Some good reasons to consider Fulfillment by Amazon

For a while now I've been reading an excellent blog by Randy Smythe, who provides some interesting statistics about his Amazon selling, especially how Fulfillment by Amazon has been getting additional sales for him.

Randy ran his numbers this weekend and found a unmistakable pattern:

In January, FBA shipped 796 orders for me.

• Amazon Prime Customers- Made up 20% (157) of those orders.


• Super-Saver Shipping - Made up 53% (423) of those orders


• Regular Shipping - Made up 27% (216) of those orders.

As you can see, free shipping is a huge incentive for buyers, and it seems FBA orders are making up a growing percentage of Randy's business. (You can list some of your items via FBA while continuing to sell other items directly to buyers.)

Why do I even mention these numbers? Because, if you are not listing and selling using FBA, you are missing out on a huge number of Amazon buyers, who want free shipping (I still sold 27% of my orders to customers who paid for S&H as well).

Read the rest of Randy's post for an illustration of why buyers regularly choose items listed with FBA. (Hint: It's all about the shipping fee and the sorting advantage FBA gives your listing.)

Judging from the FBA Message Board, Amazon is still working the kinks out of this program. Hardly a day goes by without an FBA merchant screaming about how Amazon has fouled up their account. Perhaps the problems are confined to particular warehouses, while other warehouses are managing FBA without too many hiccups.

Judging from Randy's reports, FBA seems to be developing into an important sales tool already.

Will eBay boycott bring boatloads of sellers to Amazon?

The week-long eBay boycott set to begin tomorrow is getting huge play in the media. Sellers are outraged about a series of changes to feedback, fees, and search results. Here's a good rundown of the changes at CNN/Money:

• Fee hike sparks seller rebellion

• Backlash: Rival sites court eBay sellers

• Outraged sellers plot strike

• PayPal funds freeze draws fire

• Talk back: eBay forum discussion

• 5 sellers who ditched eBay

And here's a YouTube video that states the grievances of sellers devastatingly well.




In part, it says:

New CEO John Donahoe] called eBay sellers and buyers "nothing more than noise." He then proceeded to call eBay buyers and sellers "a flea market" and implied that he is ashamed to be a part of it.

In his very next breath, Mr. Donahoe then announced yet another eBay fee increase. This increase raises fees by up to 66 percent higher for some sellers. eBay management had the bright idea to market this increase as a "fee decrease," blatantly insulting the intelligence of millions of buyers and sellers worldwide."

True enough. But as noted by Ina Steiner on AuctionBytes, the impact of the week-long boycott will be hard to measure. eBay has coyly scheduled a temporary listing fee reduction to coincide with the boycott.

Meanwhile, Amazon is doing all it can to attract eBay refugees. "We want all sellers on our site," Amazon's business solutions chief, Matt Williams, told Steiner.

eBay 101: Selling on eBay For Part-time or Full-time Income, Beginner to PowerSeller in 90 Days

Amazon redesigns payment accounts

The excitement never stops at Amazon. Now they're redesigning the payments section of seller accounts. Click twice on the picture at right for an enlarged illustration. Here's the announcement:

Soon we will be upgrading the Get Paid section of your Seller Account. Below is a preview of the redesign. Please note, these changes are designed to make this feature easier to use. No fees are being changed or updated. Improvements include:

• A completely new interface that makes it easy to examine your financial data.
• No longer need the additional log-in step currently required.
• Quick access to other settlement periods.
• A set of Quick Filters to quickly refine a list of transactions.
• Easy drill down to transaction details and order information.

We know that access to your Payments account is key to your business; therefore, we will provide continued access to the current interface while you move to the new one.

As always, we welcome your comments. Please feel free to send feedback to sya-changes@amazon.com.

Thank you for selling on Amazon!

eBay cuts media listing fees, but shuts the book on feedback

It seems eBay is starting to recognize that sellers are really steamed about the recent policy changes. In response, the company is making what looks like a token adjustments in fees in some categories, including books. But there's no give on the issue of feedback--sellers will no longer be able to leave negative or neutral ratings for bad buyers.

eBay is slashing insertion fees for these categories by up to 50 percent. For example, auctions with start prices of $1.00 to $9.99 will cost 25 cents in insertion fees, compared with 40 cents under the previous scenario.

Here are the changes, effective February 20:

In the Books, Music, Movies and Video Game software categories, eBay will offer lower insertion fees for the first three insertion tiers as follows:

$0.01 – 0.99 (auction-style only)
Original Categories Insertion Fee: $ .20
New Media fee: $ .10

$1.00 - 9.99 (auction-style and fixed price)
Original Categories Insertion Fee: $ .40
New Media fee: $ .25

$10.00 – 24.99 (auction-style and fixed price)
Original Categories Insertion Fee: $ .60
New Media fee: $ .35

But eBay marketplace honcho Lorrie Norrington pooh-poohed seller concerns that the recent feedback changes would hurt business. "We will proceed with our plans to evolve our feedback system and with the weighting of Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) in search, as announced," she said. "They are both central to our plans and will aid in providing a great buying experience from sellers buyers can trust."

