals. Whatever approach you decide for, Algopix vastly simplifies the process of researching profitable products on Amazon with key information such as recommended market price, a detailed expenses breakdown, the product demand, competition analysis and profit as well as sales estimation. This saves you time and reduces your business risk, improving your bottom line. On top of that, Algopix provides this information across eBay and Walmart marketplaces as well!