
Sell Services on Amazon - prostoalex
http://services.amazon.com/selling-services/pricing.htm?ld=EL-www.amazon.comAS
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buro9
I wonder under which "in-home" service out-call escort services will
masquerade as.

It's only a question of time.

When I was at Yell I wasn't that surprised to see how frequently such services
would appear on our database, initially as massage and then moving on to ever
stranger personal services (with the real service buried in the description or
provided by a phone call later).

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njloof
"Headlight Restoration"? "Door Knob Installation"? "Power Washing"?

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nulltype
If they sell it as plumbing the hourly rate wouldn't even be that suspicious.

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salimmadjd
I'm curious what (if any) startups will be build around this.

For example, what if there is a service that enables you to take your Amazon
ratings to another platform but not have to pay the 20% cut. You can imagine
the service providers would be willing to pay for the cost of verifications
where their Amazon ratings is verified and transformed to platform B where it
charges only 10% or 8% cut.

Other interesting angles would be around services and tools you can create to
help the service providers market themselves better, engage their customers
for reviews, return for repeat business, etc. Very exciting time!

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danr4
sounds like you want [http://www.erated.co/](http://www.erated.co/)

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rattray
If we thought Amazon's Product Search was a threat to Google, this is taking
the battle to a new level entirely.

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mattthinks
It certainly is, though with Amazon's token lack of finesse and personality.
Could become something akin to Odesk for real-world services, and would likely
suffer from the same maladies: low average quality, race-to-the-bottom
pricing, and impersonal customer service

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gokhan
From the FAQ:

 _\- For example, if you install car audio, your services would be listed
alongside car audio components._

The real benefit for some, not much for others. iPad Repair can't benefit from
iPad sales

 _\- Amazon creates pre-defined scopes of work based on common customer
requests which you are then able to pre-estimate and offer... Before a job
begins, you can review a customer’s specific scope of work and process a
change order if needed._

Isn't this too complex? Also, no mention of procedure if customer does not get
satisfied by the service. But anyway, it's very interesting to see Amazon
trying to standardize service business. It's too complex, I want them to show
me how to do it.

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mattlutze
iPad repair certainly can benefit from listings next to iPad sales. There's an
obvious case where someone has broken their iPad, goes to look for what a new
one would cost rather than sending it in to Apple, sees the cheaper repair
option and purchases services.

On the second point, it looks significantly simpler, particularly from
Amazon's standpoint, to start the capability only using predefined service
offerings. Such commoditized services can be more easily and confidently
associated with products, whereas open service offering definition would be
significantly harder to support (leading to a poor user experience and
adoption rate).

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hownottowrite
20% cut is a little stiff.

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drsim
If you consider that the service provider pays nothing to acquire the customer
and close the sale, plus Amazon brings the platform and payment processing I
think it's very reasonable.

As they rightly point out in the benefits these aren't leads, they are closed
sales.

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maratd
> I think it's very reasonable.

It's high. They're not first to the scene. If you look at Elance, it's 8.75%
for exactly the same thing including payment processing. On the high end, I've
worked with agencies that charge 15% for everything. 20% is steep.

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gonzi25
Taskrabbit takes a 20% cut as well, I'd say it's going rate for sure.
Especially with Amazon backing it and the guarantee.

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Nagyman
Might this compete with Thumbtack [1]? That's the comparable startup that
comes to mind.

[1] [http://www.thumbtack.com/](http://www.thumbtack.com/)

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cmapes
I was also thinking redbeacon.com, although they've already exited to Home
Depot so it's not so much of a concern.

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sargun
This is amazing. They've created the arbitrage market with reputation
management that we need -- it suddenly builds a platform for Cherry, Homejoy,
Exec, etc..

I wish they introduced the ability to have structured bids / sell orders for
things like food delivery, and even transportation service.

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runeks
> I wish they introduced the ability to have structured bids / sell orders for
> things like food delivery, and even transportation service.

Yes! That would be very interesting to see. If we could, sort of, commoditize
a certain service (eg. transportation), and build a bid/ask order book for it
(potential customers are bidders, and transportation services provide the
asks).

The problem, as I see it, is defining the base unit. In order to have a
unified order book, we need a base unit for this order book. What are we
selling? Is "1 mile of transportation", or is it necessary to build different
order books for different locations? I suspect most transportation service
have a base fee _plus_ a $/mile rate. So now you have two variables, and the
price of "1 mile of transportation" will depend on the quantity of miles,
which makes it a non-commodity (1 ton of iron ore in the spot market will cost
roughly the same as 100 tonnes).

