There's already millions and millions of eyeballs going to

Amazon every single day. The problem with that, though, is how

am I going to make sales? If I didn't have Shopify and

I just had Amazon, I'd be like sitting back like, ah, it

was like holidaying, like all the time. If you're prepared to put up with

the frustration of dealing with Amazon's bullshit, then great, go and do it.

How much is it going to cost me to set up my business in Amazon compared

to setting up my business in Shopify? It's definitely more expensive

setting up your business. And that's why today I'm voting as

the number one way to start your business online. I'm

Matthew Fraser and this is Amazon Ecom

Secrets. I'll be sharing with you the secrets that helped me go from

millions in debt to an eight-figure entrepreneur. If

you're ready to escape the nine-to-five and live life on your terms,

let me show you the way. Hey guys, welcome to Amazon eComSecrets.

My name is Matthew Fraser, and in today's episode, we're going

to talk about and go into detail about Amazon

versus eCom. What are the differences? What

are the differences in fees? Which one's the best? And

I'm going to break it all down because guess what, guys? I've been selling on Amazon and

e-commerce now for at least seven

years or so, give or take. And I can tell you

intimately from my experience, what are the benefits and

what are the cons with each platform. Let's start with

the biggest one of all. Amazon. This is probably the one

platform that a lot of people will look to go into, particularly if

they're trying to break like what I was, trying to break out of

like the 9 to 5 or looking for a second source

of income. The Amazon platform seems to

be or it's sold as a very easy platform to get into. And

from that perspective, yes, it is pretty easy

to get into. Now, you've even got Amazon in Australia. So

if you were previously concerned that you didn't want to operate in

a foreign country, which can be daunting for a lot of people, you

know, the biggest one, of course, is Amazon USA, where Amazon started.

And I can understand the people

being a little bit scared of the unknown. Yeah, because do

you need to have an LLC, which is a limited liability company in Australia, or

can you operate your Australian country or your Australian entity

in the USA? And so these are all the questions that people come up with. So

the good thing for people in Australia is that you can actually sell

straight into the Australian Amazon platform pretty easily. Obviously,

you can use your Pty

Ltd company, if you decide to go that route, or you could just be a sole trader and

operate under your own name and just have your own ABN and

GST registration. So here's

the thing, Amazon is powerful. There

are millions and millions of people coming to the Amazon

marketplace every single day. When you're starting out

in this journey of finding a product, and let's say you've now found

your unique product, let's just call it a yoga mat. you're

now going to send that yoga mat into Amazon.

And let's even say it's in Australia. You're going to send it down to Amazon Australia and

Amazon is going to store that product for you in their warehouse. That's

the first advantage. Their warehouse is going to handle it. But

the thing to think about is How am I

going to make sales? How many eyeballs

am I going to get onto that? Now with Amazon, the

great thing is that there's already millions and millions of

eyeballs going to Amazon every single day. So

you don't have to worry about finding people

from within the internet to come to your product

listing. You're on Amazon, there's already people looking for

yoga mats. The problem with that though, is that if you're

starting out from scratch and you're sending in your yoga mat, if

your listing is not optimized, what

does optimization mean? Does it have the right keywords? Does it

have the right bullet points? Does it have the right title? Does it have the

right price? Does it have the right pitches? It's

got to have all that. And then you're going to hope that

people find your listing because as you can appreciate, you're

probably not going to be the only person selling yoga mats on Amazon

unless you've got something unique. Maybe it's a color that they

don't sell, hot pink or something. So you need to be found

now on Amazon. So the good news is they've got millions of people coming to Amazon every

