question for people selling on Amazon or Ebay

I decided that I would try selling my highest margin item on Amazon, so I signed up to be a seller. Then discovered that all products have to have an EAN, UPC, ASIN, or one of another product identifier codes. My product doesn't have those so I would have to get one. Someone on Reddit Small Business told me to buy them from a reseller on Ebay, and to look for registered re-sellers to avoid fraudulent codes. I took a look and there are some on there who will email the codes to you, so that's easy enough.

Too easy, my red alert siren is going off. I asked one of the vendors how the number gets assigned to the particular item, and he said either the retailer or Amazon does it. I'm not dumb, I also checked out GITN.org, one of the places where those numbers originate. It's not at all cheap there. Am I correct in thinking that even if I bought a number from an Ebay reseller, I'd still have to pay to register it to my product by paying GTIN.org or similar site?

Wow. Sounds like a lot of red tape. I remember someone asking about this a while back, but I'l be damned if I can remember the answers.
I'm sure someone will chime in. I'm interested in hearing how to do this as well.

Ugh, so I'm now thinking I just can't afford to do this right now, or deal with the headache of it. I posted the same question in the "fulfilled by Amazon" subreddit and one person said this:

If you cannot afford to buy GS1 for your products, which is a few hundred dollars per year, then you really should avoid Amazon all together.

TO answer your question, if you buy ebay codes, there is no way to register them to YOUR product. Sorry. You can get lucky if you're the first to buy the codes.

Amazon is getting more strict about GS1 UPCs and is likely to continue becoming more strict. It only helps them.

Recommendation:

suck it up and make your business a bit more real by investing in the GS1 barcodes. If you don't sell enough to cover the costs in 1 year, then you should absolutely stop selling on Amazon after that and forfeit your GS1
after getting your GS1 come back here to learn from others about properly marketing your products.

You might find a huge demand for your products on Amazon and wish you had been listing here in the first place.

There are also some gated categories so you'll want to watch out for that before you buy GS1.

It matches my intuition on this. Which means that there are too many people out there flippantly telling small business owners to sell their stuff on Amazon. It's not as quick and easy as a lot of people seem to think.

We don't sell through Amazon or eBay but did have to deal with the GS1 since we started to sell through Northern Tool a year or more ago. For just a few items the cost once you get past the first bite isn't bad. I believe for 10 items the initial cost is $ 250 but only $ 75 per year to maintain them. We have about 20 items we had to have bar codes for and went with the option to have 100 bar codes which was $ 750.00 for the first year but only $ 150 per year after that.

There are some re-sellers that make it more affordable. If someone buys the capacity to do 10,000 bar codes the second year cost would only be 13 cents a bar code so it could be pretty profitable to resell them. The initial cost would be 65 cents a bar code but that assumes they could resell most of those.

The other disadvantage of a re seller is the first numbers of a bar code if I recall correctly represent the country and the next numbers are the vendor then the item number and a check sum number at the end. If you bought the bar code from a reseller it would show them as the supplier of the item. For many that would not be a big deal but does give some advantage to doing your own.

I have learned from many people about selling on Amazon. I think, it is profitable income. Because I am doing bookkeeping for many sellers who are selling on Amazon. I am checking their Profit & Loss Statement, Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flow. They are earning handsome and enjoying their business.