The high-risk, high-reward world of selling random stuff on Amazon | Hacker News Reader

The high-risk, high-reward world of selling random stuff on Amazon

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126 pointslxm82 comments

I list trading cards (YGO, MTG) on Amazon, in addition to TCGPlayer.

Amazon is very lucrative because I can list commons at $0.01 where there's almost zero competition and make all of my money on shipping. I do this at high volume and have a high amount of repeat business/trust. I aggressively price the more expensive stuff and it works out well. YGO in particular is very good on Amazon because the secondary market for non-rares is shit for that game. Players have a hard time getting the low-value cards they need without opening new product or doing bulk buys.

I can often get 5x-10x what I would for some things (cheaper products that sell at higher volumes) on TCGPlayer because the market (customers & expectations) is different. Plus the feedback is a lot better. The fraud rate on Amazon is a fraction of what is at the card game sites.

I used to flip YGO cards at events (once made $25-35 per on Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon, they were insanely undervalued when they first came out). Do you just purchase cases and resell?

I buy cases and I buy peoples collections. I sell at shows/conventions (I'm a vendor at big comic cons, etc) and that ends up being one of the best ways to buy collections.

Last year I managed to pick up a huge (triple digit) volume of 1st edition Yugi/Kaiba/Joey/Pegasus starter decks for essentially original cost. If you know what those go for you know what an incredible deal I made. (They're all sold now)

Yeah that's pretty bannanas, I think the Blue-Eyes alone pieced out are more than double the original price. I never operated at your level but I was able to break even on the whole habit while on the cutting-edge of tier 1 decks. I never considered Comic Con, that's likely where a lot of people who are not currently into YGO decide to sell their collections

Mixed bag. From players I get better collections outside of the cons but I have to pay more for them. If someone brings their collection with them to a show they almost definitely don't want to go home with it and want to use the money to buy something else. This puts the pricing much more in my favor.

There are a lot of casual collectors though and dealers of other products who have casually sat on some very valuable product for years. After years of doing the same show as us, they know we're going to be there, know that we'll buy and they're happy to get _any_ amount of money for it. That deal we got for those starter decks was from another dealer who approached us with "if you don't buy these, i'm throwing them in the trash". He didn't have the time or the interest to value and sell them himself and was just happy to make more than he paid on them and lighten his load packing up.

tldr: being in a niche market at these shows occasionally is a huge (but inconsistent) boon to us.

How do you make money on shipping? Do you use first class mail or media mail? Whenever I sell used stuff on amazon I end up losing my shirt on shipping.

First Class Mail. You set a shipping rate on Amazon that covers your costs and then some, for most shipping conditions. Free shipping is the sucker play (except for boxes/cases/etc)

I do not bother with Media Mail ever (except internationally with certain repeat customers). It is too slow and makes buyers unhappy.

Yeah I always do "free shipping" but I guess that's my mistake...

I think this kind of market is the exception instead of the norm. It sounds like the cost of business is time, not inventory.

Thus, charging for shipping instead of inventory makes more sense.

You've nailed it.

Selling $0.01 cards kinda precludes me from doing that.

Bulk purchases by single buyers perhaps?

charge more for shipping?

This has a (not so surprising) resemblance with the current state of app development for Google's Play Store.

This is discussed e.g. here: https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/9n88wv/the_futu...

It's really quite unnerving that Google (and Apple) has the potential to destroy any of the numerous mobile-first companies out there with effectively the flick of a switch. An entire company could be shut down, and many jobs ended, just by having their app suddenly deemed to be unacceptable. I'm looking forward to seeing what the EU will try to do about it.

Having your business model around Google is not a good idea. Try to be as independent as possible.

If you really depend, you are in high risk and should be ready to be shut down at any time.

Sounds like obvious advice in theory, but in practice you will run into a lot of problems.

Google's Play store has a quasi-monopol on Android app sales, alternative app stores make up a small fraction in the promille range.

Make a web app in addition to your native apps? Then if they pull the native app you can direct people to the web app. I think Uber has this?

Has anyone actually made a mobile webapp that isn't a completely miserable user experience? People keep talking about how PWAs are the future or whatever but then every time I try using one the performance is really poor.

Twitter for example claims their PWA "Loads quickly on 2G and 3G networks" compared to their native app but my actual experience using it was very much the opposite. Everything takes seemingly 2-3x longer to load.

