We’re all looking to increase the amount of customers looking at our Amazon inventory and boost our e-commerce sales, right? This is especially true during Q4! The more people who see your inventory, the more people will buy it!
One way to get more customers buying your Amazon inventory is to list that inventory on multiple sales channels. You can also use multi-channel fulfillment, where your inventory is listed on multiple channels but fulfilled from one channel. For example, you can list your inventory on Amazon, Shopify, and eBay, but have the Amazon FBA warehouse fulfill your orders, regardless of whether the sale comes from Amazon’s website or another site.
Setting up multiple listings on multiple sales channels can be super complicated and time consuming… but it doesn’t have to be that way at all. Enter JoeLister.
JoeLister is a third-party program that allows you to list your Amazon FBA inventory on eBay AND Shopify in just a few clicks per item. I’ve been using JoeLister for 0ver 4 years now, and I’ve enjoyed the boost in sales I’ve received from having extra eyes viewing my inventory.
Since I’ve had a while now to get some experience with JoeLister, I want to share with you the reasons I like the program and a couple of my frustrations as well.
Let’s start off with the positives:
1. Automated listing on eBay or Shopify
Who doesn’t love automating your online business?! I love that with just a few clicks per item, I can create listings on eBay from my Amazon FBA inventory. Part of the reason I hadn’t tried multi-channel fulfillment before now is that I don’t love creating each individual eBay listing. But JoeLister makes the process of creating the listing super easy by importing titles, descriptions, and pictures from Amazon into the eBay listing.
2. Smart pricing feature
JoeLister is able to make calculations based on both the Amazon fees and the eBay fees, and it gives you suggestions for your eBay price accordingly. It’s important that you know your numbers when you are setting your prices, and JoeLister makes it simple for you to make comparisons with your Amazon price and with other recent eBay listings of similar items. You can easily set your eBay price with your payout for that sale in mind. Note: Amazon terms of service require you to price your multi-channel fulfillment inventory at or above your Amazon price when you’re pricing on other platforms. You should not set your eBay price lower than the Amazon price when listing through JoeLister or you will be at risk of possible account suspension.
3. Automatic fulfillment of orders
This is where JoeLister becomes even more exciting, in my opinion. When you list an item through JoeLister and an eBay or Shopify customer purchases it, the fulfillment process for that order is completely automatic. JoeLister communicates between eBay or Shopify and Amazon to set up the fulfillment order, have the item shipped from the Amazon warehouse to your eBay or Shopify customer, and provide the tracking information. You just sit back and watch (and see the sales rolling in)!
4. Inventory numbers syncs between Amazon and eBay or Shopify
Another cool feature of JoeLister is that it synchs your inventory amounts between Amazon and eBay/Shopify. So let’s say you have your Amazon inventory listed on eBay through JoeLister, and you make a sale of one unit of that item through Amazon – JoeLister automatically syncs and adjusts the quantity available on eBay for that listing. It works the same way going the other direction – if you make a sale on eBay, JoeLister syncs to adjust the quantity available in your Amazon FBA inventory. You are never in danger of selling an item on one platform when it’s not truly available because you already sold it on another platform.
5. Inventory pricing will also sync between Amazon and eBay or Shopify
For those of you using an Amazon repricer (we like using BQool), you can also turn on a feature in JoeLister that syncs up your pricing between selling platforms. If your repricer increases your prices on Amazon, then JoeLister will (if you chose the option) to sync up the prices of your inventory items on other selling platforms (like eBay or Shopify).
Frustrations with JoeLister:
Our business model includes selling shoes, and we’ve noticed a slight problem when we are automatically creating listings on eBay from our shoe inventory. When JoeLister imports the title of the product, it often takes the title directly from the parent ASIN of the shoe. That parent ASIN title doesn’t include any info about the size or color variation that I’m actually wanting to sell on eBay. When this happens, I have to then manually add the size and color for my variation to the title as I’m creating the listing. Kind of a pain, but not a big enough problem to be a deal breaker for me and JoeLister.
