Selling your stuff on Amazon - Part 6- Advice for newbies in first post

TallGirl

I 2 books last week after 2 weeks with no sales, one for £5 one for £20 well pleased.

Cat72

Thanks for your replys.KAT - I hope you make a forune with your purchases you sound like your on the right track.I had a snoop THIS ONE - 190024446850 sounds too good to be true but is off no use to me as I live too far away and dont like to collect anyway . but 400 books for 1p ? !.I was thinking about 50 -200 books as I dont want as much as a pallet as they would take up to much room. I dont know if 50 is too little if you are taking in postage costs and incase you get a load of rubbish. Im not sure about this 1p book listing thing as I cant work out if it is profitable to do. Although found this one 180022302173 which is academic books, however I am very wary as it looks to good to be true and is quite a large amount once the the postage is added on ( a whopping £69.99) !!.These are smaller lots of books 120021895704 but the seller seems only to sell books- should I be wary of this ? Thanks

Annie021063

Cat72 wrote:

Has anyone had any sucess buying books from ebay ?as I have noticed ot mentioned a few times on the thread ? I have been using my local auction market but it is mostly old hardback books I get there.
I am wary of ebay incase I get someone elses unsellables !! What sizes of book purchases would you recommended getting from ebay- if you would recommend it at all.

Hi Cat
I have had one small lot from ebay which turned out to be ok, one book sold for £20 and I only paid £10 for the lot. I am picking up 100+ on Tuesday so I will report back on that and also made 2 paper bids for some at an auction as I couldn't attend real auction - just went to viewing and will find out what the outcome is on Tuesday, again I will report back.
Annie

Bella13_2

Cat72 wrote:

Thanks for your replys.KAT - I hope you make a forune with your purchases you sound like your on the right track.I had a snoop THIS ONE - 190024446850 sounds too good to be true but is off no use to me as I live too far away and dont like to collect anyway . but 400 books for 1p ? !.I was thinking about 50 -200 books as I dont want as much as a pallet as they would take up to much room. I dont know if 50 is too little if you are taking in postage costs and incase you get a load of rubbish. Im not sure about this 1p book listing thing as I cant work out if it is profitable to do. Although found this one 180022302173 which is academic books, however I am very wary as it looks to good to be true and is quite a large amount once the the postage is added on ( a whopping £69.99) !!.These are smaller lots of books 120021895704 but the seller seems only to sell books- should I be wary of this ? Thanks

Cat - the middle item number you posted are books for sale by books 2 door ltd. I can't be certain about this but there are several sellers of pallets of new books on ebay under different names, all based in Leicester and all of the auction layouts are identical (even down to spelling/grammatical errors). Nothing wrong with that, but some/all of them sell individual books on ebay, and books 2 door definitely sell on Amazon. As these are new books (but it also depends on when they were published as to how in demand they might be now) you would be up against all the booksellers who sell new (which is a whole lot of them).

The last item has an email address of jackygeorge (further down the auction) - I am sure I have seen an Amazon seller of the same name, but it may just be coincidence. They also sell individual books on ebay, and frequently have job lots up for sale. You can see some of the titles of the books on show, so you can at least look them up on Amazon to see what they might be worth. There are going to be more books obviously than shown - it depends how much you want to spend really - it can be a bit of a gamble, but I guess that's how it often is. These could be good, I just always wonder why people are selling in bulk if they also sell individually.

Sorry if this hasn't been much help!! Feel like I have been rather negative but I have had my fingers singed slightly a couple of times!!

Cat72

Bella13 thanks that was an excellent, very thorough reply full of information I could never have got. Nor think off.

Bella13_2

No problem - keep looking something will come along (I was looking every day but managed to wean myself off that bad habit, now down to every two days :rotfl:). I narrow my search to within 50 miles of my home, then I don't get depressed at all the really good looking lots that I cannot possibly get!! (Although narrowing it leaves very few for me to look for!) I do then expand it, to see what else is about - I think I have a bit of a book problem (or need to get a life!!)

