Selling online help

[Gilly]

I have a large amount of books I want to get rid of and I'm kind of intimidated by the Amazon marketplace. How can sellers beat the guys who are selling mass quantities of books at cents a piece? I know there is money to be made in the shipping credit, but I want to know if it's a waste of my time to list 100-150 books when it seems like they'll never sell considering the competition. I've looked online and it seems like people have success but I don't understand how you could. Anybody here have success with this?

[yesno]

I've sold a ton of stuff through Amazon.  There's basically no way to "beat" people who will sell at a lower price than you.  If you sell a book for one penny, yeah, the shipping credit might leave you a little left over, but it's Amazon and not you that determines what the shipping credit is.  For some larger books, I've actually had to pay more for shipping than the credit provided.

Just pick the books that have a decent going rate on AZ and sell those.  Take the cheap ones, and do them as a lot on eBay or trade them at a local bookseller.

[bruce]

Just pick the books that have a decent going rate on AZ and sell those.  Take the cheap ones, and do them as a lot on eBay or trade them at a local bookseller.

Yesno hit the nail on the head, don't get stuck listing books that will just sit there. If you do the ebay thing group them together in bundles of the same author or same genre.

Used book stores pay crap in cash if they even do that. I've sold new HC after reading them for review and only got a fraction of the actual price. Usually you can get a good amount in store credit but still nothing that will equal what you are turning in.

[Gilly]

Thanks. What are your pricing tips and when do you decide not to list? For instance I have a copy of A History of Violence that seems to have 44 sellers at about 5 bucks a pop. Why do people list it as more than that and is that too many sellers to have a chance to actually sell it?

[yesno]

Thanks. What are your pricing tips and when do you decide not to list? For instance I have a copy of A History of Violence that seems to have 44 sellers at about 5 bucks a pop. Why do people list it as more than that and is that too many sellers to have a chance to actually sell it?

I just base it on all kinds of factors.

For instance, if you have enough books listed, you can afford to sell at lower rates, if you assume you'll be able to batch together your trips to the post office.  But you don't want to go through all the hassle just to ship a single $5 book.

Amazon doesn't do a listing fee, so you can afford to list things that don't sell.

[Gilly]

Sounds good. I'm gonna begin the journey tonight! Luckily, I have a post office on the way to work and I don't work until 2pm so this might be right up my alley.

[herbie]

good luck. i sold some books on amazon in january and made about $100.
i've also been selling off my cd collection and made about $400 in the past two months, probably off of about 60-70 cds.

[ughwhy]

When I'm buying books from Half.com I gravitate towards the sellers with solid ratings but who clearly aren't superstores, just because their descriptions are more trustworthy. A lot of those places just put the same description in for everything. I like a seller who tells me how many cracks in the spine & underlined paragraphs I'll have to contend with. Also some folks like to know if you're a smoke/pet-free home.

Service! That's what I'm saying.

[Jason]

Would you say that its better to sell cds and books on Amazon than on ebay?

[Gilly]

Would you say that its better to sell cds and books on Amazon than on ebay?

I don't know. You definitely can get a better price on Amazon but both suck if you have a bunch of stuff that is somewhat popular. You just can't compete. I don't like Amazon's 3.99 shipping credit because that won't cover costs a lot of the time unless you have extra boxes lying around. I'm just selling some stuff that I can get more than 10 bucks for and calling it a day.

I'd say if you have some rare stuff go Ebay because you're only competing with people who are selling it that week and you can get a lot more than you think and usually get fair value. For other stuff sell on Amazon.

[Josh]

Also you don't have to worry about getting burned by nonpayers through Amazon.