Have you ever sat in front of a blank screen and thought: “Okay, I want to make money online – but where do I even start?”
Most people make a mistake at this point. They open Google, read five different opinions, get five different answers, and end up right where they started – with nothing.
Amazon or Your Own Online Store – Where Is the Money for You?
I’ll show you the facts, the numbers, and practical experience – so that by the end of this article you’ll know exactly which path to take and how to walk it. Even if today you know absolutely nothing about Amazon.
Keep reading. Because the answer might surprise you.
What Does It Actually Mean to Sell on Amazon?
Before we compare anything, let me explain what we’re talking about.
Amazon is the largest online shopping platform in the world. Every day it is visited by hundreds of millions of customers from all over the world – from the US, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and elsewhere. As a seller, you register on Amazon, upload your products, and sell on this enormous marketplace.
There are two main ways to sell:
Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) – This is a system in which Amazon takes over all the logistics for you. Logistics means: storage, packing, and shipping. You send your products to Amazon’s warehouse, and Amazon takes care of everything else – including delivery to the customer and customer service. You just sell. This is the model I use myself and recommend to beginners.
Amazon FBM (Fulfillment by Merchant) – With this model, you pack and ship every order yourself. This takes more time and is more complicated for beginners.
For the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on Amazon FBA, because this model is the best fit for beginners who want to start earning as quickly as possible without logistical complications.
So What Is Your Own Online Store?
Your own online store means you set up your own website through which you sell your own or other people’s products. The most common tools for this are:
- Shopify – a paid platform that lets you set up an online store quickly
- WooCommerce – a free plugin for WordPress.
- Wix or Squarespace – simple website builders with an online store feature
Once you have your own online store, you’re responsible for everything yourself:
- attracting visitors (traffic – these are the people who visit your site)
- advertising
- logistics
- the payment system
- customer support
- site security
- and everything else
The Key Difference Most People Overlook
Amazon gives you traffic. With your own online store, you have to build it yourself.
Traffic is the number of visitors who come to your sales page. Without traffic, there are no sales. Without sales, there are no earnings.
When you create a listing on Amazon (listing = your product page on Amazon, where customers see your product and buy it), your product is instantly visible to millions of customers. These people are already on Amazon with the intent to buy. They’re not there for fun. They’re there because they’re searching for exactly what you sell.
But when you open your own online store, it’s like opening a shop in the middle of a desert. No traffic. No customers. Nobody’s there. You have to lure them in – and that’s an expensive, time-consuming, and complicated process.
This is the difference that is deadly for most beginners at the start. And that’s precisely why so many new online entrepreneurs fail within their first year.
Amazon or Your Own Online Store: A Comparison by Key Criteria
Now let’s systematically go through everything that matters for your earnings.
1. Startup Costs and Investment
Amazon FBA:
- Seller account registration: ~$39 per month (for a professional account)
- Purchase of your first inventory: from €500 (depending on the product)
- Basic product research tools: from free to ~€100 per month
- Shipping to Amazon’s warehouse: depends on the supplier and weight (from €500)
Total to get started: from €1,000 (more is better).
Your own online store:
- Platform (Shopify, WooCommerce): from €0 to €100 per month
- Inventory of at least €500
- Domain and hosting, email software tools: €10–50 per year
- Website design, programming, social media, complete brand identity: from €1,000 if you can’t do it yourself
Total to get started: from 1,500 euros – and that’s just the beginning. No guarantee of sales.
Winner: Amazon. The initial investment is lower, and so is the risk.
2. Speed to your first earnings
Amazon FBA: With a well-chosen product and the right process, you can have your first sales within 6–10 weeks of starting. That’s the time you spend on:
- Finding a product (2–3 weeks)
- Reaching an agreement with a supplier (1–2 weeks)
- Shipping inventory to Amazon (2–4 weeks, depending on the shipper)
- Optimizing your listing and getting ranked in search (1–2 weeks)
Your own online store: Your first sales typically take 3–6 months, because during that time you have to:
- Build the site
- Optimize it for Google (SEO – Search Engine Optimization – is the process by which a website earns better rankings in Google search)
- Test ads
- Build trust with customers (who don’t know you at all)
- Get inventory into Slovenia, test everything, make a name for yourself, etc.
Winner: Amazon. With Amazon, you get to money significantly faster.
3. Customer trust and conversion
Conversion is the percentage of visitors who actually buy (e.g., if 3 out of 100 visitors buy, that’s a 3% conversion rate).
