Selling on Amazon UAE vs Your Own Website: What Makes More Sense in 2026?

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]So, you've created a fantastic product or an awesome brand and you want to start selling online in the UAE or Saudi Arabia. And you're thinking, should I sell on on my own website or should I sell on Amazon, but you've heard that selling on Amazon is very expensive.

[00:00:15]Well, this same exact confusion normally stops so many sellers from moving forward and gets you stuck. Good news because by the end of this video, you'll know exactly the options between selling on your own website and selling on Amazon. Which option gives you faster traction? Which one [music] gives you more control? And most importantly, which one makes more sense for a beginner that's launching a new brand maybe [music] as a second income. The Amazon Seller Society is an award-winning Amazon [music] service provider and partner specifically since 2019 focused on Amazon in the Middle East. And I've personally see this very question [music] getting people stuck for way too long. So, let's make it simple.

[00:01:03]>> [music] >> This is not the video where we're going to talk about website versus Amazon, which option is better forever because business is ever evolving. In this video, we're going to talk about which one is better when you decide to launch.

[00:01:22]And I'm going to walk you through a five-step framework. Out of this framework, you will decide which one works best for you. Be careful because in framework number four, we'll be talking about the cost of selling on Amazon. But if you want the full step-by-step information about the Amazon seller fees, we've created a PDF file for you, which we you can download.

[00:01:46]You'll find the information in the description box of this video. Step number one, understand what you are really buying. Yes, buying. When When are selling your products on Amazon in the UAE, you are literally buying access to an existing full strategy platform and to and you're plugging your products into an existing market with literally millions of customers. So, Amazon has created a machine where you can plug your products into this machine, but what do you get as a seller? You get access to fast shipping, advertising, competitive pricing, reviews, promotions, deals, and not to mention millions of loyal customers that log into Amazon every day searching for products. However, when you sell on your own website, you get access or you have full control. That's basically what you are buying. Full control of your brand experience, the customer journey, and you control literally everything, how your website looks and feels to the customer. Now, the Financial Times did uh a study on Shopify and it really showed very clearly that brands that are selling on Shopify or on their own website literally show that the brand is theirs, and they have full control over everything. Whereas, when you are selling on Amazon, you are an Amazon seller. So, right away the difference is this. Amazon gives you a full platform and integrated marketplace where all you need to do is to plug your products into that existing machine, whereas your website gives you full control over your or the customer's experience and your brand experience. Perfect. Let's move on to step number two. Now, it's time to ask yourself and be honest, what do you really need right now? Do you need traffic or do you need control? If you are a beginner and you're building this business as a second income, or it might be your very first business of selling products in e-commerce, because trust me, e-commerce is very different than retail and selling things in standard stores, you really need to think about where your customer is going to come from. So, do you actually need ownership of the full experience or do you need a system that's already set up that has a lot of traffic? So, if your biggest problem is nobody has even heard about your brand, you do not have existing traffic because you're not an influencer launching up a product and people aren't lining up to buy your product. You want to test the product demand very quickly.

[00:04:12]You want Amazon to take care of all of the fulfillment so you don't have to bother with it. You want Amazon to take care of all of the fulfillment so you don't have to bother or you don't have to employ a third-party warehouse or better yet, you don't want additional employees just to fulfill the orders.

[00:04:27]And finally, you just want to make it a very simple buying environment for your customer. If these are your problems, then Amazon and specifically your your KSA are is the place where you need to launch your products because Amazon provides you all of this giving you time to focus on marketing your product properly and thinking about the strategies that you need to deploy in order to get customers. You do not need to think about where the customers are coming from. They're already on the Amazon platform and Amazon has created an integrated system for you to take care for it to take care of everything that we just mentioned. But if your biggest problem is number one, owning the full customer journey, building a strong brand worldwide, controlling design and messaging, and creating a store experience that is fully yours and you don't have the aforementioned problems, then creating your own website is literally the only option for you and the right way to go. So, the short version is Amazon lets you borrow traffic, but your website helps you build an existing asset that is fully yours. Step number three, be honest about the cost structure. And here where you really need to be honest. A lot of sellers think, "Oh, it's expensive to sell on Amazon." Yes, but it's not free to sell on your own website. There is a cost attributed to selling on Amazon and on most marketplaces and it goes through a referral fee, which is commission that Amazon takes depending on the selling price and it depending on the category.

[00:05:56]And then there's a fulfillment fee for Amazon to deliver your products to the customer same day without the customer paying any delivery. Yes, there are fees attributed to this, but everything else that you are utilizing on the platform doesn't [snorts] have a major fee attributed to it other than the advertising that you will be doing on the platform itself to literally millions of customers coming in. But what you when you're selling on your own website, you need to set up this full system. You still need to deliver the products over to the customer and the main concern is you need to spend a lot of money on generating traffic and demand to come into your platform as you are a newly launched website which customers don't really know. So on your website, you literally need to create traffic. That is your major cost. So you need to create content, ads, emails, socials, conversion optimization, payment setup, and customer trust building, which is very difficult to do on a website whereas it already exists on Amazon. So don't think which one is cheaper, honestly think which one is harder, which one is asking me for more things to do, and which one is harder for you as a newly launched brand. Step number four, look at what big brands selling in your same niche do in real life. Here's a real life example. Nike back in 2019 decided to pull back and stopped selling its products directly on Amazon. But back in 2024, they came back and relaunched their products on Amazon because they found out that they need access to more traffic on the Amazon platform. So the moral of the story is big brands don't necessarily choose either or. They're most of the time build both at the same time targeting different types of customers here and there. This is probably something difficult for you if you are a newly launched brand but with limited assets or with limited means rather, but it is something that you can do down the pipeline. You can build a simple website while focusing on Amazon being your top selling funnel or you can build opposite if um Amazon doesn't still doesn't seem to be the right way to go. Step number five, so what should a beginner do first? Now, let me give you my honest, maybe not so biased opinion as we've worked with over 3,000 brands and we've seen their journey on Amazon in the UAE and KSA since 2019. So, I've seen how brands have been able to build their businesses on Amazon versus their own website and I believe if you are a beginner nowadays, the most expensive cost is traffic. So, if you are not somebody that already has a following, you're not an influencer, and you're not an e-com uh marketing specialist, the best way to go is to go through Amazon as the traffic is already there, the infrastructure is already there, you just need to plug into that infrastructure. But, at the same time, you should also be building your website on the sideline or later on once you get traffic and assets and maybe even cash flow from Amazon. Your website gives you full control over the customer journey.

[00:09:04]It is your website versus selling on Amazon, you'll always be selling on a platform which you do not own and you do not control. If you are thinking of launching your product and you need more help and support, we're here to help and assist you. Check out our website and the programs on our website by simply going to www.assmiddleeast.org.

[00:09:27]Reach out to the team and book a consultation call so we can walk you through what we can help you with. And make sure that you subscribe to the channel, like this video, and leave me your comments, leave me your suggestions, leave me your questions in the comments section below and I promise if you do all three, you will enter a special giveaway where you can win a consultation call and you can win so many different valuable prizes from our partners. More on this in the following videos. I'll see you in another video with more information. Bye.