Selling Your Stuff on Amazon Part 13 - Advice for newbies in first two posts

soolin

There are some categories you need to have certain feedback and seller metrics to be able to sell in, possibly health and beauty iis one of those categories.

However, try it a different way, log in, find the exact item you want to sell as though you were going to buy it, on that page it should have a 'sell yours' button, if it doesn't then it is a restricted item and you can't sell it without tyalking to customer services and going for the extra enhanced registration.

tryingtogetsolvent

what's going on at Amazon? I tried a new line of toys on there a month or so back. I've sold a few and its looking as if it might take off.Then I get an email from Amazon basically saying as I haven't sold enough I won't be able to sell any toys on Amazon this Christmas. !!!!!!! Don't they want my trade or am I not reading it correctly?

soolin

tryingtogetsolvent wrote: »

what's going on at Amazon? I tried a new line of toys on there a month or so back. I've sold a few and its looking as if it might take off.Then I get an email from Amazon basically saying as I haven't sold enough I won't be able to sell any toys on Amazon this Christmas. !!!!!!! Don't they want my trade or am I not reading it correctly?

The criteria for toy selling is very strict it is based on numbers and seller metrics. I have approval for selling toys which is odd as i sell maybe two or three a year!

When i get back tonight I'll see if I cna dig out the criteria and post it here.

tryingtogetsolvent

they listed the criteria for me and I passed in all sections except the number of items sold. The problem I have is....if It's ok for me to sell my items on Amazon all year around why am I not good enough to sell them on there at Christmas? Why do they need to stop sellers selling at xmas?

teapot2

tryingtogetsolvent wrote: »

they listed the criteria for me and I passed in all sections except the number of items sold. The problem I have is....if It's ok for me to sell my items on Amazon all year around why am I not good enough to sell them on there at Christmas? Why do they need to stop sellers selling at xmas?

I think there have been sellers in the past who built up decent feedback then listed non existent high value, much sought after goods over the Xmas period and ripped customers off. I guess even if you get your money back as a buyer it could ruin an Xmas pressie buying experience and doesn't help amazon's reputation. Unfortunately its their website and they makes the rules

This is the link to their help page about why they do it
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200505890

soolin

I've just found out that I have almost certainly lost my main source of books, everyone seems to be getting out of this market now.

I'm struggling to sell enough to cover my pro membership, 35 books last month from 1400 listed. I think it is time to give up with books, I'm going to start going through every book I have listed and remove all the cheap ones entirely and then give up pro membership and stay with just a couple of hundred expensive ones that I can tick over. I had hoped to get through until next April when post is likely to go up again, and then I changed that to 'after Christmas' but I'm not even sure that realistically I can last that long.

In th epast month alone i have been contacted by two other sellers locally to me that sell on Amazon offering me their books as they were givining up.

I've even committed the cardinal sin and ordered a kindle. I was buying quite a few books as soon as they were released (I have no patience!) then selling them at a huge loss later, I shall just add them to the kindle now.

Ebid is now completely dead, I can't even give stuff away on there, I've stopped listing on greenmetropolis and now Amazon, it's looking as though I am putting all my faith in ebay (not for books though) which worries me.

gmc_3

Hi,

Can anyone give some advice / tips on how they do their book keeping on amazon? I'm going to sell on amazon as a sole trader and wondered if the selling reports that amazon generates are sufficient to use as a record of sales. Does anyone have any good excel templates they'd be willing to share?

Thanks

petestan

I just print off the account summary every fortnight to show what has been put into my bank account rather than each individual sale if that is what you mean.

gmc_3

Hi Pete,

Thats what I mean. I've been selling on and off on amazon for a little while and decided to make a go of it as a proper business venture. I've registered a new selling account, got a business bank account and a place to work from. I just want to make sure that I'm keeping the correct records right from the start so that I don't have a mountain of work to do at a later date.

How do you organise your records for amazon? Do you do it all on a spreadsheet? I've seen a few good templates for ebay sellers that I was going to try and modify.

Where do you get your stock from? I get a lot of mine from car boot sales, jumble sales and charity book sales. I never get a receipt from these places and wondered how best to account for these? I was thinking just making a standard form template in word with headings such as 'Sale', 'Date', 'Location', 'Amount Spent' that I could fill in after each sale. Then file these with my other receipts and record them as a purchase on a spreadsheet.

Your thoughts are much appreciated.

Crowqueen

At car boot sales etc, if you buy stock, ask for a receipt - a piece of paper with the person's signature on it and the price is sufficient but if you don't have one you won't necessarily have much to prove to HMRC what you have spent, which could be crucial in some situations.

The best thing to do at this point is pick up a book on basic accounting/book-keeping. Understanding Business Accounting For Dummies is a good one, just make sure you get the UK edition. Managing your own business is a bigger thing than any single post on a forum can help you with, and there is a good Me page on eBay itself - the member Talkinpeace has listed a lot of useful information for people as regards accounting and how to keep records. You've started off the right way but what I could explain to you would be better off read from a manual of some sort.

You might also find it useful to get hold of a computer package such as SAGE to handle your accounts for you.