Amazon & Marketplaces

In an ecommerce world increasingly dominated by Amazon and other huge marketplaces, we address how independent merchants can best use those channels to grow their businesses and brands. We analyze selling tools, listing optimization strategies, multichannel selling options, back-office efficiencies, pros and cons, common mistakes, and much more.

Amazon & Marketplaces
Amazon Versus States: A Sales Tax Roundup

May 4, 2011 • Sig Ueland

For years states have fought Amazon.com to force the ecommerce giant to collect sales tax — the states, desperately looking for cash, versus Amazon, vehemently defending its practices as well ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Alibaba CEO on Acquisition of Vendio, Social Commerce, Product Sourcing

June 29, 2010 • PEC Staff

Alibaba is a huge force in global, business-to-business ecommerce. The company is based in China and it links millions of wholesale suppliers with businesses that resell those products. The company ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne on Holiday Sales, Free Shipping

December 21, 2009 • Kerry Murdock

It's not every day that we speak with a Stanford PhD who has funded the construction of schools around the world. That same person started dabbling in ecommerce a decade or so ago and his company is now a publicly traded retailing powerhouse. He is Patrick Byrne, and the company is Ov...
Amazon & Marketplaces
PeC Review: Sellit Makes Marketplaces Social

October 23, 2009 • Armando Roggio

A new "self-promotion" tool lets merchants selling on Yahoo!, CafePress, Etsy, or Cartfly promote their products on leading social media sites, access a social media advertising network, and post a Flash-based widget on their blog or other sites. Sellit is a "bolt-on" solution that pr...
Amazon & Marketplaces
The PeC Review: Shopster Is a Brilliant Idea That Needs a Little Polish

June 10, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Shopster is a unique combination of a hosted ecommerce cart and a relatively easy supply-chain solution that promises to help many small merchants get up and running with a functional and fully-stocked online retail business. The Calgary, Alberta, Canada-based company provides its cust...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Quick Query: Amazon Exec Explains ‘Selling on Amazon’

April 13, 2009 • PEC Staff

Online retailers are frequently interested in new channels to sell their products. Merchants can consider auction sites and comparison-shopping sites, for example. And there's also Amazon.com. Amazon competes with many smaller ecommerce merchants, but also allows those merchants to list...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Ecommerce Know-How: Amazon Can Sell Your Products and Advertise Them, Too

February 26, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Although many ecommerce merchants consider Amazon to be tough competitor, some online shopkeepers can boost sales and send traffic back to their own site using two of Amazon's ecommerce services. Selling on Amazon and Product Ads on Amazon are two Amazon services that many retail ecomm...
Amazon & Marketplaces
The PeC Review: Shopzilla Is a Good Site That Could Use Better Instructions

December 15, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Shopzilla.com is one of the Internet’s leading price comparison engines. The site can expose an online retailer’s products to more than 30 million price-conscience shoppers every month, making it a powerful marketing vehicle. But uploading products—particularly for smaller merchants—c...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Amazon Exec on Outsourcing Fulfillment

November 26, 2008 • Kerry Murdock

Every ecommerce merchant must address, at least in some capacity, the issues of fulfillment. One merchant who does this in a big way is Amazon.com. Amazon now offers its fulfillment and warehousing expertise to any ecommerce merchant via its “Fulfillment by Amazon” service.
Amazon & Marketplaces
Shopping Search Engines: Six To Consider

May 7, 2008 • Bill Hartzer

If you consider yourself an online retailer, you most likely are familiar with the major pay-per-click (PPC) search-advertising providers: Google, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and MSN. Advertising on these search engines can bring sales to your site. However, you may be missing out on a lot...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne

November 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox

A doctorate in philosophy from Stanford University probably helps Founder, CEO, and Chairman Patrick Byrne deal with the daily esotericism that goes with running a company like Overstock.com ...