How to sell directly on amazon (without FBA)

I read somewhere that they don't always sell your exact items though but sometimes if something has the same bar code it will sell as yours. Do you know if that is true? Has that been your experience?

I used to sell on e-bay and it was sort of hit or miss. I didn't like the listing fees which you had to pay whether something sold or not.

I do not have anything against selling on ebay. I do sell some items on ebay but I do prefer selling on Amazon. FBA selling is just about completely hands free once your items are sent to Amazon. With ebay you have to take care of shipping to the customer and create a new listing for each new item you want to sell. I also find that prices and profits are higher on Amazon for the items I deal with.

Depending on the amount of inventory you deal with having an FBA business is not very time consuming IMO. Once the items are shipped to Amazon's warehouse it is pretty much hands off until you have to do another shipment. As for being detail oriented that is correct, correct in the sense that you have to do things correctly just as you should in any business or any aspect of life for that matter. In this sense it is not like ebay where items are regularly mis-represented, such as being listed as new when they are not new at all, happens all the time.

He hasn't been doing it in some time it seems; you haven't had to print your own packing slips for a while now.

You have to list condition notes for used items only; as a matter of fact, if the item is new, you are not supposed to list anything at all in the product description. As far as specifying the condition notes, you can be as detailed as you want; it all depends on what you think the buyer will expect when they buy your item. If the item is scuffed up and you list it "Like-new" but make no mention of the scuffs, you may get a negative review; you don't want negative reviews obviously. You don't have to be so detailed as to say it has three scuffs an inch long, but you could. Just accurately represent your product and you will be fine.

You do have the option to add the Amazon stickers yourself or you could have Amazon do it for an extra fee; to me, it's not so hard to add the stickers.

You do not have to do this 24/7 for full time. You only have to get the ball rolling and then maintain your inventory. You can do this as a slow start or jumpstart it by purchasing liquidation/wholesale inventory, but this is usually recommended for more advanced users. I have no problem recommending it to a newbie though; you just have to do your own due diligence and know that the liquidation game is a risk. The risk is that you could end up with a pile of junk that cannot be resold. Look for places that have manifested inventory and preferably that note the condition on the manifest. They aren't always 100% accurate, but will give you a better idea.

I put in maybe 15hours a week if I am lucky and return $1700-2400 bi-weekly; now, of that about 45-50% of that is pure profit. This is because of how I do it. Others operate under a fast nickel theory where they will buy a lot more to sell a lot quicker for less profit just to get the inventory moving. They operate at about 25-30% profit margins and will usually see higher bi-weekly payouts. And there are those who can do this full time and find 60%+ profit margins. It is all in how you play the game. I will say it took me almost a year at 10-20hrs a week input to reach the consistent $1700-2400 bi-weekly payout, and about 5 months of that was devoted to purchasing liquidation/wholesale lots to increase my inventory. There is a common saying amongst the FBA community that says you get more sales the more you send in, and it is absolutely true; I took a month off in January and my sales were starting to dwindle in February. I started sending in again in mid-February and they are more consistent. A lot is because many items from the inventory I send in will sell right away whereas others will take a few days or weeks. Inventory that has been in the warehouse for months is worth looking into either decreasing the price or disposing the item. Or have it sent back to you to sell on other venues, but me myself I hate selling on other venues because I hate having the inventory in my house and packing each item as they sell.

You can make a full time income doing part time work; it all depends on how much you want to earn.

The difference between the pro account and free account is that Amazon charges a $1 per item sold via the free account; if you intend to make any decent, even part time, income from Amazon, you are going to want to sell more than 40 items per month. At the point you are selling more than 40 items per month, you are already spending $40/mo on FBA so you may as well go with the pro account. If you haven't created a seller account with Amazon before, you can get the first month free so you can get the inventory you want to sell together, join, list, send in right away, and hope to get enough sales to cover the monthly fee when due the next month. They deduct the fees from your earnings if you have any so in many cases, you may never notice you are paying. I have never had to pay my fees out of pocket since I started.

I like FBA vs Ebay and similar platforms for the same reasons another user listed about it being easier and not having to store the inventory myself. Can you imagine having to house/store over 1,000 items? And that's small time!

Get started with FBA asap; it's easy money, easy to learn, easy to do, bi-weekly pay straight to your bank account, and truly is a "you get out what you put in" type of business. The more you put in, the more you get in return.

Amazon takes at least 15% of the money you collect right off the top, so I think it's better to find a way to sell and deliver your products without immediately losing 15%.