Selling your Stuff on Amazon Part 10 - Discussion Thread

4maxine

I am lucky in the sense that I still had an old bookshelf I'd built a few years ago. It is perfect for paperbacks. I can store about 300 on it and it's not very big. The rest went on my other shelves. Everything is packed solid but it all fit.
Each shelf hat its own SKU so books are easy to find.

Magenta

Hi emaxine, I wish I was as organised as you. I used to regularly give whole boxes of books away to charity shops and friends before I discovere Amazon 3 months ago.! So now all the boxes that I had nicely stacked up are now being opened and listed. It started off fine but now I am swamped with them and have just started clearing some Knic-Knac shelves in the bedroom to put some more out. When I just list them and then put them back in boxes I have a devil of a mad time trying to find them when I sell one!!!
So Newboy welcome and I hope that you are more organised than I am.:D

wilf55

i had the same problem magenta so have put mine in big aldi lidls type large canvas bags all in alphabetical order

as i list more i place them in a large box and then when i have a spare minute add these to the alphabetical bags

at the moment this seems to be working with 800 books listed

however this doesnt take account of piles of books here there and everywhere and i mean everywhere waiting to be listed waiting to find etc etc

4maxine

Wilf55, Magenta and Donna.

If you are a Pro seller you have the opportunity of adding a SKU. Otherwise, you can always add it at the end of your description.

My SKU is made up of 1) the room 2) the bookshelf / Alcove 3) the shelf number.
You could stick a big number on each box and add the box number on your SKU.

That way you don't need to bother with the alphabetical order which can be a pain when a box / bag is full and you have another book to add.

I hope this helps.
Maxine

Newboy_4

Magenta wrote: »

So Newboy welcome and I hope that you are more organised than I am.:D

:eek: I am not the most organised person you would ever meet! I was thinking of using a box system, numbering them and then using the box number as a SKU or at the end of the description.

I am about to order 800 Mail Lite D1's from Ebay for £59 delivered, it is as cheap as I can find them. Can anyone else get them lower than this? I will also be ordering some F3, H5 & J6 sizes as well but only 50 of each for £12 each box of 50 from the same seller.

Books arriving tommorow............:T

Newboy_4

4maxine wrote: »

Hi Newboy, welcome to the thread.

Did you get a whole pallet? I did, and I can tell you that when it turns up it is a bit of shock to the system. It's MASSIVE!!! :eek:

Once you've recovered, list as many as you possibly can and then list some more. The first 3 days I worked between 16 and 18 hours a day just to clear my living room - I was lucky it was a bank holiday.

It does pay off though and you should be able to reach your £1000 by October.

Good luck.

Hi 4Maxine,

Yes I did go for the full pallet.....how long did it take you to list the whole lot? You mentioned 3 days at 18 hours to clear your living room, I suspect that was just the start of it!

Regards

Newboy_4

Another few questions to anyone who feels willing to give details out. I am trying to do the calculations as to if this could ever be a significant income or simply a welcome additional income. If you prefer not to I fully understand and respect your decision. Here goes:

How soon after setting up did you sell your 1st book?
How long before you were making a regular number of sales per day / week?
How many books are you selling each week now?
How many books to you keep in stock?
Do you feel that you could sell more if you listed more but don't have the space to store any more?
Have you ever worked out how many books you sell per week as a percentage of total listed quanitity?

A long list I know, feel free to answer those that you are happy answering and leave any you are not. It will be facinating looking at peoples different experiences.

Regards

IMHO_2

Hi,
this is my first post so I hope I am posting in the right place. I want to list my new items, audio cables etc on Amazon UK. What I did was find an identical item listed on Amazon and hit sell here. All was well then a couple of days later the seller I had listed my identical item alongside emailed me to tell me to remove my listing as although the items where the same we did not purchase our stock from him and he was the owner of the bar code. As I was unsure of if I had done wrong I removed all my listings and apologised to the seller. I contacted Amazon by phone but they said they did not know what was wrong but could not get evolved. I would really like to give selling on Amazon a go but do not wish to break the rules. If I am unable to list alongside other sellers with identical items how can I list my products. Thanks

soolin

Newboy I can't answer some of your questions as I honestly don't have the info to hand..my account keeping is somewhat haphazard and I still do some of my stuff by hand in a ledger book. Actually that reminds me, don't forget to register with the tax man...

At the moment i have approx 1050 book slisted and last month I sold 51 books, although I think my average is nearer 30 books per month . I aim to sell 30 books as that is the amount that breaks me even for the pro seller fees.

I could easily sell more if I had more space, and intend to work towards that later when I can get organised. However, I do not want to have more stuf fin the house than I already have at the moment, so once I get to around 1500 books I'll probably stop buying large amounts and stick to one offs, or maybe even cull some of my less popular titles and restock with better stuff. I do occasionally sell stuff off in bulk, usually through the small ads where people can come and collect.

Strangely enough at the moment I have had a little flurry of non book sales, 2 CDs, 2 DVDs and a video since Monday, which is very unusual.

OOps, mised a question...I actually sell a very small percentage of those books i have listed. Someone on the Amazon site calculated odds once, If I come across the thread I'll let you know. It was something like 20% of newly listed books sell within a month of listing, but once the books have been listed over a month that percentage drops to single figures.

soolin

Another thing I just thought of, selling ranks. Based on a mixture of advice both here and on the Amazon boards I pay great attention to the listing ranks of items I sell.

I'm notoriously bad at explaining things clearly, but basically whether I list and at what price depends on not only the weight of the book but the selling rank. Therefore I wouldn't bother selling a 50p book where there were already dozens listed and where the ranking was over 1 million. However I would bother even at 1p if the ranking was very very high and the total of books listed was small in comparison.

A book in the rankings under say 1000 has a very good chance of selling very quickly, maybe in a matter of days, so you can afford to list at a decent price rather than a cut throat one. Under 10,000 in the listing it might still be a quick seller but maybe look to match lowest price for the same condition. Those rankings are important to my overall, and rather cunning if not confusing, policy. I'm sure someone can explain that better than me!