single day. But then the downside is you've now got

to show up within Amazon But

you can do that, you can actually pay for what's called PPC, pay

per click. Which means that you might advertise

for a keyword called yoga mats. So

when someone types in yoga mats into the search bar within Amazon,

your listing, your product, shows up to

the consumer. And then you've got the best chance now of

making a sale. So, That's one of

the advantages and I guess a disadvantage within that platform. The advantage

though with Amazon is that they're going to handle the whole

process for you. So that means that once you send it into the

Amazon warehouse FBA, fulfilled by Amazon,

Amazon is going to pick, pack and ship that

product to the customer without you doing a

single thing. I often joke right now to some of my clients about

how easy Amazon is. If I, cause I have Amazon and

Shopify. I swear, if I didn't have Shopify and I just had

Amazon, I'd be like sitting back like, ah, it was like holidaying, like

all the time. Because most of the work, all I have

to worry about is getting my products into the Amazon warehouse. That's

pretty much it. And then after that, I just have to worry about making,

you know, making the sales, making sure the money's coming into my bank account, like

every single week. So those are certainly some of the advantages of

having an Amazon-based business is

it is much easier than a e-commerce

slash Shopify store, okay? Now,

let's talk about some of the downsides, though, with

Amazon. And there are lots of downsides. I hate to say

it because, you know, I'm a big fan of Amazon. I've made millions of dollars out

of Amazon. But it does come with its negatives.

First thing is that Amazon controls you.

You're not autonomous, okay? Although you like

the fact that you don't have to do any work once you send the

product into Amazon Warehouse, there's a whole bunch

of metrics and regulations and rules and this and that

that Amazon makes you adhere to. And

it can be very, very daunting. Let me give you an example of something that happened

to a friend of mine recently. She had a

product on Amazon that was, I think

it was like some sort of a recyclable

bag, okay? Like a shopping bag. And in her

listing, she wrote, non, was

it, no pesticides, that's right, no pesticides, right?

Thinking, great, people want to know that this has no pesticides, right?

And, oh, there's no sort of chemicals, and For

that reason though, the Amazon system picked up that word

and then shut her listing down because the system thought

that she did have chemicals and pesticides. You see how

stupid it is? Now you think, okay, you know, poor

Amazon, we're going to give him a bit of a benefit of the doubt. We're just going

to call him up and resolve this problem. You know, it'll be all

fixed up. No, no, you're dealing, look,

You're dealing with a lot of people who aren't based in the

US. They're basically scattered all over the world. So one, they don't

really know you. They don't know the Amazon system,

certainly as a seller. They just pay to sit there and pretty much give generic answers.

But you're going to call them up. You're going to tell them your problem. And

this is what happened with my friend. Ultimately, it took

six months. six months where

her listing was shut down completely, no sales. And

you can imagine if you've just started out and you've spent all this money, most

people might spend 10, $20,000 on inventory.

That's just sitting in the warehouse now doing nothing. and

you're not making sales. It is very, very disheartening. So

anyway, she went through six months of hell trying backwards and forwards via email explaining

that, I don't have any chemicals in the product. I'm saying it doesn't

have it. Oh, but our system said, the system's flagged it. It's got chemicals. No,

it doesn't have chemicals. Fuck's sake. That's what it gets like.

It can be very, very frustrating. So I would say if you're

prepared to put up with the frustration of dealing with Amazon's bullshit, then

great, go and do it. Like I said, in hindsight. And

I've been through a lot of bullshit with Amazon over the years, but

I've still made millions of dollars. So you just got to know that going into the marketplace, you're

going to go through some shit, okay? You're probably going to get suspended for

whatever reason. It could be customer returns, rate is too

high, you know. So that means if you have too many

people sending the product back to Amazon, then you get a red flag.