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cmapes
Agreed, food / grocery delivery and transportation services would certainly be
interesting, but defining the rates based on some sort of a base-cost-unit
like mileage and speed of delivery would be extremely challenging to do
smoothly for the end user. I think it would end up being non-satisfying for
the customer and the sellers.

Besides, amazon.com has amazon fresh for the grocery delivery service needs.
Why cut into their own business?

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Kalium
Not all consumers of food transit and delivery services are end-consumers
getting groceries. Restaurants need the same services.

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cmapes
Sure, but restaurants have special needs relating to getting groceries. When
they want "avocados" they don't just want any case of avocados. They may want
a case of "locally sourced Haas 40's with 4-5 day ripening time with a USDA
Grade of #2 Combination, or #2, but not #1". Not just avocados. Instead of
wanting "bread" they might need an artisan bread with a gluten free recipe
that's standardized to 16oz weight for their lunch sandwiches. So it's not as
simple as it seems, which is why there's dozens of huge billion-dollar
companies who do this such as Costco, Sysco, US Foods, Shamrocks, etc. You
just shop around and stay on top of food costs. And if you're a medium-large
chain you lock down trade agreements much farther up the supply chain
(producer level) to very low fixed prices for 6 months at a time. So if amazon
wants to try to tackle dozens of intricacies for thousands of types of
perishable goods that will have variable quality in a market that is heavily
regulated by the USDA, more power to them. Source: I own a restaurant on the
side.

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unklefolk
"Bike Chain Lubrication"??

Do people really need to call someone out to oil a chain?

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tiler
I imagine that services can be grouped with other relevant services. For
example: Bike Chain Installation + Bike Chain Lubrication.

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bonif
Sadly, it does not seem to include Saas/web services

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PhilipA
Doesn't there already exist Saas marketplaces?

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BenoitP
Yes, and from amazon.

[https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace)

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bonif
This is for aws users /tech people.

Not for common people (my idea was i.e. an accounting web service sold on
amazon)

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ejz
Is this really something Amazon wants to do? Yes, it's the natural evolution
of Bezos' ambitions, and services are really the only category Amazon hasn't
quite touched. But it's a lot harder to control people than it is books. Do
they want the people who have come to expect toilet paper delivered in 2 days
exactly, without fail, to associated with never-on-time plumbers?

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OoTheNigerian
Amazon is finally becoming "the everything store"

Interesting!

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omarshammas
Services (unlike products) are typically constrained by the number of
personnel available.

How does Amazon determine a company's availability when a customer books a
job?

Most of these business I'd guess are probably in the 1-10 people range and
probably not the most tech savvy. I can't imagine an adequate solution unless
Amazon provides scheduling software and enforces adoption.

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curun1r
If you look at the list of services, it's basically a list that does not
include any service that requires an appointment. My company does scheduling
for small businesses and, in industries like auto, there's just a maximum
number of appointments each day that we're allowed to book.

It looks like Amazon punted on the hard part by constraining the availability
to only specific services.

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jqm
The 20% fee seems ridiculously high. I suppose this has to get passed on the
customers, but the review system alone will probably keep people going there.

On product reviews, I know some are juiced but I still look at Amazon reviews
when examining something (and try to figure out which ones appear authentic).
I imagine most people take these reviews at face value and reviews are worth a
lot when having a service performed. I've never been on Angie's list but it
seems a bit scammy from the little exposure I have had. Amazon likely appears
more trustworthy, so I grudgingly predict success for this program.

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larrys
"The 20% fee seems ridiculously high."

In one sense it is high but in another it's not.

If you consider the amount of time it would take a typical contractor, say an
electrician, to land a job if this comes in as more pre qualified business
then the extra cost will save having to bid out and spend time on jobs that
never pan out. People typically get prices from multiple sources. They don't
always follow through on work that was quoted. If this type of work is "shovel
ready" that's a great cost savings to the person doing the work. Not having to
spend time on sales and marketing at least not as much as if they got calls
from an advertisement. (Rating system means people have less doubt about using
them).

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zanny
I do local IT tech on the side. Usually two or three calls a week. If I can
get 50% more appointments though the Amazon service without having to do word
of mouth advertising locally, that is a win in my book, even if I write off
20% for Amazons insane fee.

Though I think they are trying to use their size to their advantage here. If
they wanted to be really competitive 10% would be much more reasonable. 20%
strongly motivates me to get new customers to work with me off the Amazon
service to avoid that overhead.

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avighnay
Would this also include software development services?

