Sunday 12 June 2011

UPDATES - Amazon

   I've been working so hard at my Full Time job of late that I've neglected my extra-curricular activities. I've had my weekends off, of course, but have generally been knackered (/lazy).

   In particular I've let Amazon slide, resulting in some warnings from the site and negative feedback. There are some things I've realised by this:

1) You need to have a good filing system and space above all else.
2) You should put the marketplace "on holiday" whenever you are restructuring your stock.

These two go further to the plan I was already building:

1) Buy from Ebay at a max of 5p per book. There are opportunities to do this every week.
2) Pick out the non-fiction to sell on Amazon.
3) Move on the out-sized non-ficiton straight away (postage costs deem these next to worthless).

Let's look at some stats for February to May this year:

* I brought in £327 from Aamzon after fees etc, or in other words £82 per month.
* I laid out £60 for stock.

Projecting these stats forward, I reckon I would have to increase my stock by 5 to 10 times, and keep it at that level, in order to have a c. £200 per week wage. The logistics of this would mean having roughly 3 rooms of a normal house filled with books. Therefore in order to stop your marriage falling apart you'd need to hire rpivate space somewhere. It'd need to be cheap or else all your book profit would go on rent. Also, you'd have to consider that you'll be knocking out 70 books a week, so you'd be spending an hour a day picking and packing. In order to keep stock up, you'd need to replenish at least once a fortnight, and for this you'd need use of a van.

So in a nutshell, my Amazon business is mothballed until I get to Scotland. At that point I'll need to rent cheap space for storage if I want things to get big.

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