Selling your Stuff on Amazon Part 10 - Discussion Thread

apprentice_tycoon · 27 June 2007 at 8:33PM

IMHO wrote: »

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

Please don't think that we are ignoring you - silence generally means that we are stumped by a question, we sell books mainly so this a bit out of our field.

I'd ask your question on Amazon's sellers board - it's called Seller Connection, you might find others that aren't book sellers that can help you

Newboy_4 · 27 June 2007 at 9:11PM

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

Newboy_4 · 27 June 2007 at 9:15PM

4maxine wrote: »

Newboy - Yes, you're right, that was just the start of it. I have finished all the easy ones (around 1400) and have now started on the ones either without ISBN or not in the Amazon catalogue.

Now, for your other questions:
1) I sold one the very first day
2) It started straight away (nothing huge though)
3) around 25 a week
4) at the moment around 1700
5) yes
6) no, but although I have sold my own books here and there for a long time, I have just started on a larger scale. (1 month)

Does this help?

thanks 4 your reply 4maxine, it is useful info. Much appreciated.

apprentice_tycoon · 27 June 2007 at 9:24PM

Newboy wrote: »

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? same day - yay!
How long before you were making a regular number of sales per day / week? hard to say, I built up my stock slowly till I got to around 900 and the sales bulit up at the same speed
How many books are you selling each week now? can go from 3 or 4 per day to 3 or 4 per week, the more I list the more I sell - oddly it's not always the new books that sell but strangely listing activity seems to trigger a few sales of any of my books, I can still sell books that I've had listed for up to 4 or 5 years - patience is a REAL virtue for amazon
How many books to you keep in stock? 900
Do you feel that you could sell more if you listed more but don't have the space to store any more? absolutely
Have you ever worked out how many books you sell per week as a percentage of total listed quanitity? anytime I think that I understand my amazon sales it shifts again

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

Amazon selling is a classic scenario of you learn as you go making mistakes all the time but as you get atuned to it your mistakes get less and cheaper and your triumphs arrive more often and more lucratively

Newboy_4 · 27 June 2007 at 9:31PM

Thanks for that insight Mr Tycoon, very helpful.

tsharp · 27 June 2007 at 9:32PM

I am soooo tempted to get a bulk load of books. I only have about 50 odd listed, and have made a few sales from these alone...

funkyfunkymonkey · 27 June 2007 at 10:03PM

Newboy wrote: »

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? Same day - got the bug there and then
How long before you were making a regular number of sales per day / week? Within a month
How many books are you selling each week now? Varies according to listing activity - just had a listing flurry and now selling 30-35/week
How many books to you keep in stock? 4400 at the moment
Do you feel that you could sell more if you listed more but don't have the space to store any more? Absolutely
Have you ever worked out how many books you sell per week as a percentage of total listed quanitity? As stock grows older, percentage goes down. Of the 700 recently listed in the last month 90 of those have sold.

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

There is a very successful seller who used to post regularly on the Amazon Discussion board (very quiet these days), he regularly sold a really high percentage of his stock and subsequently did not need to hold such a large volume to make a success of his business. Would love to know his secret - probably got 'a good nose'.

FFM

rare_stuff · 27 June 2007 at 11:15PM

IMHO wrote: »

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

That's just bully-boy tactics, ignore them, if they start sending more threatening emails forward these to amazon. The seller is probably just annoyed that they went to the trouble of creating a listing on amazon and now you're reaping the benefits of their work. It's not uncommon for sellers of this type of item to try this on the new seller, also they may not be aware that once they create a listing on amazon anyone can sell items under this listing.

rare_stuff · 27 June 2007 at 11:37PM

Newboy wrote: »

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? Within days
How long before you were making a regular number of sales per day / week? a week or 2, though took a couple of months of building up stock and sales to be able to call it an income
How many books are you selling each week now? anything from 70- 150 (lot of upps and downs at the moment my target is 120 but I'm not achieving that at the moment for various reasons) Best week was over 200 but that was a while ago now
How many books to you keep in stock? about 5,000, but aiming for 10,000 though need to cull about 2,000 no hopers from my shelves as well
Do you feel that you could sell more if you listed more but don't have the space to store any more? The more you list, the more you sell! As soon as you stop listing your sales will start dropping
Have you ever worked out how many books you sell per week as a percentage of total listed quanitity? lies, damn lies & statistics - You can make figures say a million things, the bottom line really is the length of time from making a purchase, to it returning a profit and how much profit it returns. I expect to be able to make my purchase price of a lot of books back within a month of listing them. some lots will return a profit within a week, other lots will take a month, lots that take longer than 2 months to return a profit I tend to avoid getting from those suppliers in future.

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

I'd also add a cautionary note on pricing, competition and sales rank. The higher the sales rank the quicker the sale, you can expect anything in the top 10 to sell with hours or 2days at most. Top 10,000 may take a week or 2. from 10,000 to 40,000 it could take upto a month or more if the rank is dropping.
When pricing it is not always neccessary to be the cheapest if you have good feedback and a detailed description, though ideally yours should appear in the top 5.
Keep an eye on the competition, many sellers use pricing software to match or even undercut your price if you go in lower than others. This can mean the price of a book that isn't selling very fast drops rapidly. These sellers often have lower feedback and will be passed over by buyers wanting a detailed description and good feedback.
Finally a word on price matching - don't do it blindly, weigh your book, allow for packaging weight and cost and work out how much it will cost you to wrap and post, including the trip to the post office.

Ordered a rare book off a fellow seller the other week, they'd priced it at a penny, postal costs on label were £1.92, packaging was a featherpost padded bag a few sizes too big, so their profit was down to about 20p before the cost of the allegedly new book and trip to post office. As the padded envelope provided very little protection it was quite dented on arrival and the seller refunded me in full upon my complaining about the delay in dispatch and the condition on arrival. it's quite difficult to make a living when profits are cut this fine by other sellers, though as a volume seller I could make 4 times more profit on selling the same book at that price.