Selling Toys on Amazon this Holiday Season

Today’s post is contributed by my colleague, Kim Tarrant, who co-wrote our book, Amazon FBA Recipe for Success. Kim has sold on Amazon for several holiday seasons.

If you’re selling on Amazon there’s no doubt you’ve received the “Holiday Selling in Toys and Games” email from Amazon. These guidelines are implemented to maintain buyer confidence in Amazon during the holiday season. If you do not meet the performance criteria you will not be eligible to sell in the toys and games category from November 15, 2011 through the first week in January 2012. These guidelines are only applicable for merchant fulfilled items, they do not apply to items fulfilled by Amazon as long as your account is in good standing.

In order to sell in the toys and games category from November 15, 2011 and the first week in January 2012 you will need to meet these guidelines:

- Seller’s first sale on Amazon.com must be prior to 09/19/2011 (sale does not need to be Toy-specific).

- Seller must have processed and shipped at least 25 orders (do not need to be Toy-specific) during the 60 consecutive days preceding 11/1/2011.

- No greater than 1% short term order defect rate as of 11/1/2011.

- No greater than 2.5% pre-fulfillment cancel rate for the trailing 30-days preceding 11/1/2011.

- No greater than 5% late shipment rate for the trailing 30-days preceding 11/1/2011.

This email can seem intimidating at first but it’s really quite simple to achieve all the requirements. Amazon will periodically send emails to let you know where you stand on meeting the criteria. On or around September 21, Amazon sent an email to all sellers letting them know where they stand on meeting the criteria for the holiday season. Amazon will send several more notices out before the deadline of November 1, 2011. In my experience, these notifications will come around the end of September, the middle of October, the end of October and a few days before November 15, 2011. If you haven’t met the guidelines yet, don’t panic as there is still time. The sales quota guidelines (first sale prior to September 19 and at least 25 orders during the 60 days preceding November 1, 2011) can be met through merchant fulfilled orders OR orders fulfilled by Amazon.

If you’ve sold during the holidays in the past, you know it can be a wild a crazy ride. If you haven’t, relax, don’t get overwhelmed and take it one sale at a time.

Amazon Sellers Note - FBA Scout Update!

I received an email from Chris Green last week regarding a fantastic update to FBA Scout, a scouting program that gives information on products listed on Amazon. FBA Scout is the ultimate scouting tool for your Amazon FBA business (in my opinion, anyway). Since I began using it in June, I have been able to ramp up my Amazon business, add non-media products, and shop more efficiently for consumer products to sell on Amazon.



The new upgrade includes a column to the right called "Net Payout." Users are able to see the payout for a product sold through FBA based on the prices shown. This is great for us "math challenged" scouters. Here is a screen shot of what the upgrade looks like:







So let's say you found this Dunkin Donuts coffee on clearance at the grocery store for $8 a bag. After scanning it, you can quickly determine that your net payout on this item (best case scenario) is $20.74. If you paid $8 for it, your profit will be $12.74.



To see the net payout column, you can either turn your phone to landscape mode, or slide your finger across the screen to the left to view the additional column. To upgrade the net payout feature on your iPhone or iPad, go to the App Store on your phone and look for the upgrade. Upgrade for the Droid is coming soon!



If you aren't already using FBA Scout, click here for a special deal and get a free month to see how it works for you. Remember, there are other tools out there but you need to be the judge of what works best for you.



Resources for selling on Amazon's FBA Program:



eBay Coach Facebook Group - Chris is a member and can answer your FBA Scout questions directly on the group page.



Proven Amazon Course



FBA Recipe for Success

Amazon Pending Orders – Red Flags to Watch for

Many Amazon sellers are addicted to watching their pending sales. I have the pending screen bookmarked on my desktop computer, iPad, and iPhone. Checking pending orders is more than just being excited about what’s selling, it is a way to gauge the demand and popularity of an item and make more money because you are “in the know.”



When an item is in “pending,” it means that a buyer has committed to the purchase. If he purchased multiple items from different sellers, he may have checked the option to have his order sent in as few shipments as possible. If this is the case, your item is marked “pending” until the complete order ships. The buyer may also be waiting for other items to be included in his order and chooses to wait for it to ship. Items can be held in pending status for several weeks sometimes.



