Power Sellers Unite

jjj525 · Joined: 08 Apr 2009 Posts: 354

Link

Amazon.com announced its annual selling guidelines for the Toys & Games category in which it limits third-party sellers during the holiday shopping season. Effective September 16, 2009, Amazon.com will stop accepting new sellers in the Toys & Games store. Effective November 16, 2009, existing sellers who do not meet certain performance criteria will not be able to sell in the Toys & Games store from November 16, 2009, through the first week in January 2010......

jjj525 · Joined: 08 Apr 2009 Posts: 354

I don't understand why any one want to sell on amazon in toys & games.They restrict you when ever they like, Notorious A-Z protection which always sides with buyer plus the take $0.99 + 15% of the profit for each item.

Mean while sellers can list on ecrater with no cost at all other than around 3% for payment processing.But if they take check or money order no cost at all.

Or they can list in bonanzle,atomic mall,vendido etc with very low costs.

Why more sellers are not leaving amazon and going to alternative sites when think of the huge amount of profits they can make rather can getting ripped off on amazon and pass along the savings to buyers in-turn getting more traffic.

Sellers also can sell in almost any category with no restriction at all.

Traffic can be easily brought to the site through google products for free.

No wonder Toys"R"Us started Toys.com & dumped amazon.

cohibastore.com · Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 4764

Sellers who pay Amazons fees do it for the same reason sellers pay ebay fees - BUYER TRAFFIC.

An e-crater store with no fees is of no value if it has no traffic. So unless you have unlimited time, resources, money or a supremely efficient way to promote your e-crater store, or any other free store, it's useless.

I am too busy to spend my time promoting my stores on 20 different blogs a day or filling out spam ridden search engine submission sites forms. Nor do I wish to spend $1000 a month on impossibly difficult to manage ad campaign.

ebay and amazon provide potential buyers. that's what you are paying for.

CS

ultimatethomas · Joined: 25 May 2008 Posts: 8 Location: Long Island, NY

I will say this...

I was an accepted merchant in the Games & Toys category last year, and it saved my holiday season. I was busier than at any time in my business' history.

The reason is most of my competition gets kicked out and prices can go higher. Less competition = less supply and the demand goes up. I could get almost double for the same item than I could on eBay or any other site.

DaLizardsLair · Joined: 15 Feb 2009 Posts: 4782

Sellers flock to Amazon for the same reason they used to hit the flea markets during the Christmas season.

They can make as much money in a few weeks as they do the entire year somewhere else.

ultimatethomas · Joined: 25 May 2008 Posts: 8 Location: Long Island, NY

True, but in Games & Toys category you need to have certain standards to sell during the Christmas season, and if you don't perform correctly, you'll get booted out.

So as long as you can keep up, it's worth it.

Rich D. · Joined: 07 Aug 2009 Posts: 2

I personally LOVED selling toys and games on AZ during the xmas season last year. This category made up about 95% of our total sales, and we sold out of about 85% of our toy/game stock before mid-December. We were still shipping items out to FBA on December 15th and they sold within days of the shipment being processed.

And I agree, that you can raise your prices quite a bit due to a lot of sellers being locked out during that season. It also helps that you only have a handful of competitors rather than a lot of them...it makes pricing your items easier.