and then they can shut your listing down, and then you have to write this whole report as

to what you're going to do to help prevent it, and the customer's always

right, and you're going to do this and bend over backwards to fix it, and

it's just a whole bunch of crap. Now, but

they make you do it though. That's the thing. You're forced to do it. And

it's certainly one thing that I really, really hate about

Amazon. So you don't have full control. But on the flip side of

the coin, let's talk about Shopify or

e-commerce, right? Most people use Shopify. E-commerce is

really just a general name for anything online that is commerce, like

business related. But we're going to talk about Shopify, which is your own

website and your own product. Now that is more

in your favor because you don't have a big

brother looking down on you, making sure that your return rate's not

too high, and this, that, and the other, okay? So you can kind of just do

pretty much what you want. There are some parameters

that you must operate within. So, for example, Shopify won't

let you sell certain types of products, like illegal products. You

couldn't sell firearms, for example, on Shopify. You couldn't sell

porn-related products on Shopify. But if you want to sell healthcare

products, if you want to sell t-shirts, mugs, caps, whatever,

that would be no problem. But the downside with

that is you've got to do a lot more work. So

you've got to spend a lot more time creating the website. With

Amazon, you're just putting up some photos. It's got a template there. And

it's pretty basic because you can only put up so much within Amazon platform. But

your website, you can change the colors, you can have

different displays and settings and how many

different pages you want. So there's kind of like more to think about when

creating your own Shopify website. And you've also got to

worry about, and this is probably the really, really big one, you've got to worry

about where is your customer coming from? How are

you getting traffic? Okay, traffic is people coming

from within the internet space,

universe, and how are they now finding your website?

Because you can't just put a website up and just think, oh, well, you know,

I'm just going to put my website up and people are just going to start buying. No, they're not. They're not

going to just buy it. They've got to find your website. So

how do you get found? Well, you've got to do search engine optimization,

which is keywords, et cetera, in your Shopify

store. so that when someone types in Google yoga

mats, your page hopefully or your shop hopefully shows up.

But second to that, you're most likely going

to have to use paid traffic. What is paid traffic? It means that

you've got to pay to get the customer to come to your store.

So that would be things like Google, Instagram,

TikTok, Facebook, all these types of social media

and search engine platforms to drive traffic to

your page. The other thing you could do though, and this is something that's probably not

really spoken about, is use affiliates. What

is an affiliate? An affiliate is someone who helps promote

your product and only makes a commission if

they help make a sale on your website. And you know

what? Even Amazon has an affiliate program. Like what?

Amazon has an affiliate program? Yes, that's right. You probably don't even know

about that. Amazon will actually pay you money

if you send someone to Amazon. So where does that kind of fit in?

Let me just touch on that for a second. Let's say you have a content site.

A content site is just a website that is about information.

And let's say that information is about yoga mats. You

could actually have a business where you don't even own your

own brand or your own yoga mat. Your content site simply

has information about yoga mats, the best yoga mat to use,

how to use them, maybe different types of positions, Pilates and

things like this when using your yoga mat. And

you might have a section on your content site

that demonstrates the different types of yoga mats. Now,

when someone clicks on that yoga mat and it takes them to Amazon,

and then they buy through Amazon, Amazon's gonna pay you a commission. Wow,

isn't that incredible? And guess what else? When the customer

gets to Amazon, let's say they also buy a yoga mat and they

buy a pair of sneakers and like a saucepan and

some cutlery, Amazon is going to pay you a commission on everything.

How freaking good is that? So now I've just eliminated the whole fact

you don't even need an inventory anymore, right? You can just promote other

people's products. So that's what you're going to do, but on a content site. So I

kind of digress there a little bit, but that's just another way for you to make money

through an e-commerce slash content site.

Probably hadn't even thought about it. Hey, happy to help. So I've just talked about

some of the positives with Shopify, meaning you have more control over

your website. And the other thing to note is that

You've actually got more because what's happening here is you're actually gathering customer

data. This is something that's so, so important. When you gather

customer data, emails, phone numbers, and names, addresses,

and things like that, that now adds to the value of

the business. What do you mean? Yes. People

probably don't even think of that. With Amazon, that's a

downside with Amazon. You don't get to know the

name of your customer or their email address. You can't market to

them. You can't come up with a new product and just email that

customer. Amazon just doesn't allow it because in

Amazon's eyes, it's an Amazon customer, not

your customer. But when you have a Shopify or e-commerce store,

It's your customer. You've paid to get the customer there. You've

collected their details and then sold them something. So now you

own that customer, which means that in the future, if

you come up with a new colored yoga mat, you can

now market to your email list. And

guess what? Marketing to an email list is absolutely free.

