It’s this simple:

1. Login to your Adzooma account
2. Click ‘Refer A Friend‘ in the top right menu
3. Share your unique code

See, it really is that simple.

With unlimited referrals and gift cards allowed, you can refer as many people as you like. The more you refer, the more you’ll earn. Just make sure that you always use your code so we know which referrals are yours.

Sign in and start collecting your £20 vouchers right now!

‘But what on earth should I buy?’ 

I hear you. And as I realise how delightfully shocking it can be to receive instantly spendable vouchers, I’ve done some research for you in advance.

You’ll be pleased to hear I have found 5 ‘must have’ products, just in case you get in a pickle trying to decide what to spend your vouchers on.

Don’t expect a run of the mill here. There are no Sponge Bob bobble hats, glow-in-the-dark sneaker laces or bulk baked bean bargains.

You’re welcome.

1: A Life-Sized Rowan Atkinson Cutout – £30.43

I can tell you’re shocked, but wait . . . 

Free vouchers are the perfect opportunity to think big. ‘Out of the box’ kind of thing, right? You’ve got to be in it to win it.

And win it you will, when your friends rock up to your home and WOW! Look who’s right there in the hall to greet them. Imagine the look on their faces. 

Priceless!

Well actually it’s just one and a half Refer-a-Friend commissions. Exciting, right? 

But before you go diving in, I have 4 more Amazon jewels for you . . . 

2: Chicken Harness with 6ft Matching Leash – £25.18

I know, I know, genius right? 

‘Office dog? Pah! I’ve got an office chicken mate’ 

Say those words with pride my friend, because they’re guaranteed to propel you to the top of the office pecking order. 

See . . . you’re already thinking of names, aren’t you? Dave, Vera, Chick, Feathery Mcfeatherface, Clucky . . . decisions, decisions. 

But oh what fun you’ll have. 

If there was ever an intelligent reason to get yourself a pet chicken, this is it. Stardom awaits.

Wait though, it gets better: ‘A storage bag as gift: it not only holds chicken harness. but also accommodates the articles such as keys, coins, lipsticks’

And all for less than ONE Refer-a-friend commission?? I can’t cope. Please make them stop.

*NOTE: Unfortunately, Dave (best name) doesn’t come with the harness.

3: E.M.T. (Emergency Meal Transport) Insulated Lunch Tote – £35.61

So . . . you waltz back into the office, Dave on his leash by your side. Cool. 

But why not give your street cred a further boost by rockin this quite simply amazing lunch carrying device. You’ll become a legend in your own lunchtime, that’s for sure.

And it has the FREE added bonus of keeping those heartless (see what I did there?) lunch peepers away.

You can relax knowing your perfectly prepared tofu, asparagus and butternut squash wrap, or spare liver, remain cool, calm and collected.

Go on. You know it makes sense.

4: Archie McPhee Handi Squirrel – £8.99

Don’t you just love simple ideas? If you love them as much as I do, you’d better brace yourself for this one. 

Only 2 steps to heaven:

• Includes 4 paws & 1 head
• Transforms hand into a squirrel

I’m beyond excited. Is it a hand? Or is it a squirrel? Modern technology is off the hook right now. I just can’t keep up.

You might THINK your life is complete, but is it? Is it really? With just HALF of a single Refer-a-Friend commission, YOU can welcome Archie McPhee into your life. 

What a time to be alive.

5: Unicorn Squirrel Feeder – £16.92

LOOK. AT. IT. 

This makes me chuckle, and we all need a good chuckle every once in a while, do we not?

‘Nope. I do not want that magnificent creation in my garden’. Said no-one ever.

Other than squirrel haters obviously. 

Do you hate squirrels? No . . . of course you don’t. You love the furry little things, right? 

Well my friend, I’m hopefully making your day with the news that YOU can enjoy the warm rush of bliss you get looking at that image, every day, in the flesh, for the rest of your life. 

For cryin out loud, just click the image and get one right now. 

Hope that helps . . .

As you can see, ‘buy with your soul’ is my message to you today. And I suggest you start promoting right now, because you know Archie McPhee is going to sell out FAST!

If you need any more help or details simply let us know, ok?

To say that Amazon is a huge company is a gross understatement.

They are a global powerhouse operating in more than 16 marketplaces worldwide, with over 100 million Prime users signed up to the website. Last year, they generated more than $230 billion in revenue, making CEO Jeff Bezos the richest man in the world. (Until Bill Gates took back the throne a few days ago).

