Anyone selling on Amazon?

[red-beard]

Good? Bad? Other places?

[HHI944]

I'll shoot you a pm later tonight when I get home. A good chunk of my income comes from amazon sales........lots of good and bad.....

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Here's something funny. Someone created a Little Traveler account and is selling our old stuff. No idea who it is, too busy to find out.

The P51 Mustang shirt was awesome.

Amazon.com: Little Traveler: Clothing & Accessories

[M.D. Holloway]

yup

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by Shaun 84 Targa

Here's something funny. Someone created a Little Traveler account and is selling our old stuff. No idea who it is, too busy to find out.

The P51 Mustang shirt was awesome.

Amazon.com: Little Traveler: Clothing & Accessories

Actually the seller is Little Boy Chic.

The way Amazon works is you need to create a product description so he would have used Little Traveler as the brand, like Levi's etc....

The first person to add a product to Amazon creates the initial description.

Subsequent sellers with the same product end up using the 1st persons description which is why it's so easy to find multiple sellers of an item.

[red-beard]

I'll be selling consumer electronics. The "fee" of 8%+ seems high on Amazon. It is less than what I'm discounting for distributors in Mexico, but it sure seems to add up

An Ebay store seems less expensive, but I think you also get dinged with Paypal fees on each sale. If this doubles the fees, it ends up about the same as Amazon.

Anyone have a comparison on the two for sales? Also, a couple of my products exceed the maximum price on Amazon.

I've checked for similar products on both sites, and neither has a complete, plug and play system. Some supply "kits" of low quality stuff and basically expect you to put it together. And the parts are seriously outdated technology.

[porsche4life]

Red is your product something that people would actually search out on Amazon?

If not, is there really a benefit of going through them and paying the fees?

[HHI944]

OK, I'm at a computer again...
Amazon sucks...period...
8% is the starting point.....they'll quickly bully you into signing a contract agreeing to a higher percentage and whatever other terms they feel like (if you have an independent website, they'll want price and product parity at a minimum despite the fact that it'll cost you significantly more to sell on amazon) If you don't, they'll delist your products....or hide you on the product page....
God help you if you ever want some form of customer service....they simply don't give a flying fuch about sellers...
There's a case pending in federal court right now re a manufacturer of kindle accessories they did this to in extreme.

On the other hand, I can sell 10x the product with 1/4 the effort on Amazon...

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by porsche4life

Red is your product something that people would actually search out on Amazon?

If not, is there really a benefit of going through them and paying the fees?

I am now manufacturing a line of Domestic Solar Energy Systems. I want to sell the 300-1500 Watts systems on Amazon. They are fully setup, plug and play from the user stand point.

We've been selling custom designed Industrial Solar Energy Systems, mostly for off-shore uses. A company in Mexico asked us to design and start supplying systems for the domestic Mexican market. I based my system off a design they have purchased before from Northern Tools. Except:

1) My system is complete and fully assembled. All you have to do is use the polarized cables to connect the panels to the control/battery box and plug your appliances into the outlet.

With the Northern tools system, you have to figure out how to connect the charge controller to the battery system, along with the panels.

2) The Northern Tool system uses a transfer switch, which is not a bumpless transfer. On our system, you are connected to the inverter all the time. You can select recharging the batteries from either Solar or from the mains. And if you have a generator, it will condition the power, along with allowing you to have quiet overnight power.

3) They use a super-cheap square-wave inverter, which means you shouldn't be connecting it to motors. I use pure Sinewave inverters which is what everything is designed to use.

4) The Inverter is way oversized to the battery. They are using an 1800 Watt inverter on a system with less than 1000 watts of storage. And at maximum draw, you'll be lucky to get 15 minutes out of the batteries. All of my systems are designed to give you at least 4 hours of operation at maximum power.

5) The Northern tool unit uses a super cheap on/off charge controller. My systems use an MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) controller which will harvest about 15-30% more energy from the Solar Panel.

6) I use 225 Watt Solar Panels, where they give you an old 100 Watt panel. They need several days to charge the batteries, while my system will charge in one day, while still provding some extra daytime power.

The plug and play systems range from 300 Watts to 1500 Watts. Each one will last a minimum of 4 hours at maximum power. Surge power is double the rated power. The designs are for running refrigerators in rural areas. If you put a 150 Watt refrigerator (4.4 cu ft) on my 300 Watt system, it will run 24/7 with no outside power. The 1500 Watt system will handle a modern 25 cu ft!

The idea was to provide power to places where electricty is intermittent / unreliable. If you use more power than the panels/batteries can provide, you can switch over to the mains, which will recharge the batteries while still feeding the inverter.

