Amazon items for 1p

[Andrew_Culture]

How do people sell things for 1p on Amazon Marketplace? There have long been scores of second hand books selling for penny, some are sold by charities, why are they selling themselves so short? How does anyone make a living when folk bottom out the market like this?

As a caveat I should state that I used to have a record shop but decided to close the doors when stock we were paying £8 for started showing up on Amazon for 1p, but I'm not bitter, honest!

 

[DCLane]

They can't make money, unless they're posting it from their work or similar OR it's a very small item and the postage gives a small profit.

I've some things on Amazon Marketplace and it's definately getting more difficult to sell and still turn a profit with many seller simply driving the price down.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

They can't make money, unless they're posting it from their work or similar OR it's a very small item and the postage gives a small profit.

I've some things on Amazon Marketplace and it's definately getting more difficult to sell and still turn a profit with many seller simply driving the price down.

My poor dad is still trying to sell my share of the stock from my record shop on MarketPlace and we shut down about (goes and looks) four years ago!

 

[Over The Hill]

Not done amazon but on ebay they have fees based on price ranges but this does not include postage.
So selling a book for £1 with £10 post costs less in fees than selling same book for £8 with £3 postage.

 

[Andrew_P]

Pallets and pallets of them leave from a warehouse in Brighton. I assume they make the money on the postage. Someone did explain how it worked but I cannot rememeber the full details

 

[DCLane]

Someone did explain how it worked but I cannot rememeber the full details

You get £2.80 - 18% for postage. However, there's also Amazon's fee of about 80p to take into account. As a result, if postage is under £1 and you got the book for under 20p then yes, you'll make a tiny margin. It's probably not worth the cost of doing it though.

 

[deanE]

Certainly the one making the biggest profit is Amazon, and not paying any taxes on it. Oh, have I wandered off topic on my old hobbyhorse again.

 

[Andrew_P]

You get £2.80 - 18% for postage. However, there's also Amazon's fee of about 80p to take into account. As a result, if postage is under £1 and you got the book for under 20p then yes, you'll make a tiny margin. It's probably not worth the cost of doing it though.

There are the mega sellers who make a reasonable amount. The other sellers are doing it to skew the PPI charges on their normal sales. They will make more money on their normal postage charges as the number of items divided by the weight goes up. Complicated but certainly one of the motivators is the overall PPI postage weight and volume. Pretty sure a pro merchant on Amazon gets the 80p waived.

 

[Black Sheep]

there is also the people doing it as a way of clearing old unwanted stock without having to pay for it's disposal.

 

[Markymark]

They charge for the P&P and its a possible tax dodge.

 

[ayceejay]

Equally as confusing is the high priced items. I have a book that I bought at the regular retail price and offered it on Amazon, I was shocked to see others are offering it for sale at $1000.00 plus. I am sure it is an attempt to manipulate the market but if it doesn't sell I am not sure what is gained.

 

[vernon]

I had a book that I bought for a fiver ten years ago. It's now out of print and on offer on Amazon for £80. I speculatively placed mine on Amazon for £30 not expecting it to sell only to get a sales confirmation within two hours of its placement.

 

[Spinney]

I think the 1p books are that price because the standard minimum postage charge (for 3rd party sellers) is abotu £2.80 (can't be bothered to look it up!). So if the postage actually costs the seller (say) 80p, then they have made £2.01 profit (before paying amazon, of course).

There may well be some tax dodging in there as well.

But what you aren't getting is a book for 1p.

 

[Andrew_P]

Equally as confusing is the high priced items. I have a book that I bought at the regular retail price and offered it on Amazon, I was shocked to see others are offering it for sale at $1000.00 plus. I am sure it is an attempt to manipulate the market but if it doesn't sell I am not sure what is gained.

Sometimes that is because the item is out of stock but they do not want to lose their position by cancelling the item.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Equally as confusing is the high priced items. I have a book that I bought at the regular retail price and offered it on Amazon, I was shocked to see others are offering it for sale at $1000.00 plus. I am sure it is an attempt to manipulate the market but if it doesn't sell I am not sure what is gained.

In the past an album by a band I was in was on eBay for incredible amounts of cash when I had boxes of the buggers under my bed