You don’t get this big without breaking some eggs. And Amazon is not without criticism.

Part of Amazon’s growth relied on the premise of a mutually beneficial relationship between them and small businesses. They provide a platform and audience, you supply the products.

But with big names like Nike ending their relationships with the platform, you have to wonder: does this work anymore?

Should you trust this global company to help your business and not crush you on their warpath to take over more of the market?

A marketplace of their own

Amazon didn’t start off with the intent of becoming a marketplace. They were an online bookseller in Seattle, packing and distributing the books themselves at a local post office.

But rather than sit still, Amazon’s success relies on seeing a gap and utilising their strengths. That’s their secret. They had faster delivery. Faster checkouts by patenting the ‘1-click checkout’ in 1999. Why should they limit themselves to books when they can ship and sell everything using their system?

It’s their ethos of being “fast”.

The same ethos which seems responsible for the unjust treatment of their own employees.

To be faster than everyone else, their employees are expected to pick up an item every 8 seconds. Every move is monitored, including their bathroom breaks. And, as a warehouse employee told The New Yorker:

“I’ve seen people who aren’t even thirty years old get injuries they’re going to have for the rest of their lives, but whenever we ask for the speed of work or the repetitive motions to be changed we’re told it’s not going to happen”

The article detailed one injury, where 22-year old Safiyo Mohamed tore an intervertebral disk in her back bending over to pick up a box. The pain from this injury will be with her forever. Mohamed claims Amazon did not care at all, saying “if you can’t work all the time, you are nothing to them”.

Mohamed continued, stating:

“How am I going to have a baby when I can’t pick him up, when I’m worried about being pregnant? I’m so angry. Amazon doesn’t want humans, they want robots. I will have this forever because of them. They don’t care at all.”

That’s a bad sign. How can you trust a company to look after your business if they can’t take care of their own employees?

It’s an ethical decision that should not be overlooked.

Sadly, most business decisions don’t come down to whether something is good or bad. Mostly because there is no clear binary. There are shades of grey in everything. As much as people will boo the company down for the treatment of their employees, others will praise them for providing jobs to over 647,000 people.

On average, they add 337 workers a day.

Amazon’s massive growth to accommodate one of the biggest businesses in the world. In April 2019, Amazon had 119,928,851 products listed on their site. There’s no other company in the world that can compete with this.

But these products aren’t all from Amazon. They cannot, under any circumstances, produce and market to that scale. It’s just not feasible. In fact, over half of all Amazon sales come from third-party sellers.

They’ve built a market place and need you to be the venders. But that might not mean that you’ll get much out of this relationship.

Fulfilled by Amazon

Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) is the company’s scheme for small businesses to sell on Amazon. In exchange for a monthly fee of $40, companies can list their goods on the website.

In addition, Amazon will also take care of storing, packing and shipping.

Having Amazon behind you isn’t like an ordinary reseller. At the start of the article, we told you that millions of people, equivalent to the entire population of Russia, visit the website every month.

If your company is on that website, you’ve got access to product exposure like never before.

But it’s not just about exposure. It’s about trust.

89% of buyers are more likely to buy products from Amazon [PDF] than any other e-commerce site. That’s because they know Amazon. They trust them, they know exactly how it works and they’ve ordered there before.

If you’re listed on Amazon, you’ve already got the backing and trust of its users.

For a lot of businesses, this equates to more sales and profit. In fact, Andrew Tjernlund of Tjernlund Services got in touch with us to say that FBA has become the largest part of his manufacturing business, earning them annual 8-figure sales from the platform.

Taking care of the logistics

“Amazon’s fulfilment is not only quick and easy, but it is way cheaper than anything else I have seen. I can purchase shipping through them cheaper than I can by going to the post office, PLUS they warehouse my inventory and handle returns.”

Jason VanDevere – Goal Crazy Planners

FBA doesn’t just give you more exposure. It handles all of the logistics for you.

Amazon, as Kerry Mellin states, Amazon “does nearly all the legwork for us”.

Your product will be stored in their warehouses, clearing up space for you. When an item sells, they’ll package it and deliver it through their own shipping service. Thanks to negotiating deals with the key players in the distribution industry, this is far cheaper and quicker than normal shipping costs.

This means you’ll save time and effort shipping your items while getting a cheaper rate. That’s a no brainer.

What’s the catch of FBA?

If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Amazon needs your products to fill their website, but that’s not the only advantage to them.

Your data is.