I 100% recommend double-checking all your titles when you are importing your listings from Amazon into eBay or Shopify anyway. Titles on Amazon, Shopify, and eBay are different when it comes to what you can and can’t use, and you want to make sure your eBay or Shopify listings through JoeLister are optimized for eBay or Shopify customers who are searching for the types of items you are selling.
Overall, JoeLister is simply awesome!
Overall, we have enjoyed having JoeLister as an addition to our e-commerce business. We definitely saw the most benefit from using the service during the Q4 months, but we have continued to see enough sales throughout the year to justify using JoeLister year-round.
The pricing options for the service range from 100 listings to an unlimited number of listings, and we have tinkered with different amounts during Q4 and afterwards. Everyone has a different strategy for how they want to use the service, so I recommend just trying it out for a while and seeing how it might best benefit your own particular business. You don’t have to import all of your Amazon SKUs to eBay with JoeLister, so you can play around with different combinations and see what types of listings work best for you with multi-channel fulfillment.
If you’re interested in trying out JoeLister, you can get a two-week free trial through this link. You can check out their website for more information on the types of plans they offer and for videos about how to use the program. If you do the two-week free trial of JoeLister, I bet you could make enough in eBay sales during that two weeks to be able to pay for a subscription moving forward!
Have you tried JoeLister before? Have you tried multi-channel fulfillment of your Amazon inventory? We would love to hear your thoughts and questions on the topic in the comments!
*Post updated for 2022
Hi Stephen. Would like to know if Joelister works in the UK? Thanks. Erik.
I’m not sure, but you can check here for more info: https://www.fulltimefba.com/joelister
Hi Stephen,
Do the eBay customer complain or hurt metrics when they receive the orders in Amazon boxes? Thanks
Not at all… even before using JoeLister I would reuse boxes from Amazon to send my ebay customers their items. Never had a complaint from hundreds of ebay orders using an Amazon shipping box. Great question!
I have been using Joelister for more than a year now on Ebay, only one time did I have to send an Ebay item out from home, I am sure it was an Amazon problem their was only one left and I think Amazon misplaced it. Lucky I did have one at home to send.
I have never had even one complaint about the Ebay items arriving in Amazon boxes. Even when I did my own shipping for Ebay I often reused Amazon boxes when I shipped. The shipping label will say this is your ebay purchase and the ebay item #.
Joelister rocks!
Thanks for sharing this great testimonial about JoeLister, Christine!
What does the shipping costs look like that Amazon will charge?
It depends on the size and weight of the item.
Tammy, Joelister gives you a approx breakdown of your Ebay final value fee and the Amazon shipping fee (always very close to exact fees) when you are building the add for Ebay. Lets you make an informed decision to set your price. I also like to use it to help clear out my Amazon LTS inventory this time of year.
Hi Stephen,
How are refunds dealt with? Do customers return the item to my home address? Do they contact me for a return label through my ebay inbox?
Thanks,
Louis
eBay customers request a refund and will send the item back to your home address. Yes, they go through the eBay process of processing a refund. You want them to send it back to you so you can inspect the item and make sure it’s in the same condition as you sent it to them… some ebay buyers try to do a switcheroo and switch out a used item for a new item. You want to make sure they don’t take advantage of you. It’s SUPER RARE when an ebay customer will return an item… and even more rare when they try to return an item with intent to switch out the product.
Stephen,
What should we do about products that are damaged via Amazon FBA that eBay users purchase? Any insight on this would be appreciated. Thanks.
You can always open a ticket and try to get reimbursed, but since the item is not in your possession, the chances are not good… but it’s worth a try.
Also what if the customer who buys on e-bay wants expedited 1-day delivery? How does Joe Lister deal with that?
Thanks,
Louis
Good question. See if it’s a FAQ here: https://www.fulltimefba.com/joelister
Hi Stephen,
Thanks for the great column. I am giving JoeLister a whirl.
2 Questions
1. Any strategy tips–do you list old items (slow sells) or do you go for high-priced?
2. You said it was easy to check and compare your listing prices with current ebay offerings but I can’t find this feature.
thanks again
1. I do multiple strategies. I list these items on ebay via JoeLister: a. older items, b. high priced items, c. items that might be charged a long-term storage fee soon, d. items that I have many multiples in stock, and e. items that are super popular.