So now what's going to happen is as you build out your customer database, your

cost to acquire or the cost to make a

sale is now diminishing because you can now continually market

to customers who have already purchased from you and

hopefully they love and trust you

and love your product, that they'll come back and buy more. And

that can be the power and the advantages of owning a

Shopify slash e-commerce store. You know, Matt, you've just told

us about all the great things about Shopify. We get to have this big database and

potentially our business is now worth more money. Should we go and sell that

business with our Shopify store and our big fat database?

Because that's what people pay. They actually pay for the database. But

what are the downsides with owning a Shopify store? Well, I

can tell you, it's a lot of work. A

lot of work. Because now, not only do you have

to design the whole Shopify website for

your store, you've got to come up with a lot more assets,

meaning pictures and text and things like that. you've

also got to come up with a way to acquire the customer.

So there's more work in that. It sounds easy to say, oh, just do some

Facebook ads. Yeah, okay, well, who's going to do the Facebook ads? You? Now

you've got to go learn how to do Facebook ads, unless you outsource it.

But guess what? That costs money too. So there's those extra expenses. And

probably the main one that people maybe don't think about is

unlike Amazon, who's going to manage the customer, including most

of the customer service, With Shopify, you're

now going to have to manage the customer service. So now either

you do it yourself, which is going to be very, very tedious, and

you're not going to want to do it because you've got to be on the computer all the time, or you've

got to outsource it to a customer service agency, or

you've got to hire people. So now you're back to hiring your own VAs, virtual

assistants, whether they be in Australia or Philippines or

America. And so it's just another layer of work

that you've now got to have to think about. But ultimately, If you want

to get all that system working, then it

can certainly be a really good way to sell your product. Because

the other thing to think about, guys, is some products are suited to

Amazon, and I would say that some products are not

suited for Amazon. Now, what would be a product that is not suited for Amazon? Well,

I'll give you a good example. A friend of mine sells toilets, and

it's like a camping, outdoor kind of toilet,

and it has this unique bagging system. They're

quite costly. I think they're in the vicinity of $2,500 to maybe

$4,000 a hit. That type of product is not suited for Amazon. That

is going to be the perfect product suited for its own website,

like a Shopify store, and drive traffic and create its

own market. Because the thing about Amazon too

is you've got to think about is returns, right?

I don't want to be in a situation where I've just sent out

or the Amazon customers bought the toilet, let's say it's sold there, they'd

receive that product, they use it one time and they don't like

it. They're going to send this used toilet or what's left

of it anyway back to Amazon. No way. Do you think you're

going to be able to resell that? No. So now you've got basically a product that let's

say it's even cost you like $1,500 in cost price that you're now

going to have to put in the bin. Now, and you're going to say, well, Matt,

why do they do that? Because Amazon is all about the consumer, and

they offer a really simple return mechanism. Now,

for those of you who are listening in Australia, we have

a different psychology. We're not the sort of people that

just return things willy-nilly. It's very, very low

return rate. Unlike in America, in

their psyche, they return freaking everything. Right?

So they will literally buy things just to test it out. And

then if they don't like it, they send it back. And all of that eats away

at your profit margin. And the reason why they

can easily do this is because Amazon makes it so simple

in America to return it. So unlike in Australia, so

when we use the postal system, we have to take things. So let's say

you're returning a product, okay? You've got to package it back up into the

package, you put the label on it. You've now got to drive to the post office

to actually ship it back. In America, guess what? In

case you're not familiar, they simply just leave it at the front door and

the postman comes and collects it. That's how simple it is. So

that's why there's so many more returns to think about in

your processes when you're dealing with Amazon in the US. So

very, very different to Australia. So guys, you're probably thinking, Ultimately,