Don’t worry, they’re not mining for personal data about your company. Instead, they’re using you for market research.

Every business that signs up to FBA is a giant experiment to find out what sells. Market research is a breeze when you are in control of the entire market. They have access to every single figure and piece of data. They know what sells and what doesn’t – so when they want to release their own product, they can pretty much guarantee that it will work. It’s the same way Netflix go about curating content.

If you do well on Amazon, there’s a danger that they will launch their own version that will knock you completely out of the water.

This happened with an aluminium curved laptop stand by Rain Design, which was an unexpected best-seller. Until Amazon released an identical design for half the price, which caused their sales to plummet.

In 2006, Williams-Sonoma sold a unique chair called the Orb. Surprise surprise, Amazon launched their own version also called the Orb, which landed them a lawsuit from Williams-Sonoma.

The controversies have launched an EU investigation this year into whether Amazon is using this data to unfairly promote their own goods in anti-competitive conduct. 

Cheaper counterfeits can win 

Any marketplace faces competition. You’re never going to be able to sell uncontested.

Despite investing millions on anti-counterfeiting software, Amazon has a big problem with counterfeit products selling on their platform.

A Wall Street Journal investigation found that thousands of products on the website “have been declared unsafe by federal agencies, are deceptively labelled or are banned by federal regulators”. Worryingly, these products include children’s toys that have dangerous levels of lead.

But it’s not just the presence of these sellers that’s the problem. It’s that Amazon’s algorithm is set up to help them win, by valuing low prices highly in their algorithm. This is great for customers looking for a cheap bargain. For sellers, this means you’re trusting a platform who’s algorithm could cause cheaper counterfeits to rank better than you.

Birkenstock is a great example of this. Their customer support system was flooded with people complaining about their shoes, all of which had been purchased from counterfeit sellers on Amazon.

When they asked about the counterfeits, Amazon simply replied that they “couldn’t divulge private information”. What a nice way to avoid responsibility. Unluckily for Birkenstock, this wasn’t the worst part.

Not only were they losing business due to counterfeits, but Amazon had also started buying enormous numbers of stock to resell on their own site. By the time Birkenstock discovered this, Amazon already had over a year’s worth of stock in their own private stores.

This gave them the power to destroy their brand by selling their product however they wished. It was a lose-lose situation for Birkenstock.

Price is a big factor in their algorithms, but it’s not the sole way it’s calculated. Factors like user views, shipping and seller rating also play a role here. But don’t put it past counterfeit companies to submit fake reviews and try other cheap tricks to fool the system.

Some companies are even paying $10,000 a month to illicitly trick their way to the top of the system. Although most small businesses don’t have that kind of money, it’s worth bearing in mind that you’re not contributing to a completely fair marketplace.

The playing field isn’t even. It’s up to you if you want to enter the jungle. 

Tackling the competition with PPC ads

There is another way that you can make your product stand out on Amazon. That’s using their PPC ads.

If you’re used to using PPC on other platforms like Google, you’ll be in for a little shock with Amazon. They are different from any other platform you’ve used before and will get some getting used to.

For those that are new to Amazon PPC, you can advertise in the following ways:

• Amazon’s own SERPs. These ads will show as products either at the top of the results or in between entries depending on the device. 
• Headlines. These are three or more products that appear in their own banner ads at the top of the page, accompanied by some text for extra advertising real estate.
• Product pages. These appear on the product pages themselves, usually in a “sponsored products related to this item” box. 
• Off-site marketing. Like Google Ads have the display network, Amazon also has a way of advertising their products on banners on different websites.
• Email newsletters. Now, this one is a nice bonus that no one else offers. Amazon generates emails for their customers and sometimes throw in a few targeted sponsors inside.

It’s a lot of options, with big potential to increase your sales. In fact, with just one simple search, users can be exposed to dozens of different product ads.

For example, let’s search for hot water bottles.

At the top, the headline adverts were for ThermaCare pain relief, who were properly bidding on the search based on the assumption that people with muscle injuries are likely to sooth it with hot water bottles.

At the top of the results, 4 sponsored SERP ads were positioned at the top of the product list.

These ads copy the exact style of the rest of the results and are impossible to discern bar the small “Sponsored” text underneath the ads. They are done in such a way to appear that they are naturally at the top of the algorithm, allowing sellers a way of battling the counterfeits.

At the bottom of the search results page, there was another row of sponsored products that are designed to look just like the listings above. But with their own row, they are more obvious advertisements than the SERP ads.

