Amazon Pricing; Niche Stores Compared; Stop That Pesky Shipping

Personally delivered to you by Steve Lindhorst, author of
"Selling on 'the River' and "The Niche Book"

This is the last issue for 2008. I thank you readers for a great year. I have a feeling 2009 will be a challenge for many. I will continue to share things I find beneficial, and I hope you continue to make money selling online. I'd love to read your predictions for ecommerce in 2009.

Here are the topics for this issue of the newsletter:

In This Issue

1. A Lesson in Pricing on Amazon
2. Six Month Update: Niche Stores Compared
   
3. Using Fulfillment by Amazon for All Your Orders
   

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1. A Lesson in Pricing on Amazon

I learned a lesson a couple of weeks ago. I had a book in my inventory about the Detroit auto industry. When I listed it, I set a price of $6.99. Ho hum. No big deal. Then all the talk about bailouts and the big three started. The book sold after sitting for several months. I thought I should look to see the price of comparable books and evidently, mine was the last hardbound version sold. The lowest price for the paperback version was $25 in "good" condition.

It's easy to list inventory on Amazon and forget it. It just sits there. But we need to keep track of what we have, and also pay attention to trends - even sudden trends and adjust prices accordingly.

When Sarah Palin was chosen as McCain's VP pick last summer, her biography Sarah sold out quickly. Prices on eBay and Amazon jumped. The same happens when a big celebrity dies, or is otherwise in the news for some outstanding reason.

No matter where you sell, keep track of your prices so you don't lose out on sudden opportunities when the item gets hot.

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2. Six Month Update: Niche Stores Compared

Last summer I spent a lot of time building Niche stores to earn some extra money (it's never really extra though). I built several using BANS (Build a Niche Store) and a couple using a WordPress blog with the phpBay plugin. All of these sites are affiliate sites, meaning when someone clicks through to buy products, I earn a commission. Both types of sites primarily list products from eBay.

I wanted to build sites that would generate commission without me having to spend money on pay-per-click advertising. I wanted them to get indexed by the major search engines, and show up in organic search results.

I spent about two solid weeks on these sites, tweaking, writing some content, creating a few graphics. Then I pretty much just left them alone. My goal was to see if there really was such a thing as an "autopilot" site. I have good news and bad news. First let me say, since August, I've made around $1000 on a handful of sites - from two weeks of work. They're still earning. Now that I know what works, I'll create more of the strong sites, and I won't mess with the weak ones.

First the bad news...Build a Niche Store Sites

The BANS sites started really well. One site did really well for a few months. They were showing up on the first page of Google search results, getting totally organic traffic, and generating affiliate income. Then, for some reason, Google went on a BANS killing spree. Google has been de-indexing BANS sites right and left. Eventually, they got to mine, and killed it. My best site, Schwinner.com is pretty much dead. (I'm now in the process of reconstructing the site.)

It seems no matter how much content you produce, no matter what the design of your site, it's a struggle to stay out of Google's crosshairs. One odd thing is the sites that are getting de-indexed are mostly the BANS sites that are created with BANS 3.0. I have some older BANS sites that are performing just fine. For some reason, it seems Google people see the BANS sites as "thin" affiliate sites. Thin affiliate sites that just redirect traffic without adding much else. My personal opinion?

(Tin foil hat time.) Google has already de-emphasized eBay in the organic search results. There is no question about that. So I think they are also hitting the sites that simply redirect traffic to eBay listings too. Sites built with a product like Build a Niche Store are easy to track down, since they have common parts that can be located simply by searching. BANS sites are "low hanging fruit."

While I'll still use BANS (especially if I can build sites using the old version) I cannot really recommend the product if you're new at building affiliate sites. It is just too much of a struggle to keep the sites up. I believe you need to keep adding fresh content to stay up in the organic search results, but BANS makes it too hard.

Now the good news...Wordpress sites with phpBay Pro

Since blogs are heavily favored by search engines, I thought I'd try building a complete site from a WordPress blog, with the phpBay Pro plugin. I built two sites like this, and they're both still receiving traffic and making money. And I haven't touched either of them for a few months. Autopilot indeed.

In November I did a full article explaining phpBay Pro along with a special offer (see item #2.) I didn't share my niche store with you then, but I will show you one of my sites that I built with phpBay Pro. It's at www.VwPartFinder.com. This is an amazing product and combined with WordPress this site allows a VW fan to shop by model, shop by price, etc. Does it rank well in search results? As of this writing, if you search for "volkswagen jacket" I rank #2 out of 1,090,000. (That may change day to day. Since products are always refreshing.)

I am determined to build more WordPress based sites going forward. This product only gets better. In fact, phpBay Pro creator - Wade has just released a version of this plugin that adds Amazon products to a WordPress blog. I think I'll have to go add some more products to my site...

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3. Using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to Handle ALL of Your Orders

Amazon has over a decade of experience processing and shipping orders from their warehouses. Not long ago, they decided to share their vast experience with you, the average seller.

How would you like to focus all of your efforts on selling, and have Amazon worry about fulfilling the orders? That is exactly what happens with the Fulfillment by Amazon program. You send your products to Amazon, they store them in their warehouse, customers purchase the products, Amazon then picks, packs and ships the products to your customers. Fulfillment by Amazon is currently available in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan.

You do not have to be a large seller to use FBA. There is no minimum on how much you store, or how much you have to sell, to use their services. In fact, you don't even have to sell the products on Amazon. You can use FBA to fulfill orders from other channels, your own website, eBay, or even in-store retail sales.

There are generally speaking, two types of fees associated with FBA. The first is an inventory storage fee. This is determined on a cubic foot per month basis. The fee is initially $.45 per cubic foot per month for the first three quarters, and rises to $.60 per cubic foot on the fourth quarter.

The second fee is the fulfillment fee. This fee varies based on the specifics of the order. There is one chart for Amazon orders and another for non-Amazon orders. In each case the fulfillment fee involves Amazon picking, packing, and shipping the items for you. The prices are quite reasonable and really free up a seller's valuable time to focus on selling and not on fulfillment.

One more good thing about Amazon's FBA program. Amazon will be responsible for all related customer service and order returns sold on Amazon.com. You can find more details about the program at: http://www.amazonservices.com/fulfillment/

Thanks! See you next year!

Steve

Tagged as: affiliate, Amazon, Build A Niche Store, eBay, ecommerce, FBA, Fulfillment by Amazon, income, phpBay, wordpress