USPS Rate Changes May 2012

The United States Postal Service will be changing their rates starting the first week in May 2012. Their first-class service is being reclassified from expedited, (which delivery time is between 2 to 3 days) to standard shipping service (with an estimated delivery time between 2 to 5 days). The name will be changed from First-Class Mail to First-Class Package.

All vendors who have online stores need to be ready when these changes occur. Please warn your customers of the upcoming changes, and reset your online store items with the new shipping options. If you sell on eBay, you will have a little help in updating your listings.

E-Bay will automatically make these changes on the listings that have First-Class Mail as a shipping service option during the first week in May. For those who list expedited shipping, it is required that the wording is changed in your shipping descriptions. For customers who want a true expedited delivery of your products, you may use a different service that offers a 2 to 3 day delivery time.

Take a moment to review your stores and your listings to make sure you are still able to meet the shipping time frame as show your customers. Click here for more information.


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Amazon Now Offers Labeling Service for FBA

Image Courtesy of FBAPower

Amazon is expanding its services to help support the FBA seller. The recently announced FBA Label Service can help simplify sending in your products for Amazon fulfillment. Any item that does not qualify for Stickerless, Commingled Inventory and/or has a barcode qualifies for this service. For the fee of 20 cents per item, Amazon will label your products once they are received in the warehouse.

This could be a good option if you do not have a laser-printer readily available, are all out of labels, or have a large shipment but not the time to label each item. This may really work for you if labeling your items for shipment is a part of the process you really do not love.

With a large shipment, it will save a lot of time. With this service, you will not need to label each print out the labels and sticker each item before shipment. While this may cut into your profit margin, the time savings may be worth it.

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My Right Hand Auction

We all use eBay to sell items for different reasons. We sell things we no longer need. We use it to sell great finds from the stores we shop. One eBay seller is using it to get rid of a bit of bad luck!

The seller seems to be ready for better times that apparently include getting rid of her hand!

I am selling my hand as it brings nothing but bad luck to my life.

It has been trapped in a door, bitten by a dog, burned by a flexilead and broken in a fall. I also sawed through the thumb a few years ago and the scar causes pain occasionally.

Please note: my watch is not included.

A screenshot of the listing is below:





The seller, located in Wantage, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, offered local pickup for her item. Things may be looking up for the seller since she had two bidders and was able to sell her unlucky right hand for about $1.57 US. Do you think the bidding would have gone higher if she had included the watch? On to better days!

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Amazon to Open Fifth Indiana Fulfillment Center

Amazon FBA grows again! Amazon has announced its FIFTH fulfillment center for Jeffersonville, Indiana. The new center is slated to open later this year and will employ more than 1.050 new jobs by 2015. The warehouse is expected to open Fall 2012.

This center will be approximately 900,000 square feet. It will join the centers in Indianapolis, Whitestown, and Plainstown to create more than 4-million square feet of warehouse space for Amazon in the state of Indiana.

Amazon is investing more than $150 million dollars to build this facility in an area of southern Indiana that has a rapidly growing transportation and distribution industry. According to the announcement from the company, Indiana has more than 1.1 billion tons of freight travel through its state, making it the fifth busiest state for commercial freight traffic in the nation. How is that possible? Indiana its more than 4,700 miles of mainline rail track, three international airports and more than 11,000 highway miles.

The new fulfillment center is also good news for the Jeffersonville and southern Indiana areas which were heavily damaged a tornado in early 2012.


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Amazon Pricing - How to Swim With Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of this series. This post will give you some ideas on pricing an item, both Merchant Filled and FBA for which there are no other offers. This is my strategy, ask other sellers you will get other answers. These are just some guidelines I give my clients.

If the item is being sold merchant filled, and there are no FBA sellers and Amazon does not have it, add the price of the item, the shipping cost, and $2. This is a starting point. If the item sells quickly, you can raise your price. If this is a repeatable item that you can source more of, you can continue to raise your price to find the threshold of what a customer will pay. If the amount is near $25, I always try the $25 price to make the item available to Super Saver Shipper customers. Even if the merchant filled + shipping + $2 price is around $20, I will try $25 to see what happens. You can always reduce the price later if the item isn't moving.

If the item is listed on Amazon, but shows the red message, "Currently unavailable, sign up to be notified when this item becomes available," this is a good sign!

