As a long-time customer of Amazon and general lover of the company (both for buying, selling and computing platform), I was recently posting a slew of things to the Amazon Marketplace (a damn-easy way to sell things you have, by finding the listing in Amazon, and clicking “Sells Yours Here” on the product page) and noticed a new service called “Easysell” provided by Amazon.
It appears that the service is officially called Fulfillment by Amazon and seems to be a damn interesting (labor-intensive for Amazon) way to sell your goods through Amazon.
When using Amazon Marketplace, Amazon already takes a reasonable percentage of your sale if the item sells — there is no fee for posting (you hear that eBay?). Once the item sells, the user pays you via Amazon Payments and it’s up to you to go package up the item and ship it to them.
What’s interesting about Fulfillment by Amazon is that in this model, they go one step further… you actually send your item to Amazon, list it, and then just sit back and wait for Amazon to sell and ship the item for you. I’m sure the percentage they take is higher given their overhead, but if you have an unholy amount of items to sell and don’t want to deal with it… you can box all that shit up and send it to Amazon and let them sell it for you.
It seems to be a hell of a service, but I can imagine Amazon has to walk a fine line between keeping the service charges just high enough that not everyone and their mother uses the service then they have a labor problem with incoming items getting backlogged. But they also have to keep the service charges just low enough that the service gets used and they get a clear understand of what kind of market is available here to them.
The amount of infrastructure that Amazon has had to build up over the years relating to order fulfillment has got to be incredible, the idea that they are leveraging it for individual use like this is really brilliant. It’s really not too different from the Amazon Web Services computing platforms they provide — I fully expected Google to beat everyone to that punch, but out of the clear blue the world’s largest e-tailer did it… maybe they are making another first-move here in the melding of online and offline worlds before another company like Wal-Mart steps in and tries it.
Keep up the innovating Amazon!
Very cool. I may have to start selling stuff on Amazon and forget using eBay with their ever increasing fees.
Don’t forget though, with eBay you get PayPal, and with those two, you get fees *and* shenanigans… so it’s really a 2-for-1-deal
I have been selling books via Amazon FBA since the summer of 2007. This has been one of the best decisions I have made.
Here are some benefits:
-I make around $2 more per book.
-Books sell faster.
-I have been able to grow an inventory of 20,000+ books by myself.
-I have tons of time to pursue other interests/revenue streams.
-I am able to purchase inventory that would NOT be suitable for regular merchant fulfilled, but is profitable for FBA (ie. lower priced books).
-I could go on and on…
Nathan Holmquist
what if the book does not sell, whill eat up your profit? how much the storage they charge you in your case.
what type of books is worth sending to them? Paperback, and popular ones? only with ISBN….?
How expensive if the book does not sell is my question.
I read your book “Selling on Amazon’s FBA” program and found it very informative, helpful and encouraging. Since my interest is selling books on Amazon, ebay, half, etc., do you have other “how to” books on starting a book selling business, as well as details of how to build an inventory, how to find book bargains, etc.?
Thank you.
William
If you like Fulfillment by Amazon, why would you not look at saving some money by using a dedicated fulfillment company that can provide more service for the same price; therefore creating more value. Amazon is great and I am a loyal shopper, but as a seller the are harvesting your sales data to determine their prices and undercut you on your price. I think it is a conflict of interest. You should check us out at http://www.sbcfulfillment.com check this page especially
http://www.sbcfulfillment.com/solutions/why-sbc-is-better-than-amazon