Uber would be in deep trouble if their app got pulled. It's not that easy to get people to use your web site once they are used to the app.

Could you make an app that just installs your web app in the launcher so the user only uses your webapp directly? iirc that can't be pulled as easily by Google.

I've done that - it's a pretty poor experience in practice.

Why is that? What has been your experience?

I found it harder to make a clean, smooth user interface. Lots of workarounds to make things fit into the right place, to make the right thing in focus for user input. I'm not a professional front-end developer so maybe I just wasn't any good at it, but achieving a basic level of quality was much harder.

True but if that is the case, you have to play by their rules, even if they are idiotic. It kind of is what it is until things change.

That's the the thing - if it's a case of "play by our very specific, unambiguous and consistently applied rules" then I think most people would have no issue. However I know that Apple for example have kicked a few apps off the App Store after they made their first party replacements. And while I have no first-hand experience with Android, a friend of mine has been grousing about some Google Play store ranking or recommendation changes (I don't know exactly what it was) within the last few months that decimated his income overnight. These stories pop up relatively frequently on HN, and I'm sure you'll have seen them if you've been around for a while.

The issue is that you can find yourself completely kicked off (literally or figuratively) a platform with no recourse whatsoever even when you play by their rules. One day you have a business and an income, the next you don't.

+1 was not enough, therefore verbal +100.

(Will be nice once comment systems allow multiple upvotes on a budget)

Then don't be in the Android app business.

> Try to be as independent as possible.

Having worked SEO for a number of midsized e-commerce companies, their revenue lives and dies on the latest Google dance.

These are regular shopfronts running regular websites. Non-Google organic traffic is negligible. What other platform choice do they have?

Get a sudden Google penalty for no obvious reason? There goes 70% of your monthly revenue, have fun trying to reverse engineer the problem.

That's what I said. If you depend on Google at least be aware that you can lose everything overnight. Be prepared

> That's what I said.

And that's my point. The web is supposed to be an open platform but no longer, you just married Sergey.

Make an iPhone app? OK understood you're in bed with Apple now. But a website should be a free agent. That's no longer an option because monopoly.

Possible other choices:

1. create enough valuable original content to drive organic traffic

2. run an affiliate program for referrals

3. Facebook advertising

1. Is a frankly a Google lie. Matt Cutts likes to bang the OC drum but in my measurements it is only one fragment of the SEO picture and not a big one at that. Google rewards content volume and freshness waaaay more than uniqueness and quality. If you get a sudden penalty, OC will not save you.

2. That's a great way to get autoflagged for a penalty.

3. You're on the money here this is actually a viable alternative. But then you're at the mercy of Facebook instead of El Goog. Different boss same crap.

People said the same thing back when the web was the thing and everyone depended on Google search traffic. They didn't listen. They're not going to listen this time. Whatever the solution is, it won't be telling people not to follow the latest proprietary gold rush.

> Having your business model around Google is not a good idea. Try to be as independent as possible.

The surprising thing is it's 2018, it shouldn't be that hard to do. Diversify to do websites, maybe look at other platforms like Salesforce, or build desktop apps along with mobile apps.

I've known many friends who were building apps and none of them relied solely on Google for the success of their company.

It's really gross that your first instinct is to call for government regulation.

Why? Are there other options? Signing petitions won't help, obviously

The recommended approach is to get to scale in terms of customer awareness ASAP - so you have public channels available, and fans, to complain about any unfair actions on the part of the platform owner.

There are non-google app store places to get apps though. APKpure, for example.

Sure, and there's places other than amazon to sell.

That doesn't matter when the Play store, or Amazon, controls the majority of all sales. How much money are people making on APKpure? Is it enough to support a dozen software engineer salaries?

Didn't think so, no. Getting booted off of the Play store does not mean your app is impossible to share, but it decimates the size of your audience - worse, even. Will even one in one hundred be left?

Amazon has about a 44% e-commerce market share in the US, which is huge but not yet a majority.

Indeed there are, but most people are wisely taught to avoid them as there is more risk of installing an app that may have nefarious (hidden) behaviors.

So practically speaking, distributing your app outside of Play store is going to severely limit your reach.

I'd rather build a web app and try to get people to create a "desktop" shortcut.

I think a PWA (progressive web app), that people get directly through your website, is a more viable alternative.

As long as you don't need some native-only functionality of course.

