Profitsourcery?

fishybusiness

It’s all a bit of a pain to sort out imo

For ex..
Item found sells for 24.99, but postage costs 3.99 which you don’t account for…
Postage out 3.99

Total 28.98

So, this one is not FBA, even though you give FBA costs, have to package and post, which is more than FBA costs anyway.

Cheapest post 2.90, plus small packaging cost, merchant fees of 9.66 comes to 41.54

Lowest price listed is 53.58, taken lowest not highest, profit is then 12.05, rather than your 19.05

Or thereabouts.

Concept is great, and purchasing more than 1 item at a time will obviously almost negate postage costs, but it’s a real pain sorting out which information is valid, how many I could order, and what the true margins are.

Your 35 to 70% margins are not wholly realistic and of the 11 products I have on my screen today, 5 are merchant fulfilled only, which affects margins and logistics.

RFW

Ed_B wrote: »

There's a bunch of info on pricing within the training guides that you may find useful in terms of profitability - we'd highly recommend using a repricing service for example that will hunt out the buy box.

A repricing service would generally cost a fee, so you're knocking more out of the profit.

I don't understand how you can not account for postage. On Amazon, marketplace sellers sell in a big range from those selling inclusive postage and those adding a hefty chunk.

It seems like there are quite a number of overheads missing from the overall profit. Shrinkage is difficult to account for but would make a difference and I think most professional sellers will have something in mind for it. For FBA selling there are storage fees and charges for delivering to fulfilment centres.

I'd like to know how long the pricing accounts for. If, for example, you find me a profitable item selling at £50, that you can source so I earn £10 an item selling it at £50. How long is the £50 price tracked? There are obviously no guarantees that as soon as I spend a few thousand pounds on the item that Amazon won't decide to list it at £35, or even the supplier decides to start retailing.

RFW

fishybusiness wrote: »

So, this one is not FBA, even though you give FBA costs, have to package and post, which is more than FBA costs anyway.

I've actually found several products that make it more cost effective to use FBA.

fishybusiness

I've actually found several products that make it more cost effective to use FBA.

I've been looking at it recently, really from the cost of postage angle. Some products are large letter size and cheap to post, once above that threshold, FBA looks more viable.

Using the Amazon FBA fee calculator has helped, and I guess once stock is with Amazon, as long as pricing is competitive, the work is done.

Seems like a win/win deal, especially for one off purchases, downside being one's own brand isn't promoted, Amazon is.

fishybusiness

Not sure I follow - what do you mean by not FBA?

Ran a bit of a test today, one of your products, add to inventory and off to Amazon Fulfillment Center, Amazon told me they didn't have a center yet designated for that product...wouldn't let me ship.

It is a fairly new product, if it was an ongoing issue, those people wanting to use fulfillment would probably get a bit cheesed off.

RFW

fishybusiness wrote: »

Seems like a win/win deal, especially for one off purchases, downside being one's own brand isn't promoted, Amazon is.

Unless you're specifically competing against Amazon then FBA items get treated quite well, they certainly rank higher than merchant fulfilled items.
Sponsored products offer a cost effective boost. I've just been checking and I'm averaging 8% cost on successful click throughs. It's another big chunk but works for me as I've got a few good margins to work with.

RFW

Ed_B wrote: »

For many people the attraction of using a repricer is that you set the thresholds on min and max selling price, and then ask it to hunt for the buy box. Getting the buy box is vital to win sales; 90%+ of sales are through that.

Depends on your personal strategy of course, but many people would rather take the hit on the repricer software so that they can scale up faster and not have the overhead of constantly checking and changing prices to win the buy box.

It depends how you source and sell, if you're going up against Amazon selling products, you're not going to get the buy box very often. If you're competing against other sellers, using repricing software then you're going to be racing to the bottom price and cutting out your profits.
Personally I'd rather source my own goods to sell, brand them and not have any competition, or at least minimalise it as much as possible. Your software seems to be putting sellers right in the centre of competitive markets. What kind of exclusivity do you offer that you are not going to be handing the same sourcing opportunity to 100 sellers who will all be competing with each other?

Ed_B wrote: »

Two different issues here; we don't account for postage from when people buy from stores and get it sent to their home address, thats correct; this is largely because most people will buy multiple products and qualify for free/ discounted shipping.

Where do you get that information from that people buy multiple products. Can you let me know the percentages that buy multiple products. In my experience that doesn't tally.

Ed_B wrote: »

We do however account for postage from Amazon to the purchaser; to be precise we include the FBA fees. You may find that if youre looking to fulfil these items yourself (ie go Merchant Fulfilled) that your costs will be lower than the FBA ones.

Then again, you may not, I don't get the point.

Ed_B wrote: »

We surface outside market intelligence data to help offset risk.
We do include links for each individual product that we find to CamelCamelCamel.

That should allow you to track both the Pricing History and the Sales Rank history.

ProfitSourcery is there to take out most of the manual work involved in product sourcing, but as you say, its vital to do the due diligence and check stuff like pricing history and sales rank trends over time. All that info is in the tool

Hope that helps

What experience of selling on Amazon do you bring to the table? How many products have your company successfully sourced and now sell on there?

nortong

fishybusiness wrote: »

Signed up for a trial today........

I now have 3 items on my dashboard will all of the relevant info to hand. So far, so good.

Followed the link to first item, can only purchase 3, limited stock. Second item is marked 'Last One', third item limited to 4 items per order.

All 3 items are sold by this retailer on Amazon, so they are direct competition, which for a non FBA seller I should think will be a tough one to crack.

From the outset I would find this a pain, purchasing 2 of item 1, 3 of item 2 etc, I want 10 at a time.

See what tomorrows offers bring......

I suppose your free offer has finished now, how did it go, was it worthwhile?

fishybusiness

I ended the trial, based on comments I made previously.

I'm having a go with the 70 odd quid a month option as a trial now, there are some better offers, one or two really good ones.

There are also plenty that demonstrate 3 or 4 quid profit, which when you look closely will be the max you can achieve. Add in the odd delivery cost or choose to merchant fulfil rather than FBA and the profit is wiped out.

For me, the biggest difficulty is not knowing the market in many of the areas that offers are from. For example, this morning there is a Diesel mens watch on offer, looking at the numbers there is stacks of profit. I have no clue as to the watch market - feels like a gamble.

That has led me in to thinking about warranty....toys, games, consumables warranty is not really an issue.

What about a £200 watch, surely I purchase it as a consumer and then sell it on as a trader, how would I warrant that to a purchaser, same goes for any electrical goods - that has me thinking....

It is an interesting idea, it is nice to look over the offers, gets my profit making ideas going but na, not for me.

soolin

Also, if I may add another issue. If we buy as a business we ourselves have less protection than we would if we were buying as an individual.

Whether overall that is going to make a difference I'm not sure, but it is worth considering.