If you are not checking your pending sales, you are missing valuable information about Amazon buyer demand. Let’s say your FBA order hits the warehouse and you have some products in the box that you have never sold before. You want to pay close attention to how quickly those products are snapped up by buyers and how many each buyer wants. For example, a few weeks ago I sent in a seasonal food product. As soon as the order hit the warehouse, all 6 of them went into pending, 3 units going to 2 different buyers. By keeping an eye on my pending orders, I was able to determine that this product was hot, buyers wanted it, and I should go get more as quickly as possible. If I had waited until I received the “Amazon has shipped the item you sold” email, I could have missed the opportunity to purchase and resell some of this product, because the items didn’t actually ship out of FBA until a week later.



To check pending orders:





Click here for more information on using Amazon’s FBA program.

Make More Money on Amazon – Stop Undercutting the Competition!

Attn FBA Sellers: In case you were not aware, you do NOT have to be the lowest price to get the sale. (Kim and I will be going into detail on this in our book coming out in a few weeks.) We can all make money and share the sales at a higher price. Here is how.

Look at this product listing.



On the landing page it says, "Sold by Pillypaloo and Fulfilled by Amazon." Customers can buy the item directly from this page - it is called the page with the "buy box" - because you can buy it from here. Pillypaloo will get those sales. BUT......

What many Amazon sellers don't realize is that the seller featured on this page ROTATES. It isn't always going to be "Pillypaloo." It will rotate between however many FBA sellers have this item and are within 9 cents of each other. Even if it is 10 sellers all within 9 cents of each other. Any FBA seller will get a shot at being on the "buy box page" if they are within 9 cents of the lowest price.

Click here to look at how many FBA sellers have this product, and how they keep undercutting each other by a few cents. Undercutting by pennies is a silly marketing strategy and not necessary to get sales on Amazon. This thinking causes a race to the bottom and eventually, nobody wins.

If you are selling on Amazon, please stop playing "the penny game." You don't have to! I am selling a product right now with an $18 profit, and thankfully, I am assuming, my competitors know about the buy box. We are all holding firm at the same price. I am getting sales every few hours and so are my competitors. We all win.

Amazon is NOT eBay. You don't have to be the lowest price. This is especially true if Amazon does not have the product. Slow and steady wins the race - don't be in such a hurry to sell something!

If you don't understand, please ask questions on my Facebook group. This is really great information to help you make more money - to help us ALL make more money.

I am working on a new information product that will explain these types of issues about selling on Amazon in great detail. Make sure you are subscribed to my blog or a member of my Facebook group so that you can be notified when the information product is released.

How to Use eBay for Amazon Inventory

Here is a cool trick for using eBay to obtain inventory to sell on Amazon, especially books. If you are looking to get into the book business selling used or new books on Amazon, you can do this at home, at your convenience, without a special book scanner.

If you aren't selling books already, you will need to poke around on Amazon and look for books that are selling for $20-$30. (Click here for the types of books and categories to look in.)

If you are already selling books on Amazon, pay attention to your sales reports. When you sell a book for a high price on Amazon, go look for it on eBay and see if you can buy it at a low enough price to resell it on Amazon for a decent profit. For example, I recently sold the book, "Disney's Aladdin - The Making of an Animated Film." Here is a screen shot of the Amazon sale:



My profit on this item was $23.44 after my cost and Amazon fees. I consider that a high profit book sale. Next, I checked on eBay for this book, and found the following listing:



This book on eBay would cost me a total of $6.34. So, I can buy this book on eBay, receive it in the mail, and list it on Amazon for $32.97 (the same as my other sale). When it sells, I will make a profit of $20.34:

Cost to buy on eBay = $6.34
Amazon fees after sale = $6.29
Total investment = $12.63

Amazon sale price = $32.97 - $12.63 = $20.34

The moral of this story: Pay attention to your sales and scope out eBay for the product. Many sellers don't know how to price books and don't know their value. You can snag some high profit books very easily and resell them without ever leaving your house!

For more easy and clever tricks like this, CLICK HERE to check out Skip McGrath's eBook about selling used books on the internet.