In terms of product exposure, you can’t really go wrong with Amazon PPC.

And some small businesses have profited greatly from it, finding better ROI than other platforms. At a talk at the BrightonSEO conference, Prabhat Shah revealed that some of their clients were actually moving 50-60% of their allocated Google Ads budget to Amazon because of the success they’ve had.

Don’t get too comfortable yet.

These are the good points, now let’s have a look at the bad.

Is PPC more hassle than it’s worth?

Let’s not beat around the bush here. Amazon’s PPC system is difficult to use and set up, especially if you’re new to the PPC world.

For some small businesses, this skill cap bars you from getting a return that’s worth it.

“I used Amazon’s PPC service for a few months and didn’t find that it helped much. Our budget was around $200/week. That amounted to a few extra sales but barely enough to justify using the program. I would not recommend it based on my experience.”

Mike Greig – NinjaBudgeter

If you’re willing to put in the effort to learn it, there’s no reason why you can’t profit. Like Jeff Moriarty tells us:

“With Amazon PPC, we wasted a lot of money in the beginning, because we didn’t quite know how to use it. But after researching online, we were able to make it work. And it helps. We see about 40% of our sales coming from the Amazon PPC program.”

Part of the Amazon PPC learning curve is understanding how important competitor bidding is.

PPC doesn’t just give you a chance to make your advert stand out. It also gives people a chance to essentially steal potential customers directly from the competition in a way that’s not possible on other platforms.

Amazon allows you to run ads on specific product pages. As well as more rows of Sponsored products at the bottom of the listing, you can also see an ad underneath the description like the following:

Wow. That’s a bold move. You can attract customers who are one click away from buying from a competitor to your product instead.

Heavy competition isn’t the word for some searches. It’s a cut-throat scene.

Both a help and a hinderance

“They don’t have great worker conditions, to put it mildly, but they’re hardly as bad as the fashion or mining industries. Their logistics infrastructure is the best in the world, and they’ve got one of the best tech solution offerings in the world in AWS, thanks to their internal SOA engineering culture. Are there things they should do better? Sure. Veting[sic] all marketplace sellers, human customer support and lots of it, and greater focus on reviews and listing manipulation would be lovely. But I’d say they’re a net benefit to business specifically, and the world more generally.”

Pete Watson-Wailes – Tough & Competent

As this article has proven, there’s no easy “good or bad” answer when it comes to Amazon. I can’t just circle an option and move on.

If you’re wondering if Amazon is good for small businesses, the really awful answer is that it depends. Sorry. It feels like a cop-out, but it’s true.

For some small businesses, Amazon is a fantastic way to gain exposure, increase your sales and get a much-needed boost to your profits. For others, it’s just not worth it.

But there’s not a clear conscious on which small businesses can benefit from Amazon. For John Moss, it depends on the type of product you’re selling. Anything that was bespoke or made to order would not survive on the website.

But using Amazon for their standard samples or test goods, they found that their “available product lines sell much faster when offered via FBA than by means of direct shipping”.

For Christopher Nelson, success is based just on size, as he states “unless you have a massive budget, I don’t see how Amazon is an effective small business selling site”.

Amazon has the power to either save or kill your business. You can only really know for sure if you try it.

If you need a hand with selling on Amazon, check out Jungle Scout – your all in one platform for selling on Amazon. They can help you grow your business, start selling and explore agency and brand solutions.

A necessary evil

Out of curiosity, I posted a simple poll on Twitter to get a general consensus of how people feel towards Amazon. The most common answer? That they are a necessary evil. And I think that sums a lot of feelings up pretty nicely.

Particularly paired with this quote from Calloway Cook of Illuminate Labs, which nicely echoed the feelings of lots of similar businesses.

“Amazon is a necessary channel for eCommerce businesses that sell exclusively online, but they can be very frustrating to work with. Once you sign up for a Professional Seller account, which costs $40/month, you get assigned an Amazon rep. In my experience (I’ve dealt with two), the Amazon reps take an extremely long time to respond to your questions. I’ve sent my Amazon reps troubleshooting questions that took them over a week to respond to.

“Selling on Amazon is still absolutely worth it for our business, since the vast majority of our market buys on Amazon. I just wish they took small businesses more seriously.”

And that’s the key problem, isn’t it? Amazon needs small businesses, but they’re at a size of unprecedented growth that they don’t need to take small businesses seriously. They call the shots.

You either play along or make do without them.

