I was listening to one of my favorite podcast’s today – “Internet Business Mastery“.  At about the 25 minute mark of the podcast, one of the hosts started going on and on about how much he loved BUYING on Amazon Prime.  I agree with him. I also belong to Amazon Prime and will buy pretty much anything I purchase on Amazon from Prime (FBA) sellers.  It’s great, free shipping and the item arrives in 2 days!

Since I have joined Amazon Prime I see why other customers like it so much and I now have nearly all of my Amazon Inventory in Amazon FBA so I can target these customers.  If you are not selling on FBA you are missing out on Prime customers.  With podcasts like IBM touting the advantages of buying with Prime to their massive audiences, the number of Prime customers is sure to continue to grow.

Another couple of factors which may contribute to more people becoming Amazon Prime customers:

• With the Amazon Kindle Fire becoming a huge seller, Fire owners will want to join Prime to take advantage of streaming video.
• With Amazon Prime now offering streaming video such as TV shows and Movies (like Netflix), more people may join Amazon Prime to access this service.  I have not tested out this video service yet but I intend to in the next week or so.

If you want to hear what was said about Amazon Prime in the podcast CLICK HERE and scroll to about the 25 minute mark.

Here is a guest post that I did on one of my favorite blogs – Adam Bertram’s Sell Your Books Online.  The freedom of location was one of the main reasons I decided to get involved with Amazon FBA and continues to be a huge motivator for me – Let me know what you think of the post!:

“Imagine that you’re an online book seller.  You have a profitable business going, but no employees.  You have a few thousand books and you sell a few each day, seven days a week.  Life is good – you have created a profitable business working from home!

Then one day you decide to take a week vacation.  You long into Amazon and Half.com and put your listings on “vacation” setting.  You remove your books from eBay.  You’re having a good time on vacation but in the back of your mind you know that you are not making any money.  Worse than that, you fear that potential customers are buying books that are usually in your inventory from competitors.  You try to decide when to end your “vacation” settings – when you return or two business days before returning?  Do you really want to get back and have to ship a dozen books as soon as you walk in the door?

This was my experience two years ago.  My long term goal was and is to build a business and travel – A LOT.  I realized that this may not be possible with selling books online.  Did I just waste almost two years learning everything I could about selling books online, finding sources of inventory, and investing in supplies and inventory?

About a year and a half ago I started experimenting with Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon).  I have found that not only has FBA made my business more profitable – it has also made it less time consuming, easier, and most importantly, given me more freedom.

With FBA, Amazon stores and ships my inventory for me.  I do not need to be chained to my house anymore to ship orders or even to answer customer emails (Amazon does this for me).

A few months ago I decided to experiment with FBA remotely.  I found a huge book sale across the country in a city where my brother lives.  I packed my laptop and my wife and I hopped on a plane.  I spent parts of 2 days at the book sale and the rest of the week I had fun.  Before I returned home I bought some boxes, borrowed my brother’s printer, and shipped hundreds of books to Amazon.

I flew back home at the end of the week without taking any inventory with me.  I realized that two great things resulted:  1) while I was away I was selling books each day and making money, and 2) the books I acquired while away later sold for more than enough to cover my travel expenses!

For me, FBA has changed my entire business for the better – I have nearly all my inventory in FBA now.  Of course there are negatives to FBA – it can take awhile to learn, the fees are higher, and sales rankings are more important than anything (even price).  If you are interested in selling only antique or collectable books FBA will probably not be profitable.  If your goals are like mine – building a profitable business and being able to travel – FBA may be worth looking into.”

I have recently begun to take this to the next level – if I can find used books to resell while I travel, why not other products?  In fact, I have been learning how to sell brand new retail items that I can find at retailers and flip for high profit margins on Amazon!  If you are interested in learning about this as well, I highly recommend the new ebook by Chris Green – “Retail Arbitrage”.  The price is substantial ($97) but if you are serious about learning this skill it is worth the investment.  I will be doing a full review of the book soon on my blog.  Another great book is “Barcode Booty” by Steve Weber, available on Amazon.com or Weberbooks.com.

I have been getting a lot of emails from readers who were surprised to find out that they can make money on the last days of a library book sale.  I just added up my numbers from a book sale that I attended on the last day only a few weeks ago.  The prices weren’t as low as I was hoping (basically 50 cents per paperback & $1 per hardcover).  I also had to travel to the sale so I spent money on gas.  While the numbers aren’t as impressive as my last book sale post I will still make $150-$250 not including gas cost.  The funny thing about this sale is that is was advertised as having 150,000 books and was only 3 days long.  Despite this, I didn’t see anyone else scanning books on the last day!  It just goes to show that there is money to be made on the final day of a book sale and very little competition in your way.

If you are selling on Amazon FBA, you have probably received the email notice of the fee increase – thanks to Steve Weber for shedding some light on this increase today in his blog.

While I haven’t had time to compute how the fee will affect every single one of my products, here are a few things to consider:

1. If you sell on FBA (or sell anywhere online) and you don’t think that fees will increase, you live in a dream land
2. You can either complain about the fees and quit (if you read the Amazon Seller Forums this seems to be the consensus solution) or you can figure out how these changes can benefit you

eBay increases its’ fees nearly every year it seems.  Guess what? I still sell on eBay (not books) and make money!  For the past 6 months or so I have been trying to increase my bottom dollar books on Amazon from $4 (penny books) to $6.99 minimum and have been advising my readers to do the same.  Guess who the new fee increase affects the most?  Penny book sellers!

The way I look at it, if an average 40 cents fee increase is going to kill me, then there is something wrong with my business model.  If your average profit on a book is 50 cents or less, then this fee will be killer!  What if your average profit per book is $5, $10, or $15?  You get the idea… maybe this fee increase will squeeze out some of the bottom price feeders that drive down all of the other sellers prices on Amazon.

I think texas-angel said it best in the Amazon Seller Services FBA forum:

“For light books, you’ll now pay at least 37 cents in weight based fees, even if the book is 2 ounces. You’ll also pay $1 pick and pack fee, even if the book is $2.

So now $1.37 becomes the lowest FBA fee you can pay, add to that the $1.35 fixed fee and your per book fees become $2.72 for any book under 1lb.

In the old system, a 4 ounce book under $25 would have cost you $0.70 in FBA fees, a total of $2.05 including the $1.35 book fee.

The difference is a 67 cent increase for a 4 ounce book. Not the end of the world, unless you have a ton of cheap books and sell volume.”

Exactly – good riddance low-ball FBA sellers.  I am staying and look forward to making this change work for my benefit.