I looked into selling baby clothes on Amazon, and as people say, the fees are actually much higher than I expected.

Living in Las Vegas, I've been thinking about starting a small online business.

I've always enjoyed looking at baby clothes. Even when I go shopping for my niece, I get excited and spend time browsing pretty baby clothes on Instagram.

Then it suddenly hit me: what if I chose these clothes myself and sold them online?

So the first thing I checked out was Amazon.

Since so many people shop on Amazon, I thought that as long as the products are decent, they might sell.

However, when I looked into the fees, I found out that a Professional Seller pays $39.99 a month.

If sales are low, there's also an Individual Plan where you pay $0.99 for each item sold instead of a monthly fee.

Since I'm planning to sell baby clothes, they fall under the Clothing and Accessories category, and the fees vary based on the selling price.

Currently, Amazon takes a 5% referral fee for clothing priced under $15, 10% for clothing priced between $15 and $20, and a whopping 17% for clothing over $20.

For example, if I sold a baby dress for $30, the selling fee would be $5.10.

But that's not the end of it.

If I don't pack and ship the items myself and use Amazon FBA, there are additional costs for storage, order processing, and shipping.

If I run ads, that adds more costs too.

Amazon officially states that using FBA or Amazon Ads incurs extra fees.

So selling a $30 dress doesn't mean I just subtract the cost of the dress from $30.

Next, I looked into Shopify.

Shopify Basic costs $29 per month if paid annually, and online card payments incur a fee of 2.9% + 30 cents.

For a $30 dress, the card fee would be about $1.17.

Compared to Amazon's 17%, that's definitely lower.

However, there's a crucial difference.

Amazon already has customers, but with Shopify, I have to bring customers to my site.

Whether through Instagram ads, TikTok, or Google ads, I need to make people aware of my site.

So while Shopify has lower fees, marketing seems to be the challenge.

I also checked out Etsy.

I thought Etsy would be a good fit for pretty baby clothes.

Etsy charges 20 cents per listing and takes a 6.5% transaction fee on sales.

For U.S. sellers, there's also a 3% + 25 cents fee for Etsy Payments.

So, looking at basic selling costs, it's around 10%.

But there's an important catch here.

Etsy isn't just a place to resell regular baby clothes bought wholesale.

Products must be handmade or designed by me, and if I use a manufacturer, it has to be for my designs.

Reselling regular wholesale products is often not allowed under Etsy's policies. So I can't sell here, haha.

Finally, I looked at eBay.

For general sellers, eBay typically charges about 13.6% of the sale amount plus 40 cents per order.

However, there's no separate card payment fee structure.

Ultimately, my impression is this:

Amazon has high fees but a lot of customers, Shopify has low fees but requires me to bring in customers, Etsy is attractive for unique designs but doesn't allow just any clothes, and eBay is easy to start but doesn't quite match the brand image I have for pretty baby clothes.

So right now, I'm thinking of starting with Shopify to create a small brand site and possibly listing some products on Amazon as well.

From what I've learned, in online selling, it's not just about how much you sell, but how much you actually keep after all the costs.

If I sell a $30 baby outfit and only end up with $4 after all the deductions, I might get tired of packing and shipping quickly.

It seems that running a business starts not with picking pretty clothes but with crunching the numbers.