An unmoderated platform that will spiral out of control 

Amazon is the biggest online marketplace in the world. But their size is something that will cause their downfall.

They let almost anybody in. If you’ve got a product, you can sell and advertise on Amazon. It’s free for all, with only one clear winner: Amazon.

There’s not enough of a moderating process for sellers, which is why the platform is ripe with counterfeits. There’s not enough help and support for sellers either. If you’ve got a problem, Amazon just doesn’t care enough. It’s not big enough to impact them in the grand scheme of things.

They just want to continue their growth.

It’s not just Amazon, the online retailer. It’s Amazon, the suppliers of Kindle and home of the Ebook. It’s Amazon, land of the voice assistants where Alexa is queen, ready to answer your questions. It’s Amazon, with its streaming service and growing film studio.

But that might be their downfall.

There’s only so much growth before you can collapse. You can’t monopolise and dominate every market out there. There will be a point of no return. And if small businesses decide they no longer need Amazon, this could trigger their end.

Only time will tell.

Well, not quite. But it doesn’t feel that far off. Bezos’ departure has come as a huge shock to the tech industry. He’s been omnipresent in any tech-head’s life for what seems like forever.

From seeing his smug face pop up for the first time in 1997 when you could almost tell by his smile that he knew he was destined for glory, to being roasted by Chris Rock at the Oscars just last year, we’ve seen Bezos rise from nothing, to one of the most powerful men in the world in less than 25 years.

Bezos has become, without doubt, a tech industry legend. Love him or loathe him, you can’t fail to put him on a pedestal alongside the likes of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Larry Page who have changed the world in one way or another.

Jeff Bezos has done that too. Not many Kings have.

End of an era:

–0 to $1.5t (nobody in history);
–Turned biggest cost centers into profit centers (nobody in history);
–Established recurring revenue relationship w/82% of US households (nobody in history); and
–Hired 500k+ people in 12 months (nobody in history)#Bezos

— Scott Galloway (@profgalloway) February 2, 2021

What does this mean for Amazon?

Stock fluctuations are usually a good indicator and at this stage the answer seems to be: not that much.

Stocks closed at 1.11% up for the day, which is pretty standard for Amazon and a good sign for Amazon they’ve made the right decision in choosing their next main man.

The man in question? CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Andy Jassy.

Jassy, a Harvard grad, has been at Amazon in one form or another since 1997, beginning life in the marketing department before moving to found AWS in 2003 where he became CEO in 2014.

“He’s a win-at-all-costs type of person,” said Zoltan Szabadi, a Google Cloud employee who formerly worked alongside Jassy. “This is just one of the many tactics that he thinks will help his business.”

Those tactics seem to be working too. A subsidiary of Amazon.com inc (the mothership), as of 2017 AWS owned a dominant 33% share of the internet’s cloud services and generated $35billion in revenue in 2019.

Its power, though, is bigger than numbers. The tech boom was built on AWS’ infrastructure. It’s pretty much invisible to the general public, yet if it fell, not only would we norms go into post-AWS shock, but so would governments around the world. NASA, the CIA, Spotify and Netflix amongst so many others are powered by AWS.

There’s no doubting Jassy has done an impressive job, but this is quite the step up, and as Tim Cook found taking over from Steve Jobs — handling someone else’s baby isn’t always easy.

While Bezos doesn’t move from the CEO to his new Executive Chairman role until the third quarter of 2021, he has taken a reduced role in the running of the company over the last few years, so the transition is unlikely to cause much of a hiccup.

Amazon dropped an astounding earnings report too yesterday which showed the company nearly doubled its sales and profits last year, so as Bezos said when announcing he was stepping down, “Amazon couldn’t be better positioned for the future.”

What that future looks like is anyone’s guess at the moment. There are so many arms to Amazon – from Prime to Logistics, from Robotics to Publishing – that whatever the strategy is, Andy Jassy will have a lot to juggle.

Not least dealing with the Federal Trade Commission investigation that came to an end yesterday concluding that, “Amazon baited drivers with promised earnings, and then secretly slashed wages by pocketing tips.” A despicable move when you consider Amazon earned $386 billion in 2020 and Amazon drivers earn close to the minimum wage.

So is that the reason Bezos is moving on? To help Amazon turn over a new leaf after years of bad press which ranges from warehouse worker maltreatment to alleged anti competitive practices?