2. Just search the main keywords of the item in an eBay search bar.
Hope this helps!
Hi Stephen,
Thanks for this post. We are looking into Multi-Channel and are considering using Joelister too. Have you had any experience with other Multi-channel Fulfillment software?
Thanks,
Dan
No, I’ve only used JoeLister
Thanks for all you share, Stephen! Do you set your eBay handling time to 2 days or more on your items listed with Joelister? Do you have different handling times for your regular inventory, any difficulty juggling these? Are you having any problems with the MCF service?
No problems at all with JoeLister. No problems with handling times or with my other inventory at all.
If I currently sell the same products on both platforms (with different titles), and then sign up for Joelister which will link the Amazon items to Ebay, will I now have to remove the previously created Ebay listing? In other words, how do I prevent having items listed twice on Ebay ?
Yes… otherwise you’d be in danger of a double sale.
I was wondering about all the listing costs on EBay. It seems I get a bill everyday from EBay and I only have about 209 items. If I list thousands won’t that be very high cost?
You get 250 free listings every month on eBay… so if you have thousands of items on Amazon right now, then only pick certain items to sell via JoeLister on eBay. That’s what I do. Pick the high priced items and pick the items you have the most multiple quantities in stock. You don’t have to list them all on eBay, just the items you want to.
Stephen,
I am wondering how a multi-channel order affects the Amazon Sales Rank? Does Amazon treat it like a normal sale with an impact on sales rank?
Thanks!
Good question. There is no documentation on Amazon about this, but I would think that because the sale happened outside of Amazon that it would not effect Amazon sales rank.
Stephen,
What about if in our Amazon marketplace we are nor using at all FBA?
Imagine we are in Italy serving UK customers and using JoeLister for ebay.co.uk
How the sales/process is conducted? As it is was no FBA at all, I suppose, we will receive an email from ebay, and we will proceed as always, or we are missing something? Or the order appear at Amazon?…
If you’re not using FBA there is no reason to use JoeLister. You can also ask the same question to the people at Joe Lister here: https://www.fulltimefba.com/joelister
I suppose just for the Amazon > eBay syncronization, otherwise how can I do it? I do not know how to use the same catalog in Amazon and eBay out of JoeLister.
Hi Stephen I bought your course about selling shoes. I really enjoy it. Question about Joe Lister. Joe lister took all photos from amazon an exact description. Is it legal? Can i do that?
Only once in using JoeLister to sell shoes on ebay via Amazon has ebay cancelled my listings because of a possible copyright image violation. I just made note of that shoe brand to not sell them on ebay anymore. Only once in thousands of shoes listed on ebay. No need to worry unless it is WAY more often than that.
Hi Stephen,
You stated that ” Amazon terms of service require you to price your multi-channel fulfillment inventory at or above your Amazon price…”
1. Is this still a requirement? I clicked on your link but couldn’t find this rule stated.
2. If it is still a requirement, is there a quick or automated way to check compliance in JoeLister? I’m using the recommended “Percent Margin” pricing formula set at 0. When I manually look through some of the prices most of the time the eBay prices are at or higher than Amazon, however, occasionally this is not the case and I have to manually increase the eBay price.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I have corrected the link (in the blog post above) with the updated link stating this rule. Yes, the rule is still in the Amazon TOS. I also, use the percent margin pricing formula to set at zero and manually reprice ebay if I raise my Amazon price.
Do you have a training course for JoeLister?
I do not, but they have some good training videos. Click for more info: https://www.fulltimefba.com/joelister
Hi Stephen,
I’m giving Joelister a two week try based on your advice & link. Question re: the eBay price needs to be at or above the FBA price. Are you referring to the earnings or the listed price? I ask because at a lower price of $7, my EBay and AMZ earnings are the same. Is that still a violation? Thanks in advance!!!
The listed price (what the customer sees). Amazon needs to be cheaper or the same price as ebay.
Hi,
Does Joe Lister work for book sellers also?
Thanks
Yes. It works for sellers of all Amazon categories that contain physical goods.