Selling Your Stuff on Amazon Part 11 - Advice for newbies in first two posts

soolin

The dearest book I have sold so far went for £99.99, the dearest one I have ever bought as a gift for my DH was £97.

amcluesent

I'm perplexed why the prices don't cluster around what the market will bear. I've been listing CD and books and the variation in marketplace pricing is huge, a factor of 10 sometimes.

funkyfunkymonkey

Might be worth investing in the £10 copy

FFM

JCS1

soolin wrote: »

Just to be warned that buyers are being given some very odd info by Amazon. I am still getting orders in and have actually (for about the first time ever) been in proper conversation with some buyers. The despatch info being given today says that their item will definitely be despatched up to and including the 25th December, and one person emailed to ask if thtat meant Amazon would be making Christmas Day deliveries and f so how did that work.

Arghh, to make it worse that means all orders tomorrow , even those after the PO has closed after lunch will be given a guaranteed despatch date of the 26th December at the latest..which is impossible as POs will not be open again until Saturday 27th. That means we should all take care to check our emails until the very last minute before the PO closes just in case we get a sale.

It is going to take just one stroppy buyer here...

At least on Ebay I could personally add a note to all my auctions stating my posting regime over the holiday period.

Similar thing happening again for New Year, Book sold tonight, expected ship date 1st Jan. Luckily I can pop to the Post office tomorrow afternoon as office is shutting at 1pm.

JesaRose

I just had two of those today - estimated postage date 1st Jan 00:00 hrs!

soolin

I posted a few days ago about having sold a book for a few pounds and when I checked the listings the only other copies were going for 25 times that. The same thing has now happened twice more, so someone or some group is watching my books for underpricing.

I can't say I am overly bothered as all three have been listed a while with no takers, the one I sold this morning went for £6.99 with the next cheapest copy at £49.99 from a US seller with barely 92% feedback. All three books have gone to different buyers.

It does seem curious and I did panic and think that I should check all my 1500 books for pricing discrepancies but thinking about it if the book has been listed for months with no takers I should just be pleased that I am getting sales. Although I sold one at £6.99, that has to be better than having it sat there for another 10 months or so unsold.

soolin

I would also add that I have used this to my advantage before as well. Seen that I had books on Amazon with prices at the £50+ mark but with no takers, bunged them up on ebay at a start price of £20 and put in the listing that this is a rare book so check out other sites..and I usually get near the Amazon price for it. I assume they go to dealers looking at the margin of profit from buying on ebay and selling on Amazon...not realising perhaps that I had originally had the book listed for a year with no takers.

funkyfunkymonkey

Soolin, bearing in mind that the Americans often use repricing software, it is possible that once your 'reasonably priced' copy has sold, their software picks up that there is not a lower priced copy and immediately reprices to 'silly prices' - it's a theory at least.

If you think about it, you would not have priced so low if yours had been the only copy or the other copies were priced at £50 plus.

FFM

soolin

funkyfunkymonkey wrote: »

Soolin, bearing in mind that the Americans often use repricing software, it is possible that once your 'reasonably priced' copy has sold, their software picks up that there is not a lower priced copy and immediately reprices to 'silly prices' - it's a theory at least.

If you think about it, you would not have priced so low if yours had been the only copy or the other copies were priced at £50 plus.

FFM

Yes I am quite confident that I priced them accurately. I took a great deal of advice from you and others on here when I started out and look at other copies listed, condition and where seller is (usually ignoring the big US mega listers), plus I check the ranking.

I rather suspect that someone has got all over excited and saw the mega listers with their £100+ copies and maybe seen my one priced considerably lower and thought they had spotted a catch. Some of the books I listed were quite rare so there weren't pages of them listed but in those cases I also took your advice and checked out bookfinder to set my own price. It probably only takes one or two other low priced copies to sell to push the sales ranking up before mine looked like a bargain.

I'm back to selling the £2-£5 books again now, so all seems to have reverted back to normal.

Strange while it went on though, some of those books I really thought would be hanging round for ever.

frivolous_fay

Bum... my first A-Z claim. (Opened one minute after first contact to notify me of non-arrival :rolleyes:) Was posted around the 8th Dec.

What do people use as proof of value when claiming from RM for Amazon items?