Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

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Tracy Barnhart, Owner
Giverny, Inc. / Mini Me Geology
http://www.GivernyOnline.com
http://www.MiniMeGeology.com

We`ve been looking at Amazon, but tending to stay away from it. When you read all the necessary criteria for listing with them, it`s a bit problematic for our situation as a startup.

We currently get half our business from our own site, and somewhere around half from eBay sales. Taking the listing fees, PayPal fees, and final value fees from eBay, we end up with something like a 10% commission. Amazon I think charges 15%?

More importantly is the return policy, and their 30-day satisfaction warranty that supercedes our own shipping and satisfaction structure. All our sales are final, with returns only for lost or damaged flags. We can`t handle a 30-day escrow type of situation, as our sales aren`t big enough.

Nor do we use a merchant account, yet, and the additional fees associated with credit cards. Finally, we`re just now trying to work out how we`ll move into the next phase of volume sales. We can`t handle that either, and Amazon would be such a large potential sales engine, we`d likely be overwhelmed.

So we`re taking a pass for now.

Hi Tracy, we are going to try Amazon if they will let us - if we get in, I`ll let you know how it goes. We were told a few months back that they were not accepting anybody else in our category, but we`re going to inquire on a regular basis.  I am hoping that even with the higher commission rate, that it may pay in the long run because of Amazon`s search engine placement, and hopefully I will get return customers that come straight to the store for repeat business.

Jennifer



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