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Amazon Marketing
•

Amazon Selling Got 2X More Competitive Since 2017

Mae Rice
•
August 4, 2021
Amazon Selling Got 2X More Competitive Since 2017
Table of Contents
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This is an excerpt from MarketerHire's weekly newsletter, Raisin Bread. To get a tasty marketing snack in your inbox every week, subscribe here.

Our infographic this week is a straight line, but it’s an important one.

Amazon flooded with merchants

It shows how the number of Amazon sellers has doubled since 2017, from 3M to 6M. 

The number of Shopify merchants hovers around 1.7 million — not even close. In fact, Shopify today has fewer merchants than Amazon did in 2017. 

Source: Marketplace Pulse

Is Amazon getting too competitive? 

All that competition drives profits down, as does Amazon policy: In 2019, the company took a 27% cut of all its platform revenues, up 42% from 2014, The New York Times reported. 

But so far, the scale of potential sales on the platform has outweighed its cost. 

If it didn’t, the number of the sellers on the platform would start to plateau — and the chart wouldn’t show a line straight up and to the right. 

Mae RiceMae Rice
Mae Rice is editor in chief at MarketerHire. A long-time content marketer, she loves learning about the weird and wonderful feedback loops that connect marketing and culture.
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Trends

Amazon Selling Got 2X More Competitive Since 2017

September 8, 2023
August 4, 2021
Mae Rice

It's not your imagination. There are more sellers on Amazon every day, and they're all competing for shoppers' attention. But what does that mean for their profits — and Amazon's?

Table of Contents

This is an excerpt from MarketerHire's weekly newsletter, Raisin Bread. To get a tasty marketing snack in your inbox every week, subscribe here.

Our infographic this week is a straight line, but it’s an important one.

Amazon flooded with merchants

It shows how the number of Amazon sellers has doubled since 2017, from 3M to 6M. 

The number of Shopify merchants hovers around 1.7 million — not even close. In fact, Shopify today has fewer merchants than Amazon did in 2017. 

Source: Marketplace Pulse

Is Amazon getting too competitive? 

All that competition drives profits down, as does Amazon policy: In 2019, the company took a 27% cut of all its platform revenues, up 42% from 2014, The New York Times reported. 

But so far, the scale of potential sales on the platform has outweighed its cost. 

If it didn’t, the number of the sellers on the platform would start to plateau — and the chart wouldn’t show a line straight up and to the right. 

Mae Rice
about the author

Mae Rice is editor in chief at MarketerHire. A long-time content marketer, she loves learning about the weird and wonderful feedback loops that connect marketing and culture.

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