On Amazon, customers already trust the platform. Amazon is one of the most trusted brands in the world. When someone sees your product on Amazon, they automatically trust it because it’s on Amazon. That trust is free for you.
On your own website, though, customers don’t know you. Why would they buy from you, an unknown website they discovered in an ad? Building trust takes time – months or years.
Average conversion rate on Amazon: 10–15%
Average conversion rate of a new online store: 2–4%
This means Amazon often generates roughly 3 to 7 times more purchases with the same number of visitors. In some cases, when an online store achieves only about a 1% conversion rate, the difference can be as much as 10 to 15 times.
Winner: Amazon.
4. Logistics and operational time
Logistics is everything that happens after a customer places an order: storage, packing, shipping, returns.
Amazon FBA: Amazon does it for you. You get an order → Amazon ships it → you get paid.
Personally, I spend an average of 1–2 hours a week managing my Amazon business once the system is set up. That’s possible precisely because of the FBA system.
Your own online store: You have to handle packing and shipping every order yourself. Unless you do dropshipping (dropshipping means the supplier ships the order directly, and you don’t keep any inventory yourself). But dropshipping has its own challenges, which I’ll write about separately.
Winner: Amazon. FBA is one of the best income systems I’ve ever seen.
5. Control over your business
Here the picture is different. I have to be honest.
Amazon: Amazon has its own rules. If you break them, Amazon can temporarily suspend your account. You aren’t the complete master of your own fate. Fees can change. Algorithms change. This is a risk you need to be aware of.
Your own online store: You’re the 100% owner. You have your own customer base, your own email list (an email list is a list of the email addresses of your customers and potential buyers – a valuable asset), and no one can take your business away overnight.
Winner: Your own online store. In the long run, having control on your side is better.
6. Earning potential and scaling
Scaling means growing your business – earning more with the same or less effort.
Amazon FBA: Once you have one successful product, you scale it with more inventory and a bigger budget for Amazon’s internal advertising (PPC – Pay Per Click, meaning you pay only when someone clicks on your ad). Then you add a second and a third product. You can even make over 30,000 EUR a month with 2–3 products.
Your own online store: The potential is theoretically unlimited, but reaching that potential requires a huge amount of knowledge, advertising budget, and time. Most people never get there.
Winner: Both have potential, but Amazon gives it to you faster and more easily.
So why do most beginners choose Amazon?
Because Amazon solves the fundamental problem of every new online business:
Who will buy from me?
That’s the question that haunts every beginner with their own online store. With Amazon, that question doesn’t exist. The customers are already there. Waiting. Searching for your product. Your job is simply to offer it to them in the right place, with a good description and the right price.
When I started with Amazon, I was surprised how quickly the first sales came in. I didn’t need a 2,000 EUR advertising campaign. I didn’t need a hundred thousand followers on Instagram. I needed a good product and an optimized listing.
And that’s the difference every beginner feels firsthand – when they see that first sale happen while they’re asleep.
If I had to start over today, I’d choose Amazon. Without a doubt.
So how do you get started with Amazon as a complete beginner?
Here is a simplified 5-step process:
Step 1: Find the right product
This is the most important step. The right product means one that:
- Has enough demand (at least 300 sales per month in the category)
- Isn’t too competitive (competitors have few reviews or poor photos)
- Sells for between 60 and 100 EUR (the ideal price point for beginners)
- Isn’t seasonal (don’t sell Christmas decorations)
- Is simple (not electronics that can break down)
To find products, you use a tool such as Helium 10 – a software tool that shows you how well a product sells on Amazon, how much competition there is, and what the potential profit looks like.
Step 2: Find a supplier
Once you have a product, you look for a supplier on Alibaba.com – a Chinese platform with manufacturers from all over the world. There you order samples (a sample = a test piece that you check before ordering the entire inventory), negotiate the price, and order your first inventory.
The goal is to add your own brand to an existing product – this is called private label. Amazon allows this, and it’s precisely what separates successful sellers from those who merely resell.
Step 3: Send your inventory to Amazon
Once your inventory is ready, you send it directly to Amazon’s FBA warehouse. Amazon tells you exactly which warehouse to ship to. Once your products are there, you’re technically ready to sell.
Step 4: Create and optimize your listing
A listing is your product page on Amazon. It includes:
- Title – must contain keywords (the words customers type when searching)
- Bullet points (key points) – short, clear benefits of the product
- Description – a more detailed explanation
- Photos – professional, bright, clear
A good listing is the difference between making sales and being invisible.
