selling your stuff on Amazon...part four...

soolin

I checked my history and it was all fine, so it means I'm just not selling anything. Shame as I have the chance to buy more books this week, but since I'm not shifting anything I might hold off buying more books for a while.

Soo

pipkin71

Still no sale - has this thread not got the magic! LOL

Pipkinxxxx

purplepatch

I haven't posted on here for ages, but just to confirm that I've joined the club of people for whom Amazon selling has died a death. It's unbelievable. I went from over 40 sales each month since last October to only 15 for the whole of last month. I'm a pro merchant seller, so now I'm losing money! I was about to cancel it last month (started on the last day of the offer 30/11/05) and got an email from them on the 28th of the month saying it had renewed for another month - thought I'd have until the 30th to cancel so hadn't got around to it. Now I'm stuck with it for another month, fantastic! Only sold 3 items since start of April so it ain't looking good. Grrrrrrrr. Totally and utterly disillusioned with it all.

purplepatch

apprentice_tycoon wrote:

Amazon gives you £2.26 to go towards the postage of the book so if it's a light paperback there will be a little money for yourself left over on just the postage allowance alone, this is how you can sell a book for as little as 1 penny and still have a small profit.

The opposite is true with heavy books - the postage allowance of £2.32 will be paid regardless of the book's size so it may cost you over £4.00 to post it, if you can get a really good price for the book then this will balance out but check your weight carefully, if it is over 1 kilo have a look at the Standard Parcel chart on the Royal Mail website (address below) this will be cheaper but it's a day or so slower than 1st or 2nd class.

AT - you need to change the second reference to £2.32

apprentice_tycoon

purple, it's nice to see you back even if it is with bad news - I'm amazed that they took your subs before the date you joined, I always seem to have mine taken on the same date.

I think that the only thing I can suggest if you haven't done it already, is to look at each book's listing in turn and see why they've been overlooked, you might find that even though you're the lowest price in your category there may be someone else's book that sounds a better deal at the price they've gone for. Do you put yours up to sell internationally? if not that's a good idea with your smaller books, I've sold a few overseas ones this last month, manly to expats if the name is anything to go by.

Anyone else got any ideas?

purplepatch

Hi AT, many thanks for the reply .

I haven't been through everything, think the disillusionment has overwhelmed me a bit!! Saying that, I've sold something within 30 minutes of my gripe this morning, so it really does work! :rotfl:

I will go though my listings and see if I need to amend my prices etc and no I don't offer internationally, so will give that a try. Just got to summon up some enthusiasm.

apprentice_tycoon

Hey, that's great with the sale!

Just break the task into chunks, I like to do 10 'goes' of one job and take a break and do something else, it means the house gets a bit messy sometimes - there are 10 ebay parcels packed, and the boxes and stuff are all left out while I do 10 listings or whatever then it's back to the packing - but it's the best way I can do it so I don't get overwhelmed by one job

apprentice_tycoon

Purple - if you decide to go international you really need to get the scales out to be sure that you are OK with the postal rates, I slightly underestimated the weight of one of mine recently and I lost around £1 on the deal - so now I weigh anything (apart from the usually sized paperbacks) that I'm likely to offer abroad.

110frankie

Funny how you notice stuff when you're looking at it with a "sales" head on.
I've listed "Nightingales, Florence and Her Family" this morning and couldn't find it to add mine. Then I realised there is an "s" on Nightingales. So how many possible buyers do you reckon will miss a book that they might enjoy because they would not add the "s" ?

Perhaps I have too much time on my hands...

BTW, is a gripe the same as a whinge, do they work the same or is one better than the other?

apprentice_tycoon

110frankie wrote:

BTW, is a gripe the same as a whinge, do they work the same or is one better than the other?

frankie - I don't think that I've done either yet, I'm saving it for a time when I haven't sold anything for about a week, I don't want to use up my whinge quota too quickly.
Interesting you mention the 's', on ebay you could list alternative approximate titles in the hope of catching the mss-speller, my favourite is 'portmeirion' you can miss-spell that half a dozen ways, it's a great one for fatfingers