out of all of the things that I've just spoken about of the pros and

the cons with Amazon and Shopify, and I'm sure there's

more that I haven't gone into super, super depth today. I'm going

to talk to you, though, about the costs because that's

one thing that always comes up. But Matthew, how much is it going to cost me to set

up my business in Amazon compared to setting up my business

in Shopify. And I can say to you, it's definitely more

expensive setting up your business in Shopify. Because

if you're not familiar with setting up on the Shopify platform, you're going to have to

hire someone to do that. Unlike Amazon, honestly, it's so

simple. It's just a template. Just drop the pictures in, put the text in, and

you're essentially done. Shopify Way more detail,

you need way more expertise. And the other thing to think about too

is that you're going to have to have a fulfillment center. Now,

unless you're shipping your products out of your garage, which means

that when the order comes through, you're literally packing it into a package and take

it to the post. The other difference to that is you've actually got them in a fulfillment center

and it's automatically being sent out. But then you're

now going to have to figure out how to be a computer genius. I'm

sure you can figure it out if you just go to YouTube, like how to integrate Shopify into

your fulfillment company system. So that when the

Shopify order comes through, it automatically sends some details to your fulfillment

company and ships out. Now, then you've got to have a system that

sends an email to the customer to make sure that they know the

order's coming out, and then they've received the order, and this is a whole bunch of more details.

So it's way more costly to set up in a

Shopify store compared to an Amazon store. Amazon, $30 to

$50 a month in a fee. Shopify is

going to be... Potentially no money down on

the subscription of the software, but it may cost you much

more in the setup of the platform itself. Like

I said before, setting up the fulfillment and even setting up the website in

itself. So while we're talking about the money side and comparing

the differences, Another thing to think about is how

much commission is Amazon going to take for

the advantage of having my product in their FBA

warehouse? And guess what? It's 15%. So if

you're selling something for $100, Amazon is going to take 15% commission

straight off the top. That's the first thing. But then

you're going to have to pay for Amazon fulfillment, storage, probably

returns, potentially repacking, potentially disposal.

So there's a lot of ongoing costs that can happen

with Amazon. Compared to Shopify, you

don't have to pay for any commission because it's your sale.

Shopify is not taking a commission, you're already paying potentially. There

are different scales within Amazon, different scales of Shopify store,

being from free store to like $100 a month and it

just keeps going up from there. And the more you pay per month,

the less you pay in merchant fee. Because with Shopify,

they integrate their own merchant facility, which means that it's

a system that enables you to make or the consumer to make a payment. And

then after so many days, Shopify will simply

deposit your money into your bank account rather than leaving it within

the Shopify store, if that makes sense. But the more you pay per month

with Shopify, so if you get really, really big like what I did, I had stores

all over the world, Ultimately, they

gave me a better deal on the merchant fee. And

that's another whole rabbit hole in itself, because there's all different things I can talk about with merchant fees.

So ultimately, you've got more startup cost

with Shopify, but potentially less ongoing fees,

but less startup cost with Amazon, but they're definitely going

to take fees, including the 15% premium. So definitely something

to think about. But ultimately, when it's all said and done, I

always say to my customers, 99% of

my customers, yeah, it depends on the product again, But generally,

if you're just starting out, you're gonna start on something simple, which

would be the Amazon platform. And that's why today. I'm

voting Amazon as the number one way to start your

business online. So there you go, guys. Thank you

so much for joining me on that episode. I hope you got a little bit about the differences between

Amazon and Shopify and e-commerce. And if

you're enjoying this type of content, please leave a five-star review

for me on Apple Podcast and Shopify. I would really, really appreciate it.

Leave a comment in the descriptions or in the section below so I

know what more you'd like me to talk about in the future. Until then, take

care. Bye for now. Thanks for tuning into Amazon Ecom

Secrets. If you enjoyed this episode, the best way to show

your support is to give a five-star review on Apple Podcast

and Spotify and make sure to subscribe on YouTube

so you don't miss an episode. You can also find more

at I'm Matthew Fraser on all social media platforms.