Just like the eternal epic struggle of “boxers vs. briefs”, the comparisons between eBay and Amazon will never cease among online retailers. At least as long as both command a significant share of traffic and online sales in the U.S..

To fuel the fire, I am focusing for this week’s e-commerce celebrity death match between eBay and Amazon on SKU profitability with two contrarian views from third-party merchants.

First, Randy Smythe posted last week a great comparison following a comment by eBay that its overall selling fees are lower then Amazon’s commission. Not arguing with that premise, Randy highlighted an example that showed higher profitability on Amazon.com for a product he sold on eBay for $199 (after 3 listings) and $249 on Amazon (with no listing fees).

The opposite argument arose from a discussion on the IMA (Internet Merchant Association) message board, an active organization of small to mid-sized multi-channel online retailers. A Home & Garden 3P seller posted a series of about 40 sales and asked fellow IMA’ers to guess where the orders had been placed (eBay or Amazon). Most, including myself, incorrectly picked the lower-priced series to be from eBay (I am claiming partial credit since I at least hesitated) with the merchant elaborating that the net proceeds for this particular set of products consistently yields higher margins on eBay (even after taking multiple eBay listings, payment processing fees and channel commission into account).

Let’s Look At The Numbers

To appease the waring parties, I took it upon myself to compare the 3 top-selling Amazon products across four categories (apparel, consumer electronics, sports & outdoor and home & garden) on eBay and Amazon using the Amazon 100 list and Terapeak’s free eBay research tool (or where that wasn’t sufficient I performed a simple eBay search).

Some fine print first:

• Top sellers and prices are a snapshot right now. Since prices and rankings change fluidly you will most certainly get different results.
• I skipped products only for sale on Amazon (there are a good number of opportunities here if you do some homework …) as well as the media category since the margins are not great on either channel (thanks to increasingly-popular automatic repricers on Amazon).
• I am deriving profitability from the product price, making an assumption that the seller’s costs (per SKU) are similar on both channels (fees may be lower on eBay but sellers often have to list products multiple times to yield a sale).

Here’s what I found:

Consumer Electronics
Coby 1.5-inch Digital Photo Keychain (eBay: $8.50 | Amazon: $14.03)
Apple iPod nano 4GB Silver (3G) (eBay: $114.39 | Amazon: $134.00)
Garmin nüvi 660 GPS Navigator (eBay: $312 | Amazon: $340)

Apparel
Shoe Pouch for Nike etc. (eBay: $9.95 | Amazon: $6.99)
Crocs Cayman Sandals (eBay: $29.99 | Amazon: $29.95)
Apple iPhone Soft Polycarbonate Slim fit Case (eBay: $13.07 | Amazon: $12.99)

Sports & Outdoors
Perfect Pushup (eBay: $24.53| Amazon: $39.95)
Ripster Caster Board (eBay: $64.74 | Amazon: $77.77)
Magna Cart Personal Hand Truck (eBay: $23.50 | Amazon: $32.81)

Home & Garden
KitchenAid KSM150PSER (eBay: $151.72 | Amazon: $268.74)
KitchenAid KSM50HDPBK (eBay: $152.63 | Amazon: $199.99)
KitchenAid KSM150PSWH (eBay: $190.00| Amazon: $239.99)

Update: I removed all Pepsi-related products in the Apparel category since they’re not really being bought for money but Pepsi points exclusively on Amazon. Bah.

Although for some of the above products the number of available offers on eBay was small (Terapeak’s free tool is limited to 7 days), I did find that prices on Amazon for some categories appear to be higher (and significantly so in Home & Garden) and deliver better margins. Not rocket science and confirms what Randy and the score of ChannelAdvisor merchants I regularly speak are stating.

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Of course this really should not be an eBay OR Amazon discussion but your goal, as an online retailer, should be to cost-effectively offer your products everywhere there are buyers online (with exceptions). The Amazon buyer places a premium on speed and convenience (translation: less price sensitivity) while eBay’s auction-based model, in turn, is based on “deals”, opportunity buys, that attract buyers seeking the thrill with the patience to “win” products. If supply is not an issue then reach them both (or your competition will).

However, if you’re only selling on eBay today then I hope this very tiny, unscientific and arguably rushed demonstration at least drove home the point that you absolutely need to be on Amazon to get to the fixed-price shopper. At least until eBay unlocks the secret to this market (the new Buy.com eBay store, eBay Express).

What do you think?

Related posts:

1. Amazon the new eBay? One strategy that is definitely not recommended if you're interested in selling on Amazon are exuberant shipping fees. In an Amazon message board thread titled...
2. From eBay to Amazon? Via Steve Weber's Selling Books blog comes this Fortune Small Business article on eBay's recent changes and the reaction in the 3P community. Of course...
3. Updated Amazon Product Attribute Information Amazon has published new product attribute data for pretty much all of their US categories in the form of new Item Classification Guides (ICG) as...