Amazon Affiliates, Scanners, and Drop Shippers

Personally delivered to you by Steve Lindhorst, author of

"Selling on 'the River', "The Niche Book", and
"Amazon - The Quick & Dirty Guide."

Thanks so much for all of your kind comments after the last issue. I'm getting back into the swing of things, and thank goodness Amazon sales have been good. Over the past two weeks, two used books sold for nearly $200 each, and one on recipes for homemade soap sold for over $60. I hope you enjoy this issue!

On to the newsletter...

In This Issue

1. Are You Using Amazon's Affiliate Program?
   
2. Scanning on 'the River'?
3. Beware of the Amazon Drop Shippers
4. Odds and Ends
   

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1. Are You Using Amazon's Affiliate Program?

Most readers of this newsletter sell on Amazon. It doesn't matter whether you're a large or small seller, you can sell a lot more, and you don't have to buy a truckload of merchandise. You probably know the drill by now. With a very simple website or blog, you can promote products found on Amazon as an affiliate.  Then you earn a commission when someone clicks from your website or link and buys something.

Amazon's affiliate program is officially called Amazon.com Associates. It's much easier to participate in Amazon's program than the eBay Partner Network. Besides that, Amazon just has a more stable program than eBay in my opinion. Since eBay began running their own affiliate program, I've had to make changes to the links at least twice. If you have blogs or websites linking to hundreds of products, that is a lot of work. I have not had any problem with Amazon's program.

If there is a down-side to their program, it has to be the fact that Amazon doesn't pay as well as some other sites. But if you do things right, you can pretty much "set it and forget it." Lots of people are looking for "autopilot" income, and while I don't really believe there is such a thing as true  "autopilot income," there is a method that is pretty close.

With the huge variety of products on Amazon, you can create niche websites that will need little to no maintenance, and bring in cash every month. I know it works, because I have several of those sites myself.

Last year (during one of my more pronounced A.D.D. phases) I created several of the sites and then just moved on and left them alone. Now, some of them pull in $5 a month, and some pull in $50. Every so often, I'll get a bigger sale and a site will bring in over $100. It adds up to several hundred per month, but I never touch the sites.

As former Van Halen lead man David Lee Roth brilliantly stated, "To me, it's not rocket surgery. It's very simple to put together."

I believe anyone can create the type of simple (nearly automatic) sites I'm talking about.
You just need a step-by-step way to do it. I found a great video series that explains it in every detail. Even though this series deals specifically with Amazon, the process can be used for other affiliate programs as well, such as Commission Junction.

Here is a list of what each video covers:

Video 1 - Overview - Amazon's Affiliate Program
Video 2 - Selecting Product Keywords
Video 3 - Becoming an Amazon Affiliate
Video 4 - Registering a Domain Name
Video 5 - Setting Up Your Hosting Account
Video 6 - NameServers And Domain Hosting
Video 7 - Install WordPress Using Simplescripts
Video 8 - Install WordPress Using Fantastico
Video 9 - Using and Optimizing WordPress Plugins
Video 10 - Change Your WordPress Design Theme
Video 11 - Grab Your Amazon Affiliate Links
Video 12 - Your "Money" Post
Video 13 - Promote Using Social Bookmarking
Video 14 - Promote Using Press Releases
Video 15 - Promote Using Web 2.0 Properties
Video 16 - Promote Using Video Marketing
You'll also get a Press Release Template (MS Word doc)

The narrator does a nice job of explaining everything clearly on the live screen. He doesn't spend time trying to get you to buy other things, it's very instructional. He stays focused and takes you from the very beginning, through the very end and shows how it's done. I think it's a really good quality product. Along with one other new ebook, I am adding it to my list of products for under $10.

Get the Amazon Affiliate Video Series Now for only $9.97

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2. Scanning on 'the River'

Last week at a local thrift store, I arrived and found another "non-scanner" equipped  book seller picking through the shelves. After he moved a short distance away, I began using my PDA/scanner on the books he had just rejected. I could sense his irritation as I got hit after hit and filled my basket with books his "gut" said were rejects.

One of my favorite readers has suggested for some time that I write an ebook about scouting services and book scanners called Scanning on 'the River'. I'm not sure I have enough for that, but I like the title anyway. (Thanks Matt!)

Maybe you've seen people using a PDA or a cell phone to scan the barcodes on used books. Those folks are probably using a scouting service. There are several companies that offer a service that tells you which books to buy and which ones to reject. You benefit by only buying books that are likely to sell. It's also great for finding those $100+ gems among the everyday stuff.

