The Fee

A repeat customer bought on Amazon Handmade or eBay costs you roughly 12 to 15 percent of every future order in referral fees (Amazon Handmade fees; eBay standard selling fees), forever. The same customer buying direct on your Shopify or WooCommerce shop costs you around 2.9 percent plus $0.38 in card processing (Stripe pricing). On an RRP candle, that gap is several pounds per unit, per reorder, for as long as they keep buying. Ignore it for a year and you have handed the marketplace a four-figure sum out of pure margin. This is the AOV argument from earlier in this act, applied to the channel instead of the basket.

The fee stack on an RRP sale, side by side

Amazon Handmade charges a 15 percent referral fee (Amazon Handmade fees). Etsy charges 6.5 percent transaction plus payment processing, plus, if you are opted in, Offsite Ads at 12 or 15 percent of that specific sale (Etsy Seller Handbook: Fees & Payments Policy). eBay works out similarly at around 13 percent on this category (eBay selling fees). A direct Shopify sale on the same order takes card and platform fees instead. The chart below uses the RRP from the pricing ladder, not the old underpriced $30 example, so the green band shows the margin you can actually defend.

What Amazon, Etsy and eBay actually forbid

Before the tactics, the reality. The naive advice, drop a 20 percent off code in the box that only works on your website, is against Amazon's seller policies and can put both Amazon and Etsy accounts at risk. Amazon in particular has a long-standing policy against inserts that divert buyers off-platform, and sellers do report account action over exactly this kind of flyer (see Amazon's Seller Central policies on customer communication and external URLs, and countless post-mortems on r/AmazonSeller). The rules, in plain English:

Amazon. No inserts, flyers, stickers, packaging copy or QR codes that direct the customer to any other place they can buy. A brand-only thank-you card with your name and logo is tolerated. A URL, a discount code, or a social handle used as a sales channel is not. Enforcement is real and the penalty is account suspension.

Etsy. No inserts that solicit off-platform sales for items the customer could have bought on Etsy. Brand cards, care instructions and safety information are fine. A newsletter opt-in via QR code sits in a grey area that Etsy has not aggressively enforced but reserves the right to.

eBay. Similar in spirit to Etsy, weaker enforcement in practice, but the same do-not-divert rule applies to identical products the buyer could purchase on eBay.

The job of this section is not to help you break those rules. It is to show you exactly where the line is, then use every inch of the compliant side.

The compliant playbook, four tactics that stay inside the rules

First, brand-first packaging. The insert says who you are, not where to buy. Your website URL appears once, small, as a made-by line at the bottom, the same way a book prints the publisher's name on the spine. No shop URL, no discount code, no call to action. The customer who wants to find you again can. The platform has no case against you.

Second, the care-and-safety QR code. Every candle already ships with a care card (see the earlier Care Card section). Point the QR code at a care guide page on your own site, not at a shop page. That care page carries an email opt-in for a burn-tips newsletter. The customer opts in on your list voluntarily, at their own initiative. Six weeks later you can email them a direct-site discount without ever having put a code in the box.

Third, the refill programme as a migration path. Refills are direct-only by operational necessity, the customer has to send the vessel back or bring it in. That is a legitimate reason to require a direct purchase and it is a Trojan horse for getting a marketplace customer onto your site. Mention refills on the care card. Do not price-anchor against the marketplace listing.

Fourth, the second-purchase email through the platform's own messaging. Amazon Handmade and Etsy both release the buyer's contact channel for order-related communication. A six-week how-did-the-candle-burn message is order-related. A PS at the bottom mentioning your direct site is a grey area that most sellers get away with. A full marketing email with a discount code is not. Know which one you are sending.

Size the direct-site discount to the fee, not to a round number

When a marketplace customer does land on your direct site, the first-order discount code should be sized to the fee you would have paid, not to whatever feels generous. On a customer who came from Amazon, a 15 percent code is break-even for you and feels significant to them. Twenty percent is a gift you did not need to give. Ten percent is invisible.

The formula. Direct-site first-order discount equals the marketplace referral fee for the channel that customer came from, rounded to the nearest 5 percent. Amazon Handmade customers get 15 percent. Etsy customers get 10 percent. eBay customers get 15 percent. Word-of-mouth customers get no code because you paid nothing to acquire them.

The lifetime-value maths that make this worth doing

Worked example. A customer acquired on Amazon who buys twice more on Amazon nets you roughly $23 across those two reorders after fees, postage and COGS. The same customer migrated to direct on the second purchase, using a 15 percent direct-site code on the first direct order, nets roughly $30 across the same two reorders. That is $7.62 per customer.

Ten repeat customers a month migrated across a year is $914 of pure margin recovered from work you were already doing. Fifty repeat customers a month is $4,572 a year. The fee is not a tax, it is a budget, and the budget belongs in the hand of the customer who has already decided they like your candles.

When to leave the customer on the marketplace

The honest counter-note. Not every marketplace customer wants to be migrated. Amazon Prime shoppers value the returns policy and free next-day delivery, and will often churn if pushed to a direct site with slower postage. Gift buyers picked Amazon because the recipient can return the item easily. Customers who found you via marketplace search, rather than a recommendation, may not remember your brand name a month later even if you did everything right. Migration is a tactic for repeat buyers who already like the product, not for first-time strangers.

The marketplace fee is the rent you pay to be discovered. Once the customer knows your name, stop paying it.