Amazon is great for reselling high end electronics to low end computer parts, books, DVDs, and other media. Amazon is the backbone of my entire street hustle, as everything from Craigslist and garage sales (which I’ll explain later) feed into my Amazon store. Not good for overly heavy items as Amazon gives a flat shipping credit, so if you’re shipping a 50 pound printer from California to New York, that $30 credit ain’t gonna cut it. I call this the shipping credit difference issue. Now this issue isn’t always a negative, like if I shipped a printer from Cali to Cali, I can get it shipped for $10-$15, and that $20-$30 credit means you got $10-$15 in your pocket. The hope is that the positives will outweigh the negatives, it is a luck of the draw.
This could be specific to my store, for instance, I got two DSL routers the other day from a curb alert, yeah DSL like from 2002, and you plug in a freakin phone cord. Both purchasers were from the mid-west, same with printers, there seems to be a lot of older-model printers that sell to the mid-west or the east coast. It’s likely that older customers find it easier and cheaper to simply replace the broken item with the same exact item, rather than upgrading and keeping up with the times.
One of the key factors to a successful Amazon store is having low dollar volume to supplement your high dollar low qty items. There are a ton of items that are priced at $0.01 and you may wonder how they even make money selling a book for a penny.
For example, this John Grisham book is priced at $0.01 for paperback. Well this goes back to the flat shipping credit, which is usually $3-$5 for media. That means they will ship out the book for $1, and they’ll make $2-$4 on each item, multiply that by 1,000 items and that penny sure does pay off. But not everybody is going to have 1,000 items to sell, but what this does is it also increases your seller performance rating which is EVERYTHING to Amazon. The thing with Amazon, is that they will always side with the customer, although you are technically a customer too, I am referring to the purchaser. Always, you will never win, but this is part of doing business, and that’s why you need to have volume so that 1 return out of 10 items sold, doesn’t bring down your performance so much. If you have 100 items sold, and 1 return, you’re doing great. Also, for big ticket items make sure to write down the serial number, just in case there is a return you can match up the serial number to the item returned, to make sure you’re not getting jipped.
Another big thing with Amazon is that customers (and Amazon) want a full package, meaning if you buy a router, the customer expects there to be a power cord and an ethernet cord. If they buy a printer, they expect there to be a power cord, and either a USB or ethernet cord. Even if you state in the item description that it’s missing these items, the customer doesn’t really pay attention to that, and will get the item, file a return, and you get screwed. If you’re able to include other items such as manual, installation CD, original box, etc, it’s even better.
