Many sellers are looking to expand their target-audience and sales. Because Amazon alone attracts about millions of consumers per month, it makes it an attractive proposition. So, instead of focusing on selling on one marketplace, this article will explain how sellers can actually export all their products from their existing eBay store to Amazon, so they can run successful businesses on both platforms!
To understand the process, we will first focus on the main difficulties and by the end of this article, we will provide an easy solution for each problem mentioned.
Incompatible categories
The main problem is the incompatibility between Amazon and eBay categories. As an example, Amazon has about 48,000 categories, and eBay “only” has around 18,000. So if a seller wants to upload an eBay product to amazon with no equivalent category, he will have to search the most suitable category Amazon has to offer.
Because of this, many inventory-managing companies claim there is no way to export products without customer participation to tag every product to the desired category.
Quote: “Amazon’s categories don’t match up exactly with the categories on other channels, so you’ll need to provide some information to be sure your products get listed in the correct categories… Brian @ Sellbrite”.
MWS-API
When a seller has thousands of products of eBay inventory, the option to manually upload every item to Amazon is out of the question.
Because Amazon wants to make your life easier when managing the inventory, they came out with MWS-API (marketplace web service – Application Programming Interface). It allows the seller to add, delete or update items and get inventory reports.
To use these tools, the seller will have to sign up for “Pro Merchant” account on Amazon ( $39 per month).
The usage of the MWS-API requires developer skills. Also, because the requirements are changing between every category, there is no generic way to use this API.
More information you can find here: https://developer.amazonservices.com
Barcodes and other Amazon rules
Amazon differs from eBay who allows each seller to design a product page. Amazon has a catalog page, so if the product already exists on Amazon, the seller can’t redesign his product page. Because of this, Amazon has very strict rules about fitting the new product to an existing product page, and any violation of the rules can easily cause the account be suspended.So the seller needs to be familiar with Amazon requirements.
Another reason to get blocked is the duplicates caused by the wrong usage of barcodes. In order to avoid them, the seller has to manage the barcodes for each item.
Synchronization
When a seller runs two stores, it’s very important that the stores be synchronized. For example, if the last product was bought from eBay, and the seller was unavailable at the time to close the listing at the Amazon store, and in the meantime, another customer bought the item on Amazon, the seller would have to cancel the order on Amazon and earn negative feedback.
So the main advantages of syncing are:
• The ability to manage a high number of products.
• The seller is free to manage his sales without concerns.
• Keep the positive feedback and high scores.
• Avoids blocking on Amazon\eBay.
Is it possible to export an eBay store to Amazon? Yes, so let’s have a look at the options.
Manually
For small stores, the easiest way is to upload each product separately to Amazon. This way requires no technical skills.
Inventory file loader
Amazon allows you to manage the inventory (add, delete, update) via uploading excel files (.csv).It is much easier than uploading manually since the Inventory file loader allows you to upload a group of items at once. The main problem is it’s only available if the product page already exists.
More information at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=3149261
Turbo-lister
The Turbo-Lister is an eBay tool for managing eBay inventory. Although it is an eBay tool, Amazon supports uploading files (.txt) that were created by Turbo-Lister.
Since this tool was created about 8 years ago, it is very slow and not efficient. Customers who are still using it, often call it “Turtle Lister”. The main problem is that amazon only supports files from the following categories: “Sports Mem, Cards & Fan Shop”, “Entertainment Memorabilia”, and part of the category “Consumer Electronics”.
More information at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=201285120
Inventory management companies
There are many Inventory management companies like “Sellbrite” and “Solid-Commerce”. These companies have inventory management as their main focus. Also, for a monthly payment + setup costs, these companies will upload your products to Amazon (and other sites, depends on price height and customer requests).
To get started, you’ll first need to import all your listings from eBay. Second, you need to link every item on the listing to your product and attach the sku to each of them.
When all the work is complete, you will still need to categorize each of your products by selecting a category from Amazon categories. So basically, the seller still needs to do a lot of work.
Export Your eBay Store to Amazon
Is a company that specializes only in exporting from eBay to Amazon and Ebid. The company doesn’t require that the seller be involved in the exporting process at all from the beginning to the end. There is no need to tag products to their Amazon category. The company has a database with a fully matched category for each eBay product. Also, the company manages an inventory of barcodes, so the customer doesn’t need to “deal” with that at all. They also provide a full, real-time sync, so the product quantities always stays equal. And there is no setup charge.
This is a guest post by Shay who is an experienced eBay and Amazon seller; the lead developer in ExportYourStore that specializing in exporting eBay stores to Amazon. Shay can be reached by email at shay@exportyourstore.com and through the company website http://www.exportyourstore.com. ExportYourStore offers exporting service from eBay to Amazon with one click, real time synchronization, barcodes management, and troubleshooting to eBay and Amazon sellers.
Disclaimer: The information and views presented in this blog post are the opinions of the guest author, and not necessarily those of 888 Lots.