This doesn’t seem to be stopping the company itself, though. We’ve seen clear indicators that Amazon aren’t holding back on the alleged anti competition as they look to cement themselves as the world’s central fulfilment outlet, with the creation of services that will carry out the fulfilment like Amazon Air and Amazon Prime Air, to the expansion into the likes of groceries and Pharmacy that will do the fulfilling.

This will be Jassy’s biggest test. Toeing the line between good and bad.

Maybe Bezos feels it’s time to get out before his legacy is tarnished by the latter?

What does this mean for Jeff Bezos?

Just in the same way Tom Brady insisted he wasn’t retiring when he left the New England Patriots, Bezos has made it clear he’s got plenty more to give.

In a similar mould to when Bill Gates stepped away from Microsoft, Bezos has stated that his ambition is to do good. Two of the major projects he’s talked about working on are of a philanthropic nature: The Day 1 Fund and the Bezos Earth Fund, which are starting with $2 billion and $10 billion to help homeless families and fight climate change, respectively.

Bezos also seems to be inspired by the man who recently took his place as the world’s richest man too, Elon Musk, as he’ll look to continue forward with his work on Blue Origin to “help make space travel mainstream”.

And it’s also very important not to forget that Bezos owns the Washington Post, one of America’s most popular and powerful dailies. Whether Bezos will venture further into media ala Rupert Murdoch is anyone’s guess. This doesn’t seem like a very Bezos thing to do, but it’s something to stay mindful of.

However, will Bezos really step away from Amazon anyway? Not everyone thinks so. Speaking to Reuters, CFRA analyst Tuna Amobi said, “I don’t think he’s going to be completely hands off.”

While Ken Perkins, President of RetailMetrics LLC also told Reuters similar, “Jeff Bezos has held a firm grip on the company for a long time. I have to believe he will have a say in what is going on and have a big hand in big picture decisions.”

Whether that’s in a reduced capacity role like Gates initially went into at Microsoft or as Reuters put it, “step[ping] down without stepping away”, it’s certainly going to be interesting to see what happens.

If this is a move to help Amazon “turn over a new leaf”, it does make sense that stepping down without stepping away may be the action here.

That was Brady’s tactic too, but at least he actually left the building.

What does this mean for marketers?

It’s very hard to say right now. Jassy has proven adept at building the most profitable part of Amazon, but moving into e-commerce is a different ball game.

However, if that success translates easily, then for us as marketers and business owners, we need to be in a position to piggyback off Amazon’s success and that means making yourself an Amazon Ads expert and getting to grips with their whole ecosystem.

I know there will be some of you out there reading this who believe we should fight Amazon’s dominance, and that’s right we should in whatever way we can. We’ve seen the damage that Amazon can do to small businesses and the way it gobbles up the industry. Yet Amazon does offer legitimate ways to improve your business too. There are so many small businesses out there that wouldn’t exist without Amazon.

Some may see this as Amazon swallowing the economy, but to watch idly while Amazon eats you up is only self sabotage.

Bezos or not, Amazon isn’t changing anytime soon. Antitrust isn’t going to change anything either.

What is going to change is every corner of the e-commerce industry and that’s not an overstatement.

We need to be in a position to benefit from that if we want to survive and thrive.

What’s your opinion? Head over to our Digital Marketing Facebook group to get involved in the conversation.

Google Shopping Ads are worth bearing in mind but are highly competitive. So let’s look at the places where your audience is already narrowed down.

Etsy

What is Etsy?

Etsy is an e-commerce site dedicated to handmade and vintage items and craft supplies. It’s home to many small businesses, often run by a single person, who make their products to order with a lot of love and care.

You can find several different things for sale on Etsy. The main categories include home decor and furniture, toys, art, crafts, jewellery, and other handmade items.

How does it work?

There are two different ways to advertise: on Etsy itself and with their Offsite Ads.

Etsy Ads

Running an Etsy Ads campaign means your product or service is only shown to users on the Etsy platform. Whilst previously Google Shopping was included, this is now part of their Offsite Ads.

They’re pretty easy to set up as they take your existing product listing and promote it, meaning the majority of the work comes when adding new things to your store.

Offsite Ads

Offsite Ads are only available on Etsy and have been designed with Etsy shop owners in mind. They use your Etsy ad budget to promote your products on sites such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Bing. This gives your Etsy shop a much bigger reach than the option above and means you don’t have to take the time to set up separate accounts for each platform.

Sellers are automatically enrolled in Etsy’s offsite ads as there are no upfront costs and you only pay when you make a sale. If you make more than $10,000 per year from your Etsy shop, you’re required to participate but you do get a discounted advertising fee. This will only affect a small portion of sellers, but some may not like being strong-armed which is understandable.

