Newbie totally baffled
Hi everyone,
I naively set up a private seller account without monthly subscription a week ago and made my first sale yesterday! Yaaaeh! The selling price for the book was a meagre £3.49 with £2.80 postage and yet I ended up with only 13p in my account. How the hell can someone sell the same book for 1p with the same £2.80 postage allowance and still make a profit?
Seriously doubt if this this business model is viable.
Please respond, I just don’t get it.
I absolutely refuse to sell a quality product for 1p just to put someone else out of business.
0 replies
Seller_BS5lg2keRs2QO
In short they pay less for postage than you do as they sell at volume. Plus with the individual selling plan you pay an extra 75p plus vat in fees that they don’t have to pay since their £30 per month fee is basically spread across all their sales for the month.
Even with FBA i’d expect to make around £1.30 - £1.80 on a £6.29 book.
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
If you’re planning on selling the odd book as an individual private seller rather than a large scale business i would recommend ebay as you can set your own price with less competitors (no buy box penny pinching)
Seller_lljyzgTxr5fgI
It isn’t, on the basis you have outlined. However, the second word of your post sums up your predicament, “naievely”. Amazon is a selling platform like no other, which is why it is so successful and why many sellers here are either successful too, or sink like a stone. Before selling here, you have to do your homework. From your naievety, I take it you didn’t work through the Seller University modules to see how the place works, what works, what doesn’t and what are the pitfalls?
The first feature of interest is your category of sale. Books is one of the commonest but also most cutthroat categories to sell in. As you’ve already discovered, there are plenty of sellers who will sell stuff at a penny, but, conversely, there are sellers, as @Demel has exampled, that would make £1.30 - £1.80 return on a £6.29 sale. Lots of sellers don’t want to engage in a “race to the bottom”.
The second feature of interest is whether or not you are trying to start a business or whether you are shifting a few of your own books a month just to make a shekel or three. If it’s the former, and your buying books to sell, you need to be selling at least 35 - 40 a month really, for it to be a meaningful business but you also need to do the maths beforehand. Referral fees, closing fees (or per item fee), postage costs vs postage credits (because some of your books will cost more to post than the postage credit you receive and you therefore have to build this into your book price). There’s a lot to take in.
The Seller University modules are here:
https://sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/learn/course?courseId=138&ref_=su_nav_course
Seller_e27ulOaK5lPPu
I joined amazon sellers last month and its been all downhill from there. I’m still trying to retrieve a refund for monthly charges for a sellers service I have not requested. This is just way too much bad blood. I’m leaving quicker than I came!