Step 5: Get your first reviews and kick off sales
Reviews are customer comments that build trust. On Amazon, reviews are decisive. Without reviews, it’s hard to sell. As reviews grow, your listing climbs in search results and sales increase.
To get started, sellers often use Amazon’s Vine program or a strategy of discounted prices for the first buyers, who in return leave an honest review.
When is your own online store better?
Let’s be honest. There are situations where your own online store is the better choice:
- You already have a customer base or followers – for example, you already have 10,000 Instagram followers who trust you. In that case, your own online store is a sensible complement to your business.
- You sell unique, handmade products – if you sell one-of-a-kind artwork or custom-made products, Etsy or your own site is a better platform.
- Long-term brand building – if your goal is to build a brand that is recognizable in its own right, you’ll need your own website in the long run. But that is often step 2, not step 1.
- A niche market that Amazon doesn’t cover well – there are niches that are poorly represented on Amazon but have good demand elsewhere.
For most beginners, though, this doesn’t apply. Most beginners don’t have an existing audience, don’t have followers, and don’t have advertising know-how. And for this group, Amazon is by far the best path.
Combining both: an advanced growth strategy
Once you’ve established a successful Amazon business, you can build on it with your own website.
This strategy works like this:
- You start on Amazon and build a customer base
- Once sales are flowing, you set up your own website
- You gradually bring Amazon customers over to your own site, where you have higher margins (margin = the difference between the price you buy at and the price you sell at)
- You build an email list of your customers
- Amazon becomes one of your channels, not the only one
The biggest mistakes beginners make with this decision
Over all these years, I’ve seen beginners make the same mistakes again and again:
Mistake 1: Putting off the decision Some people read 100 articles, watch 50 YouTube videos, and do nothing. Analysis without action is empty. Start. Now.
Mistake 2: Starting with their own online store because it “sounds professional” Having your own website sounds serious. But without traffic, it’s just an expensive business card. Someone who doesn’t have a single customer has nothing to lose by starting on Amazon.
Mistake 3: Choosing the wrong product This is by far the most common mistake. They choose a product they like – not a product the market is looking for. Amazon isn’t about what you like. It’s about what customers are searching for.
Mistake #4: Too little inventory Some people order 50 units to “test” the market. But with 50 units, you can’t get enough reviews or meet demand. The optimal starting inventory is at least 100 units (200 is better).
Mistake #5: Expecting instant profit Amazon isn’t a lottery. It’s a system you build step by step. With a good product and the right process, you’ll see results in 3 months.
My personal answer: Amazon or your own online store?
Let me answer you directly:
Start with Amazon.
Why? Because:
- Amazon FBA takes logistics off your shoulders
- Amazon builds trust for you without years of hard work
- Amazon gets you your first sales much faster
- Amazon is a system that anyone can understand and learn, even a complete beginner
Once you understand how this system works – once you see those first sales in your account – everything else will become clearer. You’ll know whether you want your business to grow on your own website, stay on Amazon, or combine both.
How to start without risk: a free webinar
I know you’ve read this article – and that means you’re serious about earning money online. Congratulations.
The next step is to get a concrete plan and see how the system works in practice.
That’s why I’m inviting you to a free online seminar on earning with Amazon, where I’ll show you:
- How to find your first successful product step by step
- How to work with Alibaba as a supplier
- How to set up an FBA system that works for you
- And how to actually get your first sales
Don’t put it off. Every day you don’t start is one less day of earning.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ) about selling on Amazon for beginners
Do I need to have a company? To sell on Amazon, it’s recommended to have a registered company or sole proprietorship (s.p.). Amazon requires tax information and a bank account.
Can I sell on Amazon from Slovenia? Yes, absolutely. I do it myself, and I know dozens of Slovenes who successfully sell through Amazon FBA from Slovenia.
Which markets does Amazon cover? Amazon has platforms in the US (amazon.com), Germany (amazon.de), France (amazon.fr), Italy (amazon.it), Spain (amazon.es), the United Kingdom (amazon.co.uk), and elsewhere.
Where can I learn more? At my free webinar
Conclusion: The decision is simple when you know the facts
Amazon or your own online store?
The facts speak clearly:
- Amazon gives you traffic that your own website doesn’t have
- Amazon FBA takes logistics off your shoulders
- Amazon builds trust for you without years of hard work
- Your own website is great – when you have an audience, knowledge, and time
For a beginner who wants to earn money online as quickly as possible and with minimal risk, Amazon is the better choice. No question about it.
I’ve walked this path myself. I’ve seen what works. And what works, I share.
Sign up for the free online seminar and find out whether Amazon is an opportunity for you too
