How can anyone afford to sell stuff on Amazon??
 

I thought ebay was bad enough with a 10% seller fee. Amazon takes 30%! And then on top of that they fixed my shipping to $4.99 to ship a 40 lb bike all the way to NJ?! That will cost me $50!

How are the small guys ever suppose to grow if big companies like this keep getting bigger and bigger?:thumbdown

Wow!! That's simply nuts! And you couldn't adjust the shipping for your own price? I don't get it, how weird.

You would think books would be easy but when I tried to get an idea of how much I would end up with selling a couple books, I decided to keep them.

I had no idea what Amazon charges the seller. That's crazy.

From a consumer point of view though, I am amazed at times how reasonable Amazon is. I can order a 15 lb bag of Wellness dog food for $6 less on Amazon than at the Petco store here, and they ship it free to Hawaii via FedEx. That sounds nearly impossible, but I love it. Shipping here is so expensive, many private vendors just won't do it, or they charge more for shipping than the item. The convenience of shopping from home is even better, saving time and gas.

I most always go there because they make it so easy to buy and they have most everything I need however they are taking the sellers for a ride.

The thing is we don't know is how many are welling to sell? So many items are from Amazon only but very many from sellers as a lower price. It's all about catching the person from either end for a sale. They are smart so far.

Yes from a consumer standpoint it's very competitive pricing. Some of the pricing is so low, it's almost stupid to buy it at a brick and mortar store. I worry about the future. This will drive out all small mom and pop shops. Even if they sell on Amazon, it's Amazon that is making the money, not the sellers. All of the "name brand" items on Amazon are being sold from the company themselves, so pretty much the manufacturer is selling directly to the public. So why then would anyone try and buy them wholesale and try to make a profit? It's frustrating!

For example, we have lots of bikes leftover from our shop since we closed up and moved out here. We don't plan on opening a new shop in Vegas bc the bike scene is not the same, so we try to sell online. We have the same bike as the manufacturer, though for example, we buy it for $199, they are selling it for $219. Even if we sell it for $219, we have to pay for shipping (or pass the cost onto the customer) AND get dinged 30%, what is the point? It's like were paying to lose the money. Now we are stuck with a bunch of bikes. And ebay puts a cap on how much you can list in a month. And you know how Craigslist is!

That's really odd.

I buy vitamins on amazon, they charge about $7 with free add on shipping, they're sold out right now and the amazon sellers want $10 plus $7 shipping. I wonder why they're allowed to charge more for shipping a small item than you were.

Idk how it's worth selling on amazon, either the prices are so high no one buys it, they're taking a hit, or their price is so close to amazon's people pick amazon for the fast shipping and customer service.

This is rather interesting, much of what we said.

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/i...0232617AADGvaf

You ever use Craig's list ?

My husband and I sell a lot of stuff on Ebay and Amazon. Here are a couple of links that explain the fees. The second link explains the shipping fees. According to what it says, for a bicycle you would get $4.49 plus $.50 per pound added to that. For books it just pays $3.99 so for the heavier books we just add a few extra dollars to our selling price to cover the extra shipping costs.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...nodeId=1161240
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...161252#credits

We mainly sell used books and software on Amazon and we do quite well. Books are priced and graded according to condition and availability.

Well if it was $0.50 per additional pound, for a 40 lb bike, I would still only get about $25, which is still half of what it would cost to ship the bike. They should do it like Fed Ex or UPS, weight PLUS distance. Also if a box is over a certain size (I think they do length + girth) they tack on another oversize charge. I once had a bike just over this amount and it was $150 to ship to FL vs the usual $50 to the east coast.

Also when sending books, don't you get to use Media Mail with USPS which is cheaper? No such thing for bikes.

I agree, Amazon is not the best place to sell a bike or large items. We often sell large items on Ebay but for local pickup only. Some items are just to hard to ship.

I paid more than $4.99 this week on Amazon to have a flimsy computer keyboard shipped to me. Still waiting for the drone to drop it off. ;):D

I'm surprised you can ship a bike for $50 across the country with UPS and FedEx's dimensional weight rate hikes.

$50 was the general amount for shipping a bike from CA/NV to the east coast, granted if it was less than 40 lbs and less than their "oversize". If I shipped within state it was still $20. So yeah, I don't get how they can ship across the country for only $30 more.

The companies we order from, who order and ship thousands of bikes every month, can turn around and ship the bikes to us (using their freight account) for $5 each (though most won't drop ship). Is this what Amazon expects us to sell to adhere to their shipping guidelines? Geez!

Sign a multi-billion $ contract with USPS and you too can ship for $5.

The lil guy just can't compete with these mega size companies in today's market.