By a landslide, eBay sellers say feedback changes will hurt business

Nearly 99 percent of eBay sellers responding to a survey last week said the site's recent feedback changes will hurt business. The only thing sellers were happy about was enhanced PayPal protection for Powersellers:

	Neg	Pos
Feedback changes	98.7%	1.3%
Fee changes	86.3%	13.7%
Best Match search visibility changes	83.3%	16.7%
Seller Standards	84.9%	15.1%
PayPal Protection for eBay PowerSellers	29.6%	70.4%

Read the full report here at AuctionBytes.

After eBay policy changes, Amazon sees surge of new sellers

No, it's not your imagination, there really are a lot more people selling on Amazon lately.

Amazon claims it has seen a spike in new sellers after several controversial policy changes by eBay.

"We've certainly heard of frustration with other marketplaces, and we've seen a significant increase in registrations," said Matt Williams, Amazon's business solutions general manager.

Longtime eBay seller Debi Lee said Amazon has worked well for certain items in her repertoire. She tired of eBay's tactics and now uses the site primarily to educate consumers about her products...

The full article is posted here at Fortune Small Business.

eBay will give special deal to PowerSellers

Ever since its founding, eBay has emphasized its "level playing field." That meant small sellers were treated exactly the same as the megasellers, and nobody had a special advantage.

Now, with longtime CEO Meg Whitman on her way out the door and with eBay trying to revive its growth, it's offering a sweetheart deal for PowerSellers who maintain certain feedback ratings. Check out the comments at the bottom of this New York Times blog post, the first one calls for a Feb. 18 boycott:

Specifically, the discount applies to PowerSellers, those who sell more than $1,000 a month on eBay and meet other criteria. They will get a discount of 5 percent or 15 percent off the final value fee—the percentage of the sale price eBay takes—depending on their feedback ratings.

The discounts are tied to eBay’s new “detailed seller rating” system that asks buyers to rank sellers on a one to five point scale four categories: item description, communication, shipping time, and shipping and handling charges.

Have you ever mooched a book?

Here's an interesting article in Fortune written by someone who's just discovered the book-sharing site BookMooch but is concerned that booksellers like us are taking advantage of it. It's a new twist on the age-old question of whether it's ethical to resell books from thrift shops, etc.

I fear Internet entrepreneurs may be taking advantage of Bookmooch... After all, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people these days using the Internet to sell used books for cash. And once the idea of resale outside the system is introduced, Bookmooch's point scheme becomes close to irrelevant; booksellers would have no problem giving away hundreds of books they can't sell in order to acquire books they can.

Q&A: Is climate control essential for storing used books?

QUESTION: Most of the books I have for sale are stored on shelves in my garage. I keep the more expensive books inside my house.

My garage is clean and dry, and the books are well off the ground, but I am concerned about the temperature extremes. I live in New England, so it can get quite cold in the winter. In the summer I used a dehumidifier, which definitely made a difference. But there is little I can do about the cold. What effect, if any, will the dry, cold air have on these garage stored books?

ANSWER: When I started selling books online full-time, I lived in a one-bedroom apartment. I had to go shopping for storage space, and all the storage units with heating/air conditioning seemed outrageously expensive. Since I couldn't afford climate-controlled storage for my books, I got a regular Public Storage unit, which resembled a single-car garage. It had a rickety orange door that rolled down in front; it was about as thick as a tin can. On the right is a picture of the place -- I must have lugged 5 tons of books in and out of there.

So for my first three or four years, my books weren't protected from temperate extremes at all. Pretty soon, I had about 15,000 books listed (I had to get two more storage units and was paying $1,200 a month is storage fees) and I was worried about the effect on the books. With all the temperature and humidity changes, I was afraid the books would crack to pieces.

Fortunately, I never noticed any damage to any of the books -- except for one that got mildewed. That's what I think the main problem is -- mold and mildew. I never had much of a problem with it, even though the summertime here in Virginia is very humid.

Also, I turn over inventory relatively quickly. My average book isn't sitting there for years, deteriorating all the time. Within a few months, the average book is sold and shipped to a buyer. If my books had been sitting around like this for years, maybe some damage would become apparent.

In my storage units, I set out mothballs and bug repellent but I'm not sure whether those did any good or not. I never found any silverfish. Of course, the books worth more than $100 I kept indoors. And now I have a big basement for storing all my books, and I have better book-preservation habits.

One hassle I did have at my storage units: During the winters, whenever we got a big snow, I'd have to shovel the snow from the front of my storage doors, and it would take forever. That's a great way to spend your morning -- huffing and puffing, sweating like a pig in your winter coat, with a baby crying in the car. But I could never afford to wait a day or two until Public Storage got around to plowing -- I had to get my orders out.