The software they provide compares any book to Amazon's database and determines what you should purchase based on the book's sales rank, condition and current selling prices. In most cases, you can set the criteria for your own needs.

For example, with the service I use, AsellerTool, I can set the scanner to return a "Buy" signal for any book, ranked better than 10,000, where the average selling price is a minimum of $4.

These tools can be pretty expensive. The PDA with the software can run from a couple hundred to over one thousand dollars. I wasn't willing to spend that much, so I began by just renting on a monthly basis. I highly recommend that if you're just trying it out.

In Amazon - The Quick & Dirty Guide, I talk about how scanning books, and using Amazon's FBA program has turned my book selling business into a major part of my income. In fact, I believe those two components are the key to very quick success on Amazon. Evidently though, I didn't go deeply enough into the subject.

Since then, readers have asked a lot of questions about the scanner I use, and scanners in general. Two (or even three) heads are better than one, so I asked for help from my friends Nathan Holmquist, author of Selling on Amazon's FBA Program, and Adam Bertram, author of  Used Books: Big Business. Between the three of us, we have experience with several companies.

Most of the services offer live access from a computer or cell phone. The "offline" option lets you use a small hand-held scanner to compare books against Amazon's database. I call it offline because the database files are downloaded and stored in the device, so they are not "real-time" or live. Every few days, you just connect to the internet and download the newest database files.

There are two costs involved. Access to the data is a monthly subscription, ranging from $6 to $50 as you'll see below. The second cost is a one-time cost for the PDA/Scanner. Prices can range from $100 to over $1000, depending on what you are willing to spend. Most of the companies below offer PDAs pre-loaded with their software.

Here are some of the better-known book scouting services include, along with a really brief review:

AsellerTool - www.asellertool.com

Steve: This is the scanner service I use. I have found it reliable and the service has paid for itself over and over again. I chose this company because it was well-established and they offer a monthly rent-to-own option. You can rent a scanner for one month at a time, and after a year, you own it. The $60 per month rental cost includes the $30 per month subscription.

Besides the PDA-type scanner, you can get their service for your cell phone for as little as $6 per month. You simply "text message" the ISBN from a book (you can send five at a time) and AsellerTool texts you back the results. It's a little primitive, but it works, and it's cheap. You must be able to send text messages with your phone for this service.

Neat-O-Scan -  www.neatoscan.com

Adam: Neatoscan offers a few different services to a potential online bookseller.  The first is their typical database download and sync to your PDA for offline book scouting.  They have a lot of robust features in this software such as native sound notification for you to discreetly put some earbuds in and start scanning.  If you scan a book that meets the criteria that you have set previously it will give you a cash register sound, for example.  There are many other configurable options in this software which allows you to do just about whatever you’d like in terms of what criteria you’d like met before you buy a book.

Neatoscan’s book scouting service is $50/month for 1 account for standard level service or they offer a business level service at $100/month which comes with better support and some extra features that you don’t get with the standard account.  Consider Neatoscan once you’ve got your feet wet and know what book scouting is all about.  They seem to be placing themselves as more of the luxury line of book scouting services.

Nathan: I've used Neatoscan.com for 3 years and never looked back - been very happy with them.

They are a very innovative company and I've found them to be good, smart people. Their interface is easy to read. I also like that they offer tools besides a scanner, such as their Inventory Evaluator. They also list book sales and events on their site.

The only "Con" I can list is the price: $50/Month for the scanner software.

ScoutPal - www.scoutpal.com

Adam: ScoutPal is known for it’s open source approach which means it’s very configurable and open to change. Whenever I’ve asked for some features that were not in the original product they have always tried to accommodate me.  They have a “format results” screen that allows you to configure just about anything you’d like.  For example, I’ve set the screen to say “Toss it” for books with low sales prices or “Amazon FBA” for books that have low sales rank prices.  Scoutpal’s support is very good also.

For me, the price of Scoutpal is what sets it apart from the rest.  It’s very cheap at $9.95/month.  This is one of the primary reasons I started using it.  It's good for someone just starting out using selling books online because it’s A. cheap and B. it works.  It has all of the Amazon pricing information you need for that fee and can get you up and running in no time.

