Thank you, blkateri14, for your kind words! 🙂
Sara B.- you are leery about which prices? Are you talking about the book I mentioned that was selling for over $200? If so, I was leery about that price as well. The other prices are reasonable. This is not a book that a frugal homeschooling mom like myself is wanting to buy. It is a college textbook and that book will sell at those prices. No guarantees, yes. But highly likely.
As an FBA seller, your customer gets free shipping, so the self-fulfilling sellers pricing their books at a penny- that makes no sense to me. Either they are foolish or know something I don’t know. What I *do* know is that if you happen to acquire the same title for free, you can list it at the same price the buyer would end up paying- $4(one penny+$3.99shipping). So if you were a self-fulfilling seller, you would profit a penny. As an FBA seller, you would profit $4. Both sellers would have fees, too. Trying not to mislead. 😉 That is why FBA makes sense. Well, not the only reason, just one of many.
Someone else said that they didn’t have space to have a ton of books taking up space in their home. Me neither. You mail all of them to the FBA warehouse to solve that problem.
Sara- you said that the buyer doesn’t go to the middle priced books. But you are thinking like a homeschooling frugal wise mama! The average Amazon customer is not like us. They have tons of money and sometimes will buy a higher priced book because the seller has a better rating or even because they think if it is priced cheap it must *be* cheap. But let’s pretend that they are all wise and frugal. If you are wise as a seller when buying books to sell, you will pick books that you know will sell. So someone comes along and buys the lowest priced book, it’s gone, then someone else buys the next cheapest book and because as a seller you’ve picked a good book, someone will eventually buy your book that you priced half-way down the page in the beginning. But as a wise seller, you don’t always purchase fast sellers. Some are going to take a while to sell, maybe a year. But if you are constantly sending books to Amazon, you will always be making something. A numbers game. Just from spending one morning going around to thrift stores and estate sales and such, I found about 50 books, paying a little over $50 for them. Because I invested in my cell phone and good scouting app, I didn’t chose any books that I will profit less than $6 on. A good number of them I will profit about $12 each, and several for #20-30, two were $100.
Ok, I’m getting all passionate about this. It boils down to this. There is a loooooot to learn about this business. I have spent time learning about it and would love to share that knowledge with anyone wanting to learn it. I have a genuine love for other homeschooling mamas and I want to give when I can. This is a *superb* way to make money. The start up costs end up being wise investments in very little time. I have prayed a ton about this, and I believe this is what God wants me to do. If I could have it my way, I wouldn’t even own a cell phone, I would love to live more simply. But my dh has asked me to make money and this is what I know God wants me to do. I know it will work if I do not grow weary! 😉
Much love, grace and peace to you all,
Jenn