Who sells on Amazon?

[npmommie]

I have been seeing others mention they sell on amazon. so if you sell there, what do you sell? just books and dvds?
i have books to get rid of, i was going to go to flea market with my stash, but maybe i will do amazon.

 

[Arky]

I don't sell on Amazon. When I looked into it, I thought there fees were higher. I sell on half.com. It is so simple!!! There are no fees to list anything, only when the books sell. You have to pay to ship it and then that is reimbursed when half.com pays you, which is twice a month.

That's what I have found works for me!

 

[annsteere]

I've sold on Amazon for several years.

The rule of thumb is that if it is a common book (best seller, Oprah's bookclub) but not a "classic (Grapes of Wrath, Great Gatsby) you won't profit much from the book. Many popular books on Amazon sell for one cent!

If you are creative in your wrapping you can still make something on shipping.

So, I buy saran wrap at the Dollar Tree and triple wrap the book. Then, I cut cardboard the size of the book. Wrap that in a clean grocery paper bag turned inside out and cut to fit. That's a bit of puttering but I figure I'm helping the earth by not buying a new mailing envelope for every book.

Old textbooks can cost you money to sell. They sell for a pittance and cost more to mail than the standard shipping allowance.

Odd books are profitable enough to be well worth the trouble to me. This weekend I picked up a children's book about the symphonic piece "Peter and the Wolf" for a quarter. I sold it in less than 24 hours for 12.99

 

[daughtersrus]

I've been selling my DD's college textbooks on Amazon for a few years now. I just sold the last one from last semester. I decided to wait until Aug to list them instead of last May because generally the closer you get to the start of class, the more people are willing to pay.

My goal is to sell them and get back what I can. I usually list mine for a little less then the lowest price for the same condition book because Amazon lists the lowest price first. I also buy most of their books on line as well from whichever site has the best price. I started keeping track of what I paid to compare to what I sell them for. I've been pleasantly surprised to sell some books for more than I paid.

Amazon takes a fee and then a commission. They give you $3.99 for standard shipping which is media mail and it generally doesn't cost that much. They give you $6.99 to ship express and I can usually get the book into a flat-rate envelope that costs around $5.00 to ship.

Again, for me it's about getting some of the money back and not about making a huge profit. It's definitely more than what they bookstore on campus would give us.

Amazon just deposited about $350 into my checking account for the 6 books that I sold. Not too bad!

 

[Miffy]

DH and I sell a lot of stuff on amazon, mostly books, CDs, and DVDs.

We NEVER sell anything for one cent. The people who do this are either power sellers (or whatever they call them--translation: people who pay amazon a hefty monthly fee and do a huge volume of business) or people who've just started out selling and think they'll make their money back with the shipping reimbursement.

Look on amazon and see what your exact item in the same condition is being offered for by other sellers. If it's less than $4, it's probably not worth your time. Amazon deducts $0.99 right off the top of everything you sell and charges a commission on top of that.

If you're selling an immensely popular book, check on half.com as well. The fees are less (as someone already said), however, the market for books on amazon is much more active.

For CDs and DVDs, we often check the price on half.com as well, but it's quite often exactly the same as amazon's prices, when you take the fees into consideration. For example, it'll be selling for $1.00 less on half.com, which is the extra fee you'd pay amazon.

Besides books, CDs, and DVDs, you can sell anything on amazon that's listed for sale there, for example electronics, computer stuff, appliances.

Make sure of the condition of your item before you sell it and list it in the appropriate condition category. If the item has flaws, list them. Remember that a heavy hardcover book will cost you more to ship (even media mail) than a small paperback, so take that into consideration when setting your price. Sometimes heavier books are not worth it (to us) to sell, since we'd make like $0.50 profit from the sale. But only you can decide what's acceptable to you. If you have enough items, maybe $0.50 profit per sale is worth it to you.

Set a mental lowest-profit-acceptable-to-you price and when the item isn't worth that much, donate it or recycle it or give it away instead of trying to sell it.

And, finally, the best way to sell stuff is to price it at least somewhat below the lowest price already offered for the item in the same condition as yours. For sure, those are the items that sell first.

HTH.

 

[mpls_mm]

When you say high demand but not popular what do you mean? I got a huge load of books from the 30's and 40's but haven't done too well on Ebay, has anyone ha dluck with stuff like that on Amazon?

 

[Miffy]

When you say high demand but not popular what do you mean? I got a huge load of books from the 30's and 40's but haven't done too well on Ebay, has anyone ha dluck with stuff like that on Amazon?

Hi--

I'm not the person who posted that comment, but I do have a bit of experience selling books, and, generally, one does much better on amazon than on eBay. The main reason is that that's where people look for books.

There's only one way to find out what your books might be worth--that's to look each one of them up on amazon and see what other people are selling them for. It takes some time, but it doesn't take forever, and you'll find out if the books are worth selling. They may or may not be. It depends on the books and their condition. Sometimes things that one thinks of as being valuable are in fact worthless, but you can be surprised in the other--the pleasant--direction, too.

Take an hour, sit down with your books, and start looking them up. Set a bottom price that's acceptable to you. If the comparable copies of that book are selling for less than that, put the book in a bag to donate somewhere. It's really easy once you get started. You can probably look up the pricing on 100 books in a couple of hours, maximum.

--miffy--