Many customers of Amazon fail to realize how many sellers Amazon has on its site and are often confused when I refer to Amazon as eBay 2.0. In Amazon's most recent quarter, 3rd party sellers were responsible for selling 48% of the units sold on Amazon. Even more staggering is the number products 3rd party sellers offer. Amazon itself has about 12 million listings in the top 20 categories. When you expand the number of listings to include 3rd party sellers, there are over 353 million. Therefore, 3rd party sellers account for 96.5% of products listed on Amazon.com. Because those listings are fixed priced with no expiration in offering period, they can sit idle and unproductive for years. Sellers only have to pay a fee once the product sells but are stuck holding onto that inventory at the same time. Amazon on the other hand has the benefit of offering that product on its' site without having to take on the cost of inventory. The faster the sales of product on Amazon shift to third party sellers, the more profitable Amazon becomes.