New seller - why so sad?
hi folks, just set up a selling account (basic) after selling bits & pieces on eBay for years. I just had a large stock buy and worked out my % figures for ebay/PayPal.
Reading some of the posts I’m wondering what I’ve walked in on, no one seems happy?
I understand a 75p & 15% take by Amazon but I’m still struggling to understand in layman’s terms how shipping costs etc work.
Any tips in general or shall I just not bother to list anything?
0 replies
Seller_2BrPSydGy6oyq
On a basic ‘individual plan’ you can’t set your own postage, Amazon set this, the postage credits by category are here;
https://sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/help.html?itemID=G201051980&language=en_GB
This can make you appear uncompetitive, but to set your own postage rates, you need to upgrade to pro-account and only worth doing if you sell 34+ items month.
It really depends on what you plan to sell and if the category requires approval, or is restricted, as to what issues you may run into, so far you have an account, but can you actually list any stock?
Indeed all these unhappy sellers, yet some have been here for years 
Seller_70UPW5SgUOvPK
Sorry to sound thick but what is BMVD?
Fees seem to add up then, on low price items it eats into profit quite considerably 
all a learning curve I guess, I will see how I get on…
I have happened across a few job lots to sell, my wife also hand crafts Macrame items, we are looking to get her onto Etsy for those.
Seller_6sxtIS0RbZ5k7
As to why so sad, most people tend to only come onto the forum when they have a problem. When things are going well they are either too busy fulfilling orders or reluctant to let everyone else know how well their particular widgets are selling in case everyone else starts selling them too!
Seller_FGrlSKDjwty1z
Once you realise Amazon is what it is you will get along with ok. Basically you have no individual value and there systems are somewhere between clunky and useless. You will get used to creating cases - never take the first answer as gospel. Get used to a war of attrition and you can turn a situation around. You will get scammed by customers and Amazon are basically complicit in this. Their are fees are going up. Overall you have to decide if its worth it by getting the numbers. Build in the costs into your prices where possible and work on your external revenue streams - in other words do not rely on Amazon. Can be worth it but nothing is ever really easy.
Seller_MKi6wqe68YZuu
To complicate things further, Amazon will apply a 2% online shopping tax from next week and take an extra 50p closing fee from January.
Seller_RiVN2dcWY6xy9
I think you ar walking into a minefield here, if you are selling new items they MUST be purchased from the manufacturer or its distributor direct and you must have invoices to back this purchase up. If you are buying items from a shop for resale, then Amazon will jump on you and probably deactivate your account, possibly for life.
Much better sticking to ebad if you are doing the latter
Seller_gOlDFgS5Li5Jc
amazon is much more stressful than ebay but the rewards are higher much more in the way of sales but you better be able to handle the rollercoaster ride
Seller_XswrI8nb0J0mV
You’ll learn to love to hate and hate to love Amazon. You’ll love it when things run smoothely and hate it when it goes wrong and you need support
Seller_x1xMSBwZsJrTE
It’s because unlike ebay where they treat buyers and sellers reasonably equally, on Amazon the order is Amazon first, buyers second, and sellers a very poor third.
Ebay support is generally pretty good but as you will soon find out Amazon’s ‘support’ completely sucks.
You will also come to realise that whereas ebay is fairly stable and makes reasonably benign changes, Amazon change with the wind every two minutes, and often the changes make things far worse. The new dashboard being a glorious example of their unwavering stupidity.
At some point you will also log in to your account to find Amazon have cause a major problem and you will have to drop everything and spend hours/weeks/months maybe even years, trying to sort out the mess.
Welcome to Amazon… 
