A little Extra Income
The best way I have found to make money on Amazon is to sell books, CDs and DVDs on Amazon Marketplace. This allows you to list items already in Amazon's catalog for sale whether they are new or used. You do not have to pay anything for this service until you make a sale. I have generally found that you can obtain a better price on Marketplace than on Ebay, although it may take you longer to sell your item.
First you need to find the exact item you wish to sell by searching for it on Amazon's website, either by title, by ISBN number for a book, or by ASIN number (found usually below the barcode) for CDs and DVDs. Make sure that you find the exact edition of the book, if there is more than one, and the exact version of the CD (check the record label, for example, and the release date). You can then see who is already selling that item in Marketplace and at what price. When you are ready to go ahead, click on the button that says 'Sell yours here'. If your item is used, you can choose the appropriate condition: either like new, used very good, used good, or used acceptable. Then if you wish you can add an extra comment about the condition, where the item is being shipped from, or what type of packaging you will be using. You can then decide on your price, and this may depend on how quickly you wish to sell as well as what prices are being asked by other sellers for the same condition. You can also decide whether or not you wish to offer your item to overseas sellers, and if you do, you will receive an appropriate postal credit from Amazon. Before submitting your listing, you will be shown exactly how much you will receive for your item; this sum will include the postal credit but will also have Amazon's fee deducted from it. If you feel that the remaining amount is less than you were expecting, you can go back and raise your selling price. Once you are happy, you can submit your listing and it will appear on the site almost immediately. You will also receive a confirmatory email giving all the details.
The listing will appear for a sixty-day period, unless of course your item sells in the meantime. At the end of sixty days, you can relist your item, and adjust the price if you wish; price adjustments can in fact be made at any time by logging into your seller account on Amazon's website. If your item is sold, you will receive an email informing you of this from Amazon. Then you can log into your seller account, view your order details, and print off a packing list and despatch label. You are expected to ship the item within two business days of receiving your order. I always despatch items by first-class mail (unless it is a very large book) because I think this results in better feedback from buyers which will encourage others to purchase from you. Sometimes I see sellers asking very low prices for their items, and I wonder if they perhaps despatch by second-class mail, as otherwise I don't see that they would be making any money at all from their sales.
I have sold a large number of CDs at various prices, as well as a number of books and a few DVDs. In the case of DVDs, I have sometimes watched them just once, listed them as 'used like new', and sold them within two or three hours. I always despatch CDs and DVDs in padded envelopes within twenty-four hours of receiving the order. Not long ago I sold a Queens of the Stone Age EP for twenty pounds; the previous year I had listed it for seven or eight pounds over several months without it selling! This is, however, exceptional. Most CDs sell for between two and six pounds in the UK as a rough guide. Amazon will transfer the proceeds from your sales directly to your bank account once every two weeks, and you will receive an email from them notifying you of the exact amount that is due.
If you have published a book or DVD yourself, or have released a CD, as long as it has a barcode it should be listed in Amazon's catalog and you can then join the Amazon Advantage program. This means that Amazon will order the product from you and will indicate on the site that it is in stock and can be despatched by them immediately. The current fee for joining the Advantage program in the UK is twenty-three pounds per year. For the first few months it is likely that Amazon will order just one copy of the item from you, but if you confirm that order promptly, ship it within twenty-four hours, and it sells quite quickly, you will find that the number of copies Amazon orders from you gradually increases. You will be notified by email when a new order has been placed, and it is extremely straightforward to log into your account on the website, confirm your order and give a shipping date, and finally print off a packing list and despatch label. Amazon are quite happy for you to use recycled cardboard packaging to send your orders to them. They disapprove of bubble wrap, preferring you to fill any empty corners with newspaper, so it does not need to cost a fortune to pack your orders up for them. It is of course a huge advantage to have your product available to be despatched at once by Amazon. I myself published a DVD two years ago and joined Amazon Advantage at that time; even though Amazon are charging a considerably higher price for the DVD than the price I am charging for it on Marketplace, Amazon themselves have sold more copies of it because the public obviously have more trust in them. It has therefore been another extremely useful way of making money on Amazon. Payment is made directly to your bank account at the end of the month following the sale, so there is a wait of a few weeks.
A third way of making money on Amazon is through Amazon Associates. If you have a website, you can link to Amazon, advertise various items that are available from Amazon on your website, and earn up to ten per cent in referral fees if buyers click on your links and then purchase from Amazon. Earnings are paid monthly. I have not personally found this a successful way of making money, but my website does not attract much traffic. If you have a website that has a large number of visitors, and especially if your website is associated with the type of products that Amazon sells, you may find it quite profitable to join the Associates program.
For me, Amazon Marketplace has definitely been a successful way of supplementing my income, especially through the sale of music CDs. As long as you are able to check your orders daily, package them well and despatch them promptly (which may mean queueing at a post office to have them weighed), you will receive positive feedback that should lead to more orders. When I have sold used books or CDs on Ebay the prices have usually been minimal, so I would always recommend Amazon Marketplace as the place to get a higher price for your used items.