Why run ads on Etsy?

Anyone with products to sell can create a store on Etsy. It’s free to set up, but there are seller fees attached. For example, it costs 15p to list an item and, once sold, Etsy takes 5% of the listed price as a translation fee. So, things can get pricey quickly making it important to list your products at a price that makes things worthwhile.

Etsy has a very dedicated userbase – if you’ve used and been impressed with the variety and choice before, it easily becomes your go-to place to browse for handmade things.

The best people to advertise on Etsy are:

• Artists who make their own unique or custom pieces
• Hobbyists who are looking to now make money
• Sellers who want to connect with their customers individually

Etsy offers a very niche audience – but if that audience is right for your business, you’re laughing.

How much does it cost?

Etsy ads work on a cost-per-click bidding system so you’ll be charged a small amount every time someone clicks on your ad. The cost is determined by how much competition there is.

You set a daily budget between $1– $50 and Etsy won’t spend over that on a given day. If you’re a newbie, it’s best to disable auto-bidding until you have some data to look at. Etsy lets you see exactly where your money is being spent, alongside a breakdown of each product’s promotion.

There’s also a handy feature to set up discount codes. These are great as extra little incentives which you can promote on social media. They can also be emailed to people who have added your product to their basket but not completed the purchase, or if someone favourites your item. The email code is dropped in their inbox, with the aim of persuading them to make the purchase. This is Etsy’s version of retargeting.

Adzooma’s experience

As Adzooma is a PPC software, we limit our advertising to platforms which lend themselves to our product. We also spend our time putting customers together with other digital marketing services to benefit their business via our Marketplace.

Despite us not running ads on Etsy, eBay or Amazon at current, our team has a wealth of experience that they’re happy to share.

Adzooma’s Paid Social Manager, Matt Hogan, shares his past experiences on running Etsy ads:

“My experience with Etsy ads is relatively straight forward. Certainly when you compare to more in-depth platforms like Google and Facebook. The bulk of the leg work is actually done when you add the product to the actual store as that then becomes the ad. So making the item title/description as appealing as possible is very important.

I’d recommend anyone who’s using Etsy to test out their ad platform. I’ve seen increases in sales from doing so in the past and there’s no reason others won’t as well. Start on a smaller budget, spend time learning Etsy’s tools and features, as well as their reports, and you’re likely to see success.”

eBay

What is eBay?

eBay is a multinational e-commerce site that sells pretty much everything. There’s not many things you can’t find on eBay, which makes it a great site for bargain hunters.

To give you an idea of its categories, the top ones include:

• Fashion
• Electronics
• Sports, Hobbies & Leisure
• Home Garden
• Motors
• Collectables & Art
• Business, Office & Industrial Supplies
• Health & Beauty

It operates on an auction system that allows users to bid against one another. Sellers can also set ‘buy now’ prices that allow customers to purchase a product straight away. So, whilst eBay made its name as an auction site, it has now become home to e-commerce stores too.

How eBay Ads work

Advertising on eBay is straight forward. You pay to promote your listing and your ads will be shown on the eBay website or app alongside products similar to yours.

The best thing about eBay ads is that you only pay for the ad when you make a sale. It isn’t technically PPC, but allows you to advertise risk-free to test the waters of your eBay audience.

Where and when your ads appear is based on factors like your chosen ad rate and the relevance of your item to a buyer’s search. You can access a lot of data to dig into the number of clicks and sales you’re getting. It’s also easy to switch things off which is always reassuring.

It’s easy to get started as you don’t have to find ad creatives or select keywords – everything is based off your existing listing, similar to Etsy.

The benefits of eBay

You can think of eBay as a product search engine in its own right. It offers great exposure to its sellers as its strong reputation means people naturally turn to it. Not sure where to find something? eBay will probably have it.

eBay can provide you with a great platform to build up exposure for your products. If your business proves popular, you can then spend money expanding into your own e-commerce site. But, until you have enough of a following for people to search for your product specifically, big sites like this have a lot to offer.

The disadvantages

The point of searching for alternative sites to run PPC ads is that you discover a platform that caters for your industry. By running campaigns somewhere that has a targeted audience, the chances of people being interested is a lot higher. You lose this benefit by looking to big sites such as eBay or Amazon; because you can sell anything and everything, it’s impossible to achieve that niche audience.

