The Tricky Business of Selling Via Amazon

Those of you that are building e-commerce sites are presented with a host of options, from Shopify to Magento to dozens of others. Many businesses also set up shop on eBay or Amazon because of the broad exposure you receive by being part of their marketplaces. You make a little less money on each sale and you have to abide by some fairly complex (and frequently changing) rules, but you have immediate access to a large audience of buyers without having to engage in SEO to build your presence from the ground up.

As some sellers have seen, though, selling through giants like Amazon or eBay can be difficult if you don't meet their standards for feedback or ratings. These marketplaces put such rules in place to weed out fraudulent sellers, but they can also snare legitimate businesses and hold up their payments for months at a time. If you're considering Amazon, check out this article from The Seattle Times detailing complaints from sellers regarding Amazon's payment and account policies. While these are isolated cases out of many happy sellers, it's worth understanding the power a giant like Amazon (and eBay, Google and many others) has in its seller agreements. View the article here.