I find that it can really vary from lens to lens, depending on what the lens topic is about.  Some of my lenses have more relevant items for sale on Amazon, some on eBay....

I personally prefer Amazon...

I just earned .74 from ebay! And yes, you have to update your entrys almost daily. What I do is always look at and list items that have been newly listed. That way they last about 5 days. Store inventory should be steady. Haven't listed those items yet.
No amazon earnings for me.

paperfacets wrote:

Is the payout driven by the cost of the item sold?

Usually, yes.

eBay will give you a percentage of the 'final value fee' that they get from the auction (which is also a percentage). There's also a bonus for getting people to sign up.

Amazon typically give you 4-8% of the price of the item, depending on how many items you* sell.

*If you use the Squidoo modules, then you only get half the revenue. However, because of the huge volumes that Squidoo send to eBay and Amazon, they probably get the maximum commissions.

paperfacets wrote:

Is there a way to see what item was sold for the earning?

Yes, go to your lens STATS and then click the ROYALTIES tab.

I do much better with Amazon on Squidoo but on my stand alone sites Ebay does better.

That would be unfortunate if we weren't getting credit for signup bonuses.
I don't recall seeing any in my accounts lately either.

What are we supposed to get paid for signup bonuses on squidoo anyways?
On my stand alone sites its $25 which is a lot more then most commissions.
Ebay just announced they are changing it to  $1-$50 based on a secret quality score, not sure if it is legit or just another ebay cash grab.

I asked myself the same question a few months ago, and so I started keeping track of sales and I found them to be pretty even. On this lens: http://www.squidoo.com/SalesOnSquidoo I wrote this about it:

In reading through my stats, I find that I get a lot of sales, over and over again off of certain lenses, while the rest are just hit and miss, if they get any sales at all. I'm interested in knowing why this happens. What is it about one lens hat makes people buy from it so often, while on another lens never gets any sales at all?

Of course this train of thought lead to: Do more people buy off Amazon or eBay and which brings in more money for me?

I have a lot of sales off Amazon. A LOT! Oddly, not too much money comes in off Amazon. Their sales pays us about 3.5% as near as I can tell. Amazon items that get sold off my lenses, seem to be low priced books and DVDs under $20. So it takes a lot of sales off Amazon, before they really start adding up. This means I should start listing higher priced items for sale off Amazon or I should do more promotion of the lower priced items so to sell more of them.

I have not yet figured out how much the average % is on eBay sales, I'll do that soon, but whatever it is, I make a lot more on eBay sales than I do on Amazon sales. A LOT MORE. More than double. Does this mean eBay pays more? No. It looks like they pay about the same as Amazon does, near as I can tell. However, on eBay folks are buying bigger ticket items. Often comic books and sewing books and usually at prices of $30 - $50 per item.

Interesting.

My conclusion? People go to Amazon to buy it new and cheap. People go to eBay to buy it used and high priced. Seems like it should be the other way around, doesn't it? Anyways, that logic tells me that I should be listing a lot of low priced books and DVDs on my Amazon modules and a lot of high bid rare comic books and out of print sewing books on my eBay modules. Savvy?

Does that help you out any?