I also package 3000 Watt (120V) and 8000 Watt (220V) systems, which are designed to be integrated by an electrcian into house wiring. Again, the packaged design allows any electrician with basic house wiring experince to connect this system up.

The 220V system will handle a 1500-2000 square foot house including a 2.5T central air conditioning system!

[porsche4life]

Man thats a tough one... I'm not sure that amazon is the best place to sell that, but I also couldn't think of a better way to get the word out....

I guess the question is if you can handle playing by their rules?

[red-beard]

The cost of doing everything myself means putting a commercial website together, along with a merchant credit card account, etc. Eventually this might make sense, but not right now, as we're getting going.

Ebay will work, but I was wanting some perspective on Amazon. Hmm. Maybe a Google Checkout Store? They are charging less than 3%, with no limits.

Hmmmmm.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by red-beard

The cost of doing everything myself means putting a commercial website together, along with a merchant credit card account, etc. Eventually this might make sense, but not right now, as we're getting going.

Ebay will work, but I was wanting some perspective on Amazon. Hmm. Maybe a Google Checkout Store? They are charging less than 3%, with no limits.

Hmmmmm.

I'd go the full blown merchant account. You'll still get less than 3% from the outset.

I like authorize.net for a gateway. Far more options than a google or paypal cart and you are still setting up a merchant account when you use them.

Merchant accounts can take some time to set up and your transaction ceiling will be limited until you build up some credibility with the provider.

Better to have it in place before you need it to avoid the gotchas that can come along with it.

I've set up a number of clients. Feel free to PM if you want.

[intakexhaust]

I appreciate your entrepreneurial spirit and also have considered Amazon. Past years I created a few sites for product selling of my own and have since sold off, but now again exploring new start-ups. I think you have to answer yourself how much to budget for the marketing of the product and pro-forma. Overhead cost from the wrong way of online marketing could be a waste and break a company.

The volume of buyers is certainly there with Amazon and eBay to captivate but if you have a clever enough website to trigger customers in finding you in the top ranking search engines (you only need MS / Bing - Yahoo and of course Google) you could be in good shape.

A few pointers: Acquire a few domain names that most generic represent the item is or what it does and another would be perhaps your company or trade name. To me, a 'keep it simple stupid' approach works. If a prospect clicks one site, you can have it point to your main site or whatever. If the site is stagnant and lost with a million others trying for the top rank, I would list the product on eBay for a buy-it-now and pay the fee for those transactions. Two reasons why: 1) The ebay listing will rank you higher in the google search. 2) IMPORTANT In your ebay listing, depict any images embedded with your website domain inviting customers to the site. You probably already know, ebay no longer permits a link to a website, so this little trick works without any flags.

Are you going big time with outsourcing a web developer or web promotion? For the alternative and super budget, check out a godaddy deal and a rapid built e-commerce website. Tired of Paypal? Talk to your bank, check out the fees and set-up a commercial credit card process linked from your website.
We could talk offline but I will tell you, for now the above strategy is far exceeding my expectations without throwing thousands into a startup. Mind you, I’m at the wee super budget of them all, its experimental and test marketing for a select market which happens to work in my favor. It almost sounds impossible, but I paid $36 initial fee for two years of my own domain and zero per month for website hosting cost, etc. There is a loophole and more freebie tools today than ever before but it may not be anything to suit your marketing needs or image. Also, don’t forget the incredible free and world viewing youtube for product infomercials.

On a larger scale, if you want small company but big time performance, I would suggest NetSuite by the Oracle founder Larry Ellison. When I was with another company and at the time a start-up, we dumped the idea of spending thousands in inventory control, production, marketing software. Netsuite came along and it was amazing within 30 days how well it went between an international based manufacturer and integrated five warehouses. Expect to pay but depending on what size or expectations are, sometimes it may save in the long run. Scott

[red-beard]

We already are in business and already have a hosted website. This is a new line of products which is the first thing we have ever advertised and sold direct to the public. Everything else is B2B Indutrial stuff.

Looking at the Google Checkout stuff, it looks like they put a frame on my site which links to their site. Also, I was looking to combine it with some Adwords/Adsense advertising.

Basically, at this point, if I'm going to go with Google or build my own site, my cost is around 2-3% (depending on volume) and I would then devote another 2-3% to marketing. I am giving a 10-15% discount to my distributor in Mexico, so I even have a little more margin I could use, if necessary.

Basically, I'm trying to keep this Simple, Easy and Cheap. 8% seemed way too much.

[RWebb]

you will need to be clear about level of support & warranty is involved

BTW - are these the same solar panels that you said were not commercially viable a few months ago??