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binarymax
Everything on the list, and from the FAQ, looks to be like distinct pieces of
non-creative skilled labor - Installations, repairs, tune-ups, etc

Software and Design is probably too broad and not concretely defined enough,
for what they are targeting.

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abhimskywalker
But given this seems like a next step iteration from Amazon MTurk platform,
it's not that far fetched a leap to see where this could lead to. I believe we
very well might soon see a similar marketplace platform for mentioned high-
skill services like SEO, Design, Software Development, etc... If they can
crack this problem for local services (which I think is a harder problem),
extending it to other services might not be difficult and given it's Amazon
they would probably go for it soon(IMHO).

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drsim
I'm on it ;)

Small businesses want to buy services like they buy apps and products online.
We're building that. And it is difficult.

Mail me if it sounds interesting (especially designers and developers): me at
daniel sim .co.uk

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netcan
This is interesting.

For the most part, it's still pretty hard to get good reviews for service
businesses. It's even hard to get prices. How much does it cost to get a car
painted?

My question is why would you pay online? It might turn out that for every sale
that goes through amazon 3-4 clients just use this like yelp. Read
review/prices and just pay the normal way.

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akhatri_aus
We offer something similar in Australia[1]. We try and focus on high quality
services & try not to commoditize our service desks though.

Amazon has been with this for some time. Its a bit surprising that they've not
launch in entirety. (Still looks like a sign up phase)

[1] [https://servicelocale.com](https://servicelocale.com)

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cmapes
Enforcing quality-standards for services rendered sounds nightmarish for
either the end user or for the service provider. It's going to be interesting
to see how this pans out for amazon.com.

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nosage
Service as a Service?

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drdeadringer
To be honest I have been wondering how long I'd have to live to see "service
as a service" come around, about as much as I've wondered the same on the
invention of "Awareness Awareness Month".

Seriously: Isn't this the inevitable conclusion to "x as a service"?

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galfarragem
Great move. Finally an improvement on Amazon MTurk.

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eva1984
The inconsistency of UI design style across different Amazon service always
bothers me...

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rikacomet
In India, they have stake in 3 e-commerce websites: Amazon.in, Junglee and
Jabong. All of them look nearly the same theme wise.

Pretty interesting pie is being cooked up in India. I wonder if their 1.2
billion $ attempt to buyout Jabong would go through or not.

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sidcool
That's like trying to gobble up a huge number of startups.

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pilsetnieks
Not that kind of services.

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damian2000
I think he means startups like Uber ... selling services for a percentage of
the fee, with an awesome mobile app.

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pilsetnieks
Oh, ok. I thought they meant the "...-as-a-service" kind of startups.

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imjk
Does anyone have an invite code for this?

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rokhayakebe
[http://www.opentaiga.com/welcome/healthcare](http://www.opentaiga.com/welcome/healthcare)

It's ON.

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zatkin
Does this include food delivery?

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paul_milovanov
"Love for sale"

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imaginenore
No web development?

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husseiny
The Power of a Brand.

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paulhauggis
if it's anything like their marketplace, Amazon will keep all,contact
information and all of your customers will be the property of Amazon. As a
business owner, this is scary, because you can get banned or dropped by Amazon
at any time.

It happened this month with DVDs on Amazon. If you aren't a wholesaler or
someone that sells a lot in bulk, you can no longer sell DVDs. so if you are a
small seller and you build up your customer base over a view years, you now
effectively have to start completely over. Still least eBay allows you to keep
your customers and build an actual business.

Now with services, I'm not sure how they will enforce this. If you are meeting
with the customer, you could easily just tell them to start purchasing from
you directly (and avoid Amazon fees). But I suppose if Amazon saw you only
getting 1-time customers, they might get suspicious.

Either way, I would steer clear of doing any business with Amazon, unless you
are fine with the fact that you aren't building yourself a business. You are
building up amazon's

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larrys
"Either way, I would steer clear of doing any business with Amazon, unless you
are fine with the fact that you aren't building yourself a business. You are
building up amazon's"

The type of people that will use this (an electrician as an example) will be
like lambs to the slaughter. While many of us know about the mercuriality of
places like Amazon and Google (dropping projects and services when they don't
pan out or when they get bored) most "normals" are not aware of the dangers of
having their eggs in this type of basket. And the risk that is involved.

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rahimnathwani
Electricians and plumbers are accustomed to running their own businesses, and
may be more savvy than you think, and more savvy than many people here.

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ams6110
Any many are probably earning a good deal more money as well. The wealthiest
self-employed people I know are in trades, and they make a lot more than a web
developer does.

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nagaiah
[http://www.nagaiah.com/](http://www.nagaiah.com/) is selling services since
2008

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