Selling on Amazon - What am I missing here?

Probably.Amazon does that themselves.

Supply and demand! LOL, but in actuality if there are 1000 people trying to sell their copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone, You are not likely to get more than .10 - .25 cents. That being said I sell alot of books on Half.com (owned by eBay) and seldom do I ever list at the minimum price although there may be several copies listed at that price. As a matter of fact on half I never list below .99 as that will insure that my listings are also shown in eBay.

But all in all there are a lot of people that make their money on the S&H charges since it seldom costs more than $2.38 to ship by media mail.

Maybe I'll take a look at Half.com then, thanks. This is pretty frustrating, I don't understand why people insist on destroying the market for their goods but I guess after all these years on eBay I'm used to it.

Since you have been on eBay a while I'm sure you are aware of all the backlash due to the excessive fees ebay has been charging...I have tried a few alternative auction sites with some success. A Google search for auctions sites will turn up a verity of choices. I have used Half.com as well as Addoway and have received decent results. I know it is hard to get away from eBay especially if it is what you are used to but it is probably best to get out there and look at the alternatives.

Good luck
-Chewster

I feel your pain. I was doing very well site flipping on eBay; operating in a market with only a few competitors. When I first entered the market I noticed that the starting price generally for sites was about $30, so I listed at that price.

In comes a bunch a sellers who don't know how to compete except slashing prices and they all list at $0.99. Of course buyers love this and quickly realize they don't need to bid higher than $3 to get their hands on a site since the market has become a 'buyers market'.

End result, earnings went from 2-3K a month all the way down to a couple hundred. I don't even list anymore because of this.

So again, I feel your pain.

Hav

Geez, that seems like an awful lot of work to go through just to make $1 or $2.

Making the listing, then answering questions, then packing it up and taking it to the post office. Egads!

Interesting. I guess you could slap the books in the envelope while you were watching tv and with bulk lisings maybe it's not as much work as I thought! I have a basement full of books..........

I've sold some books on occasion for more money than competing
Amazon listings by:

- offering expedited shipping.

- mentioning which state it ships from (implies faster delivery to nearby states)

- going into detail about the condition and saying something like: "this copy is so clean it would make a great gift"

- including a bonus CD of related ebooks and/or public domain classics. ie. "bonus CD from seller included!" - then you tell what's on it.

- Try to grab a bit of attention with the first dozen words. People can click "more" and Amazon supports quite lengthy descriptions.

- I've included personal comments on the book if I've read it.


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I just kind of play at selling books on Amazon, but I've had some
insights just the same.

Some books, textbooks particularly, are only in demand according to
college schedules. If you sit on a text for awhile you may find all
the lower-priced ones sell out and you get your price when some
professor assigns it as a class text and 30 or more college students
make a run on Amazon to get it.

One advantage of Ebay is you can package a bunch of related
books that would be tough to sell on Amazon individually and sell
them as a lot.

I haven't tried including bonus books with Amazon listings, but it is
worth considering.

By and large, fiction is hard to sell in my experience. Most non-fiction
is too, but there are sweet spots, topics and particular titles
and authors for which there is always a decent demand - certain
philosophers, mathematicians, and cosmologists, for example.

eBay and Amazon selling is a race to the bottom.

Years ago I was selling stuff on eBay and had a lot of business, taking in an average $1,000 a day. My profit on a typical item was less than $1. Even with the shipping and handling I only cleared about $1. And my wife and daughter used to spend all day packaging the orders. Then I would get flack from a few people because my shipping costs were so high. They were exactly the same as everyone else that sold that product. By the way, my sales price, including s/h was less than half the retail price for that product.

Then someone came in and sold that product for even less than the rest of us were and I quit selling it. There was no way for them to make money at that price. For that and the fact that it was so much work for so little return, we gave it up. But at that time, I had accumulated about $25,000 in my bank, so we weren't too unhappy. Of course, most of that came from one product that I did make a lot of profit on. Unfortunately that product became unavailable to me. Besides, Microsoft was getting a little upset at me for selling MS Office Pro. eBay told me that Microsoft was going to have their lawyers come call on me. But they never did.

Here is another little hint for squeezing a few extra cents from your eBay, Half and Amazon sales (especially if you ship a lot of CDs/DVDs). Most people ship by Media Mail simply because it appears to be the cheapest option. Media Mail is $2.38 for the first pound, but you can ship up to 9 ounces in a large envelope/package by First Class for a cheaper price (i.e. 9 ounces is $2.24), and guess what? most DVDs weigh in around 5 ounces ($1.56), most paperbacks will come in under the 9 ounce as well.

Get you a cheap scale and weigh your items, you might be surprised!

And, you can list those items with with a blurb that offers free First Class shipping, you will pay less, your customers will feel like they get a better deal, and they will get their items faster.