Anyone else have stories about makeshift book storage or techniques for protection from the elements?

Just because a book is old doesn't mean it's valuable

Here's something I've never seen before: Someone wrote into their local newspaper with a question about rare books, and they actually gave a pretty good answer in the newspaper.

The question was:

I have a play book on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It is 4 1/2 by 5 1/2 inches. It is a hardback book printed in 1917 by the McMillan Co. It is 173 pages. How could I find out if it is worth anything?

The answer is here in Mississippi's Clarion-Ledger.

Another book lover mourns the pre-Internet days

Here's a nice little newspaper biography about Wayne Kee, a rabid book collector in the Northwest.

He tells a good story about passing up on a chance to buy an1814 edition of the Lewis and Clark journals for around $6,000, something he could sell today for $200,000.

But he seems to have mixed feeling about the Internet's impact on book collecting and selling:

Before the Internet came along, it was a wonderful world out
there, finding books. Now that the Internet has come along, everything has come up now, and you have a true market in books. Now you put them on eBay, and you can no longer find something at a decent price. But the one thing that it has
done is brought out a lot of books that people didn’t know about before.

OK, who's going to tell this guy about Amazon?

eBay's Griff offers shaky defense of feedback changes

After the feedback changes announced this week at eBay, I wouldn't be surprised if there's an angry, torch-wielding mob beating down the front door of eBay's headquarters right now.

The new feedback policy prevents sellers from giving a bad buyer a neutral or negative feedback.

Huh? I've had about 5,000 transactions on eBay/Half and I've never left a negative for a buyer. But I should have the right to do so. It's called checks and balances. It's what regulates eBay's marketplace.

As you might expect, eBay's employees are all defending the decision, despite the outrage from sellers. Today the dean of eBay University, Griff, weighed in on his blog. He argues that eBay feedback had become meaningless because too many buyers are afraid to hit a bad seller with negative feedback, even when it's deserved.

The way it's supposed to work, Griff argues, is that sellers should automatically give buyers positive feedback. Then, buyers won't fear a retaliatory negative rating by the seller. Then, according to Griff's logic, the feedback scores of crummy sellers won't be inflated, and buyers will rest easy.

Here's how Griff puts it exactly:

Many sellers maintained a 99-100% positive Feedback rating by building their whole business strategy around “customer first” by providing the best possible experience for all their buyers. Let’s call them “A1” sellers. The majority of these “A1” sellers left Feedback for their buyers upon receipt of payment...

Many other sellers maintained a 99-100% by exploiting the system’s inherent built-in weakness: the implied threat of retaliation for a received negative. These sellers – we’ll call them “A2” sellers – never left Feedback first, but always waited to leave Feedback after the buyer left Feedback for them.

Griff, I beg to differ. Many sellers--like me, for instance-- who've been burned by irresponsible buyers now make it a habit of leaving feedback only after they've heard that the customer is satisfied. And in most cases, we know whether the buyer is happy when they leave feedback. (Needless to say, if they're not happy, I fix things.)

Griff, I'm not pulling this out of thin air, eBay itself approves this practice. It's in black and white, right here in eBay's official Feedback Tutorial:

Either approach is acceptable.... One reason sellers wait until a buyer has left feedback is they take the feedback as the signal that the buyer is satisfied with the purchase and no further customer support is needed.

Frankly, to be told I'm an "A2 seller" on eBay is pretty offensive to me. I've bent over backwards to ensure that each one of my customers was happy with their purchase.

What's your take on this?

Amazon's move to e-content threatens booksellers

Cutthroat price competition keeps driving bookseller after bookseller out of business. But the bigger threat is Amazon's move into digital content delivery.

I'm not too worried about e-books at this point. Amazon's Kindle isn't keeping me awake at night. Apple's Steve Jobs says Kind is dead on arrival because nobody reads anymore. Frankly, I'm more concerned about downloadable audiobooks.

Being able to sell instant downloads of audiobooks for iPod and MP3 player is going to fatten Amazon's profits. Not only does this totally lock out third-party sellers, it even cuts out book printers and distributors, the whole industry supply chain! All Amazon needs to do is add a few bits to its computer.

On Thursday Amazon said that it had agreed to buy Audible, the Web’s largest provider of downloadable audiobooks, for $300 million. Amazon isn’t saying much about what it will do with the company, but bringing audiobooks directly to its Web site and to the Kindle is the obvious first step.

I'm not a computer geek by any stretch of the imagination, but I bought an MP3 player about a year ago and have worn out three sets of headphones since. I've been really surprised with the quality of the audiobook experience -- I don't know whether it's my imagination or not, but I seem to absorb more of a book's content when I'm listening to a good reader.

Someday soon, everyone is going to have a cellphone with the same capability of these MP3 player.