Both, when possible. Amazon for discovery and one-time buyers; your own store for brand-building, repeat customers, and margin protection. Amazon-only is risky long-term.
**The case for Amazon (FBA or seller-fulfilled):**
**Pros:** - 200+ million prime members already shopping with payment + shipping ready - High purchase intent traffic (Amazon search captures buyers later in the consideration process) - Trust transfers from Amazon's brand to your products - Logistics handled (FBA) — Amazon picks, packs, ships, handles returns - A/B testing on listings is built in - Easy to start (no website required)
**Cons:** - Amazon takes 8-15% category referral fee + FBA fees ($3-15+/unit) - Amazon owns the customer relationship (you can't email them, can't retarget them, can't offer them subscriptions) - Amazon's algorithm can deindex your listings without notice if you violate any of hundreds of policies (some unwritten) - Amazon competes against you with their own brands (Amazon Basics, Solimo, Pinzon, etc.) - Counterfeit and review-manipulation problems (Amazon's enforcement is reactive) - Brand-building is constrained (your storefront is templated, customer experience is Amazon's) - "Buy box" competition — multiple sellers on the same product compete for the cart-add
**The case for your own store:**
**Pros:** - You own the customer relationship — email list, retargeting audience, subscription billing - Brand experience is yours (design, voice, photography, packaging) - Higher margins (no Amazon fees, no buy-box competition) - LTV through repeat purchases, subscriptions, cross-sells - Defensible asset that compounds in value over time
**Cons:** - All traffic acquisition is your job — no built-in audience - All conversion optimization is your job - All logistics, customer service, returns are your job (or your 3PL's) - Time to first sales is much longer - Marketing CAC has compressed in 2023-2025 — paid acquisition on Meta/Google has gotten more expensive
**The optimal strategy for most product brands in 2026 is BOTH, with a specific division of labor:**
**Amazon as discovery channel:** new customers find your product by searching Amazon. Hard to compete with Amazon's traffic + Prime convenience for that initial search.
**Your own store as relationship channel:** include a marketing insert in every Amazon shipment ("Loved this? Get 15% off your next order at YourStore.com — and get exclusive access to new products, restocks, and our newsletter"). The goal is converting one-time Amazon buyers into repeat direct customers, where you own the relationship and capture more margin.
**Subscription products do better on direct:** if your product has natural reorder cadence (consumables, supplements, beauty), the subscription mechanics work better on Shopify than on Amazon's Subscribe & Save (which has high cancel rates and limited control).
**Brand-led products do better on direct:** if your brand story matters to the buyer (premium quality, sustainability, founder story), Amazon's commodity-style listing format flattens that story. Your own store can sell the brand, not just the product.
**Commodity products do better on Amazon:** if buyers don't care about the brand and search by category specs, Amazon's better at delivering them.
**The risk of Amazon-only:**
Multiple categories of stories that play out repeatedly: business reaches $500K-$5M revenue selling exclusively on Amazon, then Amazon suspends the account (real or false IP claim, policy interpretation change, competitor false reporting), and 80%+ of revenue evaporates within 24 hours. Without a parallel channel + email list + customer relationships, recovery is brutal.
If you're going to be on Amazon, build the parallel direct channel from day one — even at small scale — so you have an alternative if Amazon's algorithm changes or your account hits trouble.
**Specific channel mix benchmarks for healthy product brands at $1M-10M revenue:** - Amazon: 30-50% of revenue - Direct (Shopify/own store): 30-50% of revenue - Wholesale/retail: 0-30% of revenue (depends on category) - Other marketplaces (Walmart, Target+, eBay, Etsy): 0-10%
Amazon-only stores tend to plateau and become acquisition targets at modest multiples; multi-channel brands with direct relationships sell at higher multiples and grow more durably.
- **What's the best ecommerce platform for a beginner?** — Shopify for almost everyone. Squarespace Commerce or Wix Stores for under-50-product brochure-with-shop sites. WooCommerce only if you already use WordPress and want maximum control. - **Shopify vs WooCommerce — which should I choose?** — Shopify if you want to focus on selling, not on platform management. WooCommerce if you already run on WordPress, need maximum customization, or have specific compliance requirements that hosted platforms can't meet. - **How do I price a product for ecommerce?** — Start from required margin (cost × multiple based on category), then validate against competitors and customer willingness-to-pay. Cost-plus alone fails; competitor-matching alone fails; do all three. - **What is product-page SEO and how do I do it?** — Optimizing each product page to rank for searches buyers actually use — combining keyword research, original product copy, schema markup, customer reviews, and internal linking from category pages.