Media Scouter - www.mediascouter.com

Steve: None of us have used Media Scouter recently. But it has a couple of features worth mentioning. One is that they update their information from Amazon on a daily basis, while others are less often. The second thing is something Adam pointed out, Media Scouter has a search by title feature for pre-ISBN books (pre-1970). (Others now offer that feature as well, such as AsellerTool.)

Media Scouter is also a bit pricey per month - $40 for a single device.

Which comes first?

The bottom line is, there are plenty of options to choose from and all of the services work pretty well. Some of the scanners do more than books. Many will return results on almost anything with a barcode. I use AsellerTool for CDs, DVDs, and VHS tapes all of the time. You just have to decide which is best for you based on the price and features. Visit their respective websites and spend some time doing research, then sign up  and get started!

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3. Beware of the Amazon Drop Shippers

Have you ever seen sellers on Amazon that seem to offer virtually every book you can imagine, and at insanely high prices? "Virtually" is the key word here. Because in many cases, they do not possess the items they list for sale.

These sellers are a type of "drop shipper" on Amazon and some of them are a thorn in the side of many buyers and sellers alike. Here's what they do:

They list items (typically books) for sale at outrageously high prices - often three or four times the genuine sale price. They don't maintain real inventory, they just keep a gigantic list of ISBNs. If they get a sale, they order the book from another seller, at a much lower price, and have that seller send the book to their customer. They then pocket the difference.

Is this wrong? Not ethically? The price is openly stated, and if a buyer chooses to pay it - it's up to them.

The problem lies in the fact that this type of seller seems to get away with breaking Amazon's rules.

For one, Amazon requires that an item be shipped within two business days of an order. Once one of these drop shippers receives an order, they regularly miss that deadline while they search for an item to purchase and get their end of the deal completed.

The second problem is Amazon's rules state: "Sellers are required to have their items on hand and ready to ship." Just as with eBay, some of these sellers seem to stay on the site forever, despite their horrendous Feedback scores.

How They Affect Autopricing Programs

As my inventory has grown, I found a need to use automated pricing to keep everything current. As I add inventory, I run a report, submit it to my repricer, and it prices my items according to my specifications. (FYI: I'm not one of those people that tries to be a penny below my competition.)

My repricer looks at several competing offers and condition levels to determine my selling price. What happens when one of those offers is a drop shipper selling at a ridiculous price? It gets figured into the mix, and then MY price becomes ridiculous too! For example, one book should have been priced at about $15. When my repricing program looked at similar books, in order to determine a price for the one I was listing, it found two at $12-$16 and one at $84. It then set my price somewhere in between. Not good if I want to sell books.

If you use a repricing service, watch your results carefully. If you see something priced at an insane amount, check out the competing sellers. In my case, it was a seller with the user name "any_book" that was throwing things off. I just kept seeing that name and wondered how it could be possible that they have the same title as I do every single time.

My repricing service lets me exclude certain sellers, so they won't be considered when they do their thing - and they won't affect my prices.

When I did a Google search for "any_book" I found out that they're quite well-known - and not in a good way. Hopefully, the reputation of the worst offenders will bring them down. Until then, I'll do my best to keep them from affecting my sales.

To research these sellers, you can look at a book like the hard copy version of Selling on 'the River'. I self-publish that book using CreateSpace. I keep a few copies in stock, and Amazon does too. But look how many others are selling it. Even good ol' any_book is there too. Chances are good, that the other sellers are drop shipping. Either way, in this case, I make a sale somewhere along the way...

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4. Odds and Ends

Just a couple things to add...

1. Nathan Holmquist just updated his book, Selling on Amazon's FBA Program. If you haven't purchased a copy I highly recommend it, if you've purchased a previous copy Nathan will give you the update. Just contact him and ask. (I'm not sure if he'll require a receipt, but it would be handy to have it ready just in case.)
2. If you receive my emails, at some point you signed up to get something, a bonus, or an ebook and were added to my list. I understand that you might want to unsubscribe at some point, and on each email you receive there is an unsubscribe link for that purpose. When people use the "Spam" button to unsubscribe, the sender is unfairly penalized. In order to help fight real spam, make sure when you use the "mark as spam" feature it's truly for email you never requested.

That's gonna have to do it for now. I have quite a few more things to share, but they'll have to wait till next time.

Thanks so much for reading.

Steve

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Tagged as: Adam Bertram, affiliate websites, Amazon, Amazon Associates, AsellerTool review, Book Scanner, Book Scouting, Drop Shipping, FBA, Nathan Holmquist, ScoutPal review