Selling through Amazon

[Stunsworth]

Zoverstock buy as Magpie Music - you may have seen their ads on TV. It's interesting to compare their buying and selling prices. I've sold a few CDs on Amazon but its was pointless if they were selling the same item as the software they use to price would always undercut you by a penny - I never seemed to find the charitable buyers mentioned earlier.

[Resurrection Man]

If selling books via Amazon then be careful on postage charges. Amazon dictate what you can charge for postage etc. Some books weigh a lot and so cost a small fortune to post. You can send up at a loss. DAMHIKT.

[cloughie]

As a seller on Amazon over the last couple of years I have sold a few, not vast quantities and these are mainly duplicates and discards - I do not consider it economic with p&p costs plus Amazon's cut to ask any less than £2-95. This inevitably means that many of those in my out-box are not going to sell. I have no real problems with Zoverstocks giveaway prices as I have picked up some real bargains as a result. At some point though I will want to free up space by parting with some of my out-box and a for3 swapshop might be a possibility but I guess setting up would be fraught with problems and may result in fallouts on these largely friendly boards.

[Resurrection Man]

..... for3 swapshop might be a possibility but I guess setting up would be fraught with problems and may result in fallouts on these largely friendly boards.

Not really if there are some clear (reasonable) ground rules set up. One forum I belong to has a For Sale/Wanted section. Rules are on the whole sensible...Board not responsible for the transaction/ a firm price asked for....not a 'best offer' or 'offers on'/ if someone thinks something is over-priced then they do not comment...that sort of thing.

[Sydney Grew]

I have experience of it. You will find that a CD you have is being sold by people from, say, £1.70 to £35. You might decide that while it is worth £5 you will advertise it at £1.69, making it the lowest of all, to sell it easily. Within seconds, the one that was selling it at £1.70 will change to £1.68 thereby pricing you out.

It will be a store that shifts tens of thousands and probably has an arrangement with Amazon to lower prices automatically. It will know it will make a loss on it but it doesn't care because it will be making a huge profit overall. An alternative is to try to sell it for £5 but that will take years as many others will be similarly priced.

At least with e-bay you are not up against these practices but in each case remember that the organisation takes a cut from your supposed profit too. If you do by some miracle sell a couple of CDs at very low prices, the Post Office scales appear to vary. If you go to the wrong one, you are actually likely to make a loss.

Marx had the answer to all this!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Marx had the answer to all this!

The sanity clause?

[scottycelt]

Marx had the answer to all this!

You mean that there would be no such things as evil, capitalist CDs in existence for the proletariat to enjoy, anyway ... ?

[Flosshilde]

You mean that there would be no such things as evil, capitalist CDs in existence for the proletariat to enjoy, anyway ... ?

Why not? The USSR had a record label that was quite well thought of in the West.

[Resurrection Man]

Why not? The USSR had a record label that was quite well thought of in the West.

'bout the only thing.

Oh, caviar is quite nice. Beluga, obviously

[teamsaint]

'bout the only thing.

Oh, caviar is quite nice. Beluga, obviously

Oh, I don't know, RM. Their nuclear arms were well regarded by the West..

[mangerton]

'bout the only thing.

Oh, caviar is quite nice. Beluga, obviously

I remember in 67/68 my school's biology dept bought a number of Russian microscopes. Very good they were, too. Someone asked, "What make are they, sir?"

Our (Yorkshire) master replied, "Eee.... They're Russian, lad!"

[bluestateprommer]

Thanks for the warning, Lateral. I'm actually selling some of my ceramics books that I no longer need, so it's fairly niche stuff (I realise that the problems you outline above can happen with books, too). I'll have a look & see if any of them are being offered, & how much.

Getting back to Floss' original thread topic, as a seller on Amazon.com (obviously I'm not a seller on Amazon.co.uk), one other thing to note is that, as silly as it may sounds, you may have to have some patience if you want to sell your stuff. I've recently sold a few items, niche like yours, that languished for over a year on Amazon. I remember that I dropped the price a tad to see if that would help, but it's impossible for me to know for sure, of course. I subliminally set them aside, and then all of a sudden, wham, a sale.

In addition, if you happen to go against a firm like Zoverstocks, which has that auto-pricing system set up automatically to go below your price by £0.01, again if you have the patience, don't lower your price. Zoverstocks will always automatically undercut you by £0.01, and if the potential customer who finds your item wants to help you rather than a big combine like them, s/he will choose you and pay the extra £0.01.

In short, you can list your item for what you consider to be a reasonable price initially. Then basically, you just wait. You can check price listings of the competition once a week, but I wouldn't do more than that. I fell for the undercutting game by Zoverstocks (and in the US, abundatrade is comparable), dropping my prices continuously, but they would just keep up. It finally dawned on me that it wasn't worth my time to try to keep up that way.

[Flosshilde]

Thanks bsp - I haven't put my stuff up on Amazon yet. I'll probably do it gradually. There's one bookseller I know of in the UK who specialises in ceramics books so I'll check on what price he might give me.