This means that the item has sold on Amazon but is now out of stock. These items are usually hard to find, perhaps discontinued, and buyers really have signed up to be notified when the item is available (when you list it MF or it hits the FBA center), and you can set the price. In this case, you want to go to Google and search for the product to see what it sells for on other sites. (You may find some more to buy this way, too!) Or, view eBay completed listings to check for recent sales. Look closely at the Google results. You may find posts on message boards where people are discussing the product, how it is hard to find, and what they will pay. For example, on the product above, Tone's Steak Dust, I found this article posted recently:


The article does not mention how much the item cost on Amazon, but you certainly get the idea that consumers in search of this item are being directed to Amazon to find it. Rule of thumb is to price your item 3 times your cost, but in this situation with an unavailable item, you will want to go much higher. If the item doesn't sell within a reasonable amount of time (I allow 2 months), you can lower the price. If the item sells quickly, you can raise the price to find the threshold of what the customer will pay.

It is very important here to take your own preferences, opinions, buying habits, and budget out of the equation when pricing for Amazon. You must never think, "Nobody would pay that." How do you know what everybody would do? Just because YOU wouldn't pay that price, does not mean NOBODY will. Give it a chance, you will be surprised or even shocked at what consumers will pay for their favorite product. Cost is relative. Do people like Donald Trump, Bil Gates, Oprah, or Ted Turner really care what they pay for consumer products? You may not be one of them, but the world is full of rich people who don't know or care what they spend to buy their favorite products. Do you really see Martha Stewart, Julia Roberts, or Paula Deen walking around Walmart finding the best buy on everything they need?

We are often referred to as "price gougers" because are able to sell our products far above the MSRP. However, an item is worth what someone will pay for it. Unless the item is a life-saving medicine, medical device, or needed for human survival, I don't have regrets for selling items at what the market will bear. That is what this business is all about.

Stay tuned for the next installment about why I think sales rank really isn't all that important anymore.

Resources:
Part 1 of this series

Join my Online Seller's Facebook Group

eBay Seller Success Story - Megaman

I recently received this eBay seller success story that I would like to share with you:

I have a full-time job and do some picking at garage sales and thrift stores in my free time, mostly as a hobby. Using advice from Suzanne the eBay Selling Coach, I've been able to spot lots of great bargains and maximize my listings. I usually just make a few bucks here and there reselling books, toys, electronics, and art supplies, but I recently stumbled into a big score.


At a local Bay Area, California thrift store I was able to purchase a group of Nintendo GameBoy game cartridges with their original boxes and manuals. I got 6 games for $18 (averaging $3 each). With a little research, I realized that one of them was quite rare and had the potential to auction for $40 or $50 dollars. Boy, was I pleasantly thrilled when the bidding just kept going up beyond my expectations. In the final seconds of the 7-day auction, the bidding topped out a just over $280! Even if I take a total loss on the other games I originally purchased in the group, I made over $260 profit (not including shipping costs and eBay/Paypal fees). Definitely a record for me.


I'm learning that there are a lot of rare video game cartridges and systems out there that collectors will pay top dollar for, particularly if they have their original packaging. Many game companies also made demo and sample games that were never released to the public and can sell for thousands of dollars. Even more common games from older systems can fetch a nice profit when bought in bulk and sold individually.





Keep up the good work,

Peter Guest
The Part Time Picker


Do you have a great sale or an interesting eBay item to share? Send your find to eBaycoach@yahoo.com for consideration.


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eBay Seller Success Story - Talbot's Skirt

I have been selling on eBay for several years and started with clothing in the spring of 2011. I was very apprehensive at first, but now have gone crazy with selling clothing. Of course, it was due to some wonderful coaching from Melanie Woods at the Treasure Hunters Cove.


She is always very willing and helpful in advising how to price clothing items for sell on Ebay. I purchased this Talbot's skirt at the local Goodwill for $3.79. It was brand new and the tags were still attached. Sold for $59.99. (Below is a screenshot of the completed listing.)






PS: Thank you for all you do in advising and sharing. I enjoy reading your articles on Ebay and Amazon.


Genia Geddings
Two Ladies and a Dog



Do you have a great sale or an interesting eBay item to share? Send your find to eBaycoach@yahoo.com for consideration.


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