Not sure how far anyone else is/would be prepared to travel?? (For the "perfect" lot of course).

larmy16

Frustrated, stamping feet and whingeing very very loudly. My sales have died!

I went through my listings and took off any under £2.00 because I don't think I will make any profit on them. Or do you think I should just raise the prices and sit tight???

Can I ask any other non-pro merchant sellers what is the minimum price they will price their books at now, due to the postal hike in prices?

soolin

larmy16 wrote:

Frustrated, stamping feet and whingeing very very loudly. My sales have died!

I went through my listings and took off any under £2.00 because I don't think I will make any profit on them. Or do you think I should just raise the prices and sit tight???

Can I ask any other non-pro merchant sellers what is the minimum price they will price their books at now, due to the postal hike in prices?

For me it depends on how fat the book is. I'm prepared to list £1 books but only where I am confident that the book plus wrapping will go as a large letter. If something will not go as a large letter then I would probably discard anything under £2. However, for big fat books I am happy to keep my prices competitive (but obviously higher) as the limit for 2nd class has now increased so I can send them more cheaply.

Soo

redcar_2

When I was taxing Apprentice tycoon’s brains and mine last week to see if I could come up with a formula for how much Amazon pay you for each price book (non pro seller), it was so I could make a grid to see what profit I would make on a book for each postage level, weight of book and selling price.

BTW There is an anomaly which I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but books 1kg-1.25kg (large letter and packet) are cheapest to send 1st class at £4.74 packet rate rather than parcel as minimum is £4.95.

Anyway for penny books, non pro sellers get £1.41 back after fees etc so if its large letter size and assuming you are quick to PO and sending the cheapest post, your profit for each weight would be:
0-100g -> £1.04 (postage 37p 2nd)
101-250 -> 86p (postage 55p 2nd)
251-500g -> 66p (postage 75p 2nd)
501-750g -> 32p (postage 1.09 2nd)
751g-1kg -> -0.71p (postage would be £2.12 - has to go in packet size post as heavier than LL 2nd class max)

If its going to need to go in the packet size post
0-100g -> 57p (84p 2nd)
101-250 -> 32p (1.09 2nd)
251-500g -> 2p (1.39 2nd)
501-750g -> -36p (£1.77 2nd)

So probably the realistic limit to make a profit once you take into account other costs for a penny book is going to be up to 750g for a large letter size book and up to 250g for a packet size book ie very unlikely that any but the thinnest packet size books will make a profit at a 1p sale for non pros.

The cheapest to sell books of each weight and make a profit excluding the packing and other costs (have only gone in 10p book price steps and for three profit levels (absolute minimum ie >0p, bare minimum (ie >20p) and reasonable >50p). For example book of 501-750g going at packet size will give you 4p profit if sold at 50p, 29p profit if sold at 80p and so on…

Packet size
250-500g: AM 1p -> 2p; BM 30p ->25p; R 60p -> 51p (£1.39 2nd packet)
501-750g: AM 50p -> 4p; BM 80p -> 29p; R £1.10 -> 53p (1.77 2nd packet)
750g-1kg: AM 90p -> 2p; BM £1.20 -> 27p; R £1.50 -> 52p (£2.12 2nd packet)
1-1.250kg: AM £4.10 -> 5p; BM £4.30 -> 22p; R £4.70 -> 54p (postage £4.74 1st class)
1.251-1.5kg: AM £4.40 -> 9p; BM £4.60 -> 26p; R £5.00 -> 59p (postage £4.95 parcel)
1.5-2kg: AM £4.80 -> 6p; BM £5.00 ->23p; R £5.40 -> 56p (postage £5.31 parcel)

Large letter size
Can make profit at 1p up to 750g, after that as for packet as 2nd class LL limit only goes up to 750g

Hope that helps – have double checked prices but if any errors let me know.

Jazzy_B

Very impressive. Thanks for all your hard work.