However, the upside is that you can piggyback on these huge companies’ reputations. But, the benefits are very similar to that of Google, Facebook and Microsoft – just a little more product-focused. It’s obviously difficult to suggest niche sites for every product that you can then run PPC ads on, but please take inspiration from this PPC alternatives series and spend some time looking for niche sites for your industry – cheaper clicks await you.

Adzooma’s experience

Our Head of Digital Acquisition here at Adzooma, Will Haswell, worked on eBay campaigns at a previous agency. (If you’re looking for an agency, you’ll find some great options on our Marketplace.) He said that some of his clients e.g an outdoor clothing brand received a good amount of traffic from their eBay ads which resulted in strong incremental growth.

“I don’t think there are many brands or industries that couldn’t do well on eBay. If they’re already advertising online, it simply provides additional exposure for them. If your business is product-based and you’re looking to add a new marketing channel into your mix, eBay is worth a look.”

Amazon

What are Amazon Ads?

Amazon Ads operate on a traditional PPC model. You bid on keywords and get listed in a “Sponsored Products’ slot on the search results. As its a pay-per-click model, you only pay if your ad gets clicked. Simple.

How they work

Ads are ranked based on their profit rather than CTR. After all, it’s Amazon’s job to serve results it thinks its users are most likely to buy. However, Amazon ads see a 10% conversion rate in comparison to Google’s 1-2%, largely due to the intent of its audience.

Amazon splits its PPC ads into two types of sellers: Seller Central and Vendor Central. The difference between them is that Seller Central is designed for small businesses who want to sell directly to customers. Vendor Central is for larger manufacturers that want to sell to Amazon directly, and then Amazon sells that product on.

Amazon offers 3 different types of PPC ads:

• Sponsored Product Ads: These appear on the right and above organic search results. They’re the most common types of ad you see and are available to both Seller Central and Vendor Central sellers.
• Headline Search Ads: These are banner ads and appear at the top of pages alongside ad copy. These are available to both Seller Central and Vendor Central sellers.
• Product Display Ads: These are displayed on chosen product pages but are only available for Vendor Central sellers.

Automatic vs Manual PPC ads

Amazon caters for PPC beginners and experts. If you want, you can just tell Amazon how much you want to spend and then let its algorithm get to work. It selects your keywords for you, but obviously offers less control than the manual option. If you feel like you know what you’re doing, Amazon’s manual ads are great for perfecting your performance.

Mark Neale, Head of PPC at Adzooma, suggests starting off with Amazon’s automatic ads and then feeding that data into the manual ads at a later date.

“By letting Amazon’s algorithm kick things off for you, you can easily gather the data you need to see how you can improve your ads. Once your products have been seen by enough people, you can optimise your listings to maximise your sales. Running manual PPC ads straight away may feel like you’re scrambling around in the dark – lean on automatic ads initially to give yourself time to learn the platform and ensure a smoother start.”

Why advertise on Amazon?

Amazon has 197 million active users each month and their share of the US e-commerce market stands at 45%.

There’s a lot of competition with its huge inventory totalling more than 353 million when you include its marketplace sellers. But, studies show that Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands clicks convert at more than three times the rate of Google Shopping ad clicks. If you need any more information, discover if Amazon ads are worth it here.

The best way to see if this is true for your products is to try it: the proof is in the pudding. The same can be said for other great marketing services found on our Marketplace.

E-commerce PPC alternatives

Advertising online doesn’t limit your reach like a physical store does. It’s important to ensure you don’t limit yourself with PPC either. There are a lot of alternatives to selling on Google out there, so take the time to try some alternatives with our other handy guides and see what sales they can bring in for your business.

Why: Though Amazon has more than 197 million visitors and is deemed the killer of small businesses, it’s no doubt brands are feeling the pressure to grow their revenue the same way and stand out in a saturated market. We can see this in brands like Walmart who are focused on building a marketplace advertising business of their own, and can now use this data to create a benchmark of their own.

The reason: The growth spans across their entire marketplace, though we can see that tens of millions of Amazon devices were bought worldwide and customers interacted with Alexa billions of times each week. Independent third-party sellers also sold more than a billion items during the holiday season, including more than 100 million items shipped with Prime Free One-Day Delivery – making up a large part of this monumental growth.

On assisting advertisers with both sales and advertising, David Fildes, Director of Investor Relations at Amazon, said “I think they appreciate the fidelity we can provide around shopping outcomes. We’re uniquely positioned to do this given our retail business.”