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Appollyon,
Amazon is THE place to sell books that are mainstream ie. textbooks, selfhelp, cookbooks, fiction really anything other than older collectible books or signed copies. As Zach pointed out, when people go to buy books their first stop is amazon.
Amazon recently changed their FBA storage fees, starting February 2017 all items are subject to a long term storage fee. Before the change, the fees were minor for any individual item, and only duplicate items incurred a long-term storage fee. Still viable to send in books for FBA just have to gauge their sellability and recall them if necessary before they hit their LTSF.
There is no reason why you still couldn’t list items as merchant fulfilled. They will still sell if priced competitively. I consistently sell long tail books of 2 million and higher out of my garage and send in everything else to Amazon. (Now 1.5million rank will stay.)
I double list all of my long-tail merchant fulfilled books on both amazon and ebay, amazon outsells ebay easily. Probably a 70/30 split in books over the month.
Hope that helps.
Im full time so I guess I use ebay/amazon profits for everything. But, we just took a seven day Disney cruise with the kids that was fully paid for by ebay profits. We booked a placeholder future cruise at a steep discount while on board. Now we have 24 months to save up for another one.
My youngest (12) and (14) pay for their cell phones by packing books every other night. They rotate nights and its usually 8-10 items and under 30 minutes. Whoever has Sunday that week gets a little more. They whine about it at times but they want to keep their cell phones so they keep doing it.
Our current formula is to send in books that are under 1.5 million rank, they have an ok chance to sell before the 6 month fee and a very good chance before the 12 month fee. Even if they incur a LTSF is relatively small say .50 to keep it another six months. If the book is over 1.5million and greater than $20 we list it locally and cross-platform list it with amazon,ebay,half, alibris to increase its chances of selling since its a long tail book.
The biggest issue is that we have been sending in items for almost four years and we had thousand of items that were LTSF eligible in February. Games and toys were the biggest offenders due to their size some of the fees were $6-11. So we sent back things we thought we could sell on Ebay or was worth keeping around for merchant fulfilled $20 and up. Destroyed around 1900 items that were not worth sending back.
Other ship in rankings
DVD/CD under 80k
Toys/games under 30k
Video Games 18k
Software 5kI do not do retail arbitrage much, that seems like a tough item to flip and mark up $19. There are dozens of other FBA sellers between 25.99 and 44.99. The rank is good at 11k so you should see some movement as the lower prices go out the door. I would make the call around the 17th to lower the price as time dwindles down before Christmas. See how many sellers are still under the $44 range, if they are selling out you may have a chance to move them at that price. Good luck, hope it works out.
I really do not want to keep any toys in Amazon after Christmas, not with new fee structure. I will dispose or have them send back any I do not sell and then reship them with new stuff next October.
*Edit* There are some selling on Ebay for $36-38, possible to cross list them and have amazon fulfill the order. Probably come out cheaper than shipping yourself.
*edit* reply was meant for Jay but when I hit reply it moves it to the bottom of the post.
*2nd edit* How do I change the my grape ape face/ galaxia fighter/ fat guy dancing in a tu-tu avatar? No options in my profile.
Amazon sales for October beat last years by a little under 3k, and we sold 363 unit less than last year. So selling less but making more at the moment. I haven’t seen a dip in sales since the announcement or much in terms of price changes. However, we price aggressively and run a program that keeps us in the top page of results, typically we aim for the four or fifth price position.
Debbie,
Amazon and Amazon FBA is still a great way to sell items, you can run a report to see what your estimated long-term storage fees will be. Report–Fulfillment-Inventory Age. Take a good look at how much they will charge you after a year. Its not a whole lot per item as long as its a media item and its not a crazy size.
Your board games will end up costing you a lot in fees if you leave them in for 6-1yr.
So be picky on what large items you send in, keep track of when the fees are due and just return or destroy items if the fees do not balance out in the risk vs reward of keeping them past the year mark.
• Ebay
• Total Items in Store: 5,816
• Items Sold: 108
• Cost of Items Sold: $145
• Total Sales: $2,058
• Highest Price Sold: $60 (Size 58L Blazer)
• Average Price Sold: $19.05
• Returns: 4 (clothing)
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $50
• Number of items listed this week: 85Last few days before we take off on our cruise, due to the election, the kids can travel over a week and only have two days absent from school. Still nervous about leaving ebay running while i’m gone but it will be a good test to see how things will run with me gone. Not going to leave amazon running (sans FBA), I can do without ebay but not amazon.
Great looking pad site, you guys will love having all of your inventory in one place. Interested to see what you guys do revamping your storage system. Good luck with the employee, I hope she works out. If she works out and turns into a competent helper she will take a huge load of work of you guys so you can focus on something else.
Like the new forum, all of the avatars look like rorschach blots. Will have to find a good picture.
Sold this book on Amazon, had it in inventory for a little over a year. Section Quizzes, Chapter Tests, and Authenitic Assessment $423. No idea why it sold so high, will probably get it back as a refund.
Concerning Amazon FBA, don’t get too excited about 4th quarter. If you sell toys, electronics, DVD sets or other “gift” type stuff it will move. I think you will be fine leaving books, cds or dvds in over the 4th quarter and if you have to bite the cost of returning it later then it’s worth the risk. If you have more of the bathroom hardware, odd ball electronics, or other large items then I would take the free return or .50 return. I ended up returning or destroying around 3k items.
Amazon will always offer a deal when they make a change, so these free return deals or due to the increased storage change starting the 1st of November and the earlier change was in regards to the long term storage fee change. Also, i’m betting the next change will be an increase in the return cost. They are losing a lot of money sending items back for .50 a pop.
