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

Kite2010

The good thing with Amazon compared to ebay is that you don't pay fees until the item sells, so you could have an item listed for 6 months plus, and if it doesn't sell you can remove the item and don't owe anything to Amazon.

HowardCreek

Hi all,

Long-time lurker, first-time poster.

This thread had been very useful as I started to sell a few books, CDs and DVDs on Amazon. Thanks to all of you. Though it now seems to have died a death. Has enthusiasm waned all round due to dipping sales?

soolin

HowardCreek wrote: »

Hi all,

Long-time lurker, first-time poster.

This thread had been very useful as I started to sell a few books, CDs and DVDs on Amazon. Thanks to all of you. Though it now seems to have died a death. Has enthusiasm waned all round due to dipping sales?

My sales on Amazon fell off a cliff last November. I went from selling an average of 70 books a month to around 10 books a month virtually overnight.

Looking at my account now I am not even selling 10 books a month.

HowardCreek

soolin wrote: »

My sales on Amazon fell off a cliff last November. I went from selling an average of 70 books a month to around 10 books a month virtually overnight.

Looking at my account now I am not even selling 10 books a month.

Wow. That's a shame. Increased competition? Ongoing global recession? The slow and painful death throes of the book in general?

Obviously I'm only small fry, with an inventory of around 70 items, but usually manage about 5 sales a week. (I work from home and so religiously - borderline obsessive - undercut to make my prices cheapest.)

Maybe (if I remember Soolin, you have inventory of around 1,000 books?) it's because you don't get a chance to look in detail at your listings? For example, I had a particular art book, that when I listed was one of only 4 others, and virtually brand new. So, I listed it as 'like new' for around £30, but checking back a fortnight after listing, a couple of 'new' copies have been added for under a tenner. BUT, that doesn't show on the summary page, as it's a different condition, and so I was under the impression mine was the cheapest, whereas in reality someone would have to be missing marbles to buy a used book for three times the price of a new one.

Just my tuppence... Anyway, I shan't be giving up the day job just yet...

soolin

I was running aorund 1500 books but even listing two or three times a week and removing older books didn't help.

Books i listed at £10-£30 a few months ago are now generally sitting at less than a pound. I recently bought 3 tea chests of books, mainly non fiction and listed 4, the rest would have made me at best a few pence profit but most would have made a loss.

I have a finite amount of storage so rather than store books that make me 10p profit I can use the space for more profitable items.

I bough tmyself a kindle last Christmas and whilst i still buy dozens of books a month I tend to buy whatever is cheapest kindle or real..and it is running at about 50/50.

Crowqueen

Also since Amazon give free delivery on things bought directly from them that means I probably buy less from third-party sellers than I used to. My purchases are more likely to be DVDs than books - except recently - but it made a huge difference when they brought it in. I think I remember Soo saying that a while back when I said on this thread that I seemed to be the only one buying from Amazon...!!!

soolin

Crowqueen wrote: »

Also since Amazon give free delivery on things bought directly from them that means I probably buy less from third-party sellers than I used to. My purchases are more likely to be DVDs than books - except recently - but it made a huge difference when they brought it in. I think I remember Soo saying that a while back when I said on this thread that I seemed to be the only one buying from Amazon...!!!

Very true. I am waiting for several books to arrive, none came from true marketplace sellers, most are new from Amazon but I got a couple for a few pence from an FBA seller, delivered by Amazon with free postage.

soolin

Another reason why I stopped using marketplace to buy was that I met a scammer on a high end book and it took weeks and weeks for me to get the money back off Amazon. It really put me of using marketplace and in fact I've bought a couple of books recently on ebay and Waterstones instead.

HowardCreek

Well, I'll keep plugging away! I'm chirpy because I made two sales today - one arty-photo book (bought for 2, sold for 20), and a book on running your own market stall (bought for 1.50 and sold for 14).

I swore to myself I would never, ever get in a situation where I had books that were virtually worthless. I don't have the space, for one thing, nor the inclination to do the car-boot thing.

So my minimum profit, after fees and postage, has to be a fiver, or I don't bother (I think I must be relatively blessed with the charity shops round here). I think it can be the way to make this thing a viable but non-exasperating income stream - as I say, my stock is only ever 70-ish books, so turning over 5 per week - some for a fiver's profit, some for 40 - suits me down to the ground.

Kite2010

HowardCreek wrote: »

Wow. That's a shame. Increased competition? Ongoing global recession? The slow and painful death throes of the book in general?

Obviously I'm only small fry, with an inventory of around 70 items, but usually manage about 5 sales a week. (I work from home and so religiously - borderline obsessive - undercut to make my prices cheapest.)

Maybe (if I remember Soolin, you have inventory of around 1,000 books?) it's because you don't get a chance to look in detail at your listings? For example, I had a particular art book, that when I listed was one of only 4 others, and virtually brand new. So, I listed it as 'like new' for around £30, but checking back a fortnight after listing, a couple of 'new' copies have been added for under a tenner. BUT, that doesn't show on the summary page, as it's a different condition, and so I was under the impression mine was the cheapest, whereas in reality someone would have to be missing marbles to buy a used book for three times the price of a new one.

Just my tuppence... Anyway, I shan't be giving up the day job just yet...

I think there is a way to display the "lowest" price of any condition on the stock page, so you will be able to tell if someone was undercutting you with a new book.

As for CDs & DVDs, be careful because some sellers use automatic price lowering software to always be 1p cheaper.