What fraction of a percent is the market share in app installs?

Lately, i use shopify and private label the stuff from China.

I sell exclusively through Facebook ads.

Around 20K per month revenue with 70% margin.

This is in UK only. I've no idea how to move product to the US and sell there.

I've not found any company which can take my products from UK and store it in a wharehouse in the US then dispatch them to address i specify.

Lemme know if you know about any such company.

I'm partner in a logistics/fulfillment company out of Los Angeles doing just this, primarily for e-commerce and Amazon. We receive pallets to our warehouse, repackage if necessary, store, then ship orders received via API's. My partners have been regularly in the top ten of Amazon FBA volume over the last six years. We have spent the last six months optimizing our systems. We prefer smaller sized items (no bikes for example) and ship an array including CBD products.

One of our clients right now is a cannabis accessories brand from Holland, so we are receiving pallets already from UK. My email is on my profile page and would love to help out.

Well you just partner with someone who lives in the USA. Have that person localize ads and strategies, figure out local fulfillment (there's always FBA in the USA). Test out products doing well in the UK and see if they'll work in the USA. From the way the UK health business I know do business, it's not a trivial translation from UK to USA. Drop me a line on reddit at /u/organicdude if you'd like to chat more.

If you can get a USA company to do store-and-dispatch for you, why can't the Chinese sellers do that in the UK?

Aside: I was looking at something, cables for a multimeter IIRC - cheaper shipped from China than the delivery cost from UK providers; I can't get my brain around that. It means Chinese shippers are getting cheaper shipping for the Euro stretch than local shippers? (Local providers aren't overcharging the shipping AFAICT).

Chinese shippers in many cases do get cheaper rates than local shippers. The Universal Postal Union sets rates between postal services for different countries, which are called terminal dues. I'm not sure what the terminal dues are for China -> UK specifically, but for China -> US, the shipping is much cheaper for posts originating from China to the US than from within the US to within the US. It's centered around China -> US terminal dues, but this article[1] gives a good overview.

This is also why you won't see many Chinese sellers shift wholesale inventory overseas. It might lessen the transit time from purchase to delivery, but would drastically increase their shipping costs.

[1] http://fortune.com/2015/03/11/united-nations-subsidy-chinese...

Related to the aside: It has been this way for a while. Check out ebay listings for < $1 USD shipped. Pretty much anything you could buy in a dollar store and more can be shipped to your door for less than a dollar if you are willing to wait up to 30 days sometimes. That entire inter-country shipping system is broken. From what I understand, they hand off the package with no fees going to the USPS. I believe it is that way for most tiny packages.

It's not that no fees go to the USPS, but the fees that go to the USPS are pre-negotiated by the Universal Postal Union (UPU), which is a multi-national organization within the UN that the USPS is a member of.

China is considered a Group III country by the UPU, which is a "mid level developing country". Other countries in that group include Brazil, Mexico, and Thailand. The US is a Group I "Industrialized" country. Shipments from a Group III to a Group I country equate to about $1 - $1.50 USD per pound (it's not a linear scale and per/lb rate fluctuates based on total weight).

That's really interesting; thanks for sharing.

If you want to wholesale to us in the US, we could do that for you. I'd be happy to discuss logistics and see if the numbers work for you.

Shipwire is popular in that space. If you Google search "shipwire", you'll also get ads for competitors.

https://www.blackbox.cool/

    was stuck with 600 stackable baby formula
    dispensers in her garage

Is this an over-dramatization, or is Amazon really that much of a monopoly, that you cannot get rid of inventory at all elsewhere?

I can understand that other marketplaces might not be efficient enough to turn a profit. But just selling the inventory at purchase price?

What alternatives are there? Ebay comes to mind. Anything else?

The key word her is "stackable" so the seller is focusing on volume selling which is very effective with amazon's one listing per item policy. If the item is very popular then having 600 of some item could be a weeks worth of inventory. Whereas on other sites, you would have to list on site and then everything is seller-by-seller....so if people don't see your listing or your price isn't good enough then you get no sales.

but yeah, that's just how it is. Selling products on ebay/amazon is not a guaranteed source of income so those types of businesses are inherently high-risk, especially if you are focusing on a specific product line or niche products.

    so if people don't see your listing or your price
    isn't good enough then you get no sales

Again, I understand how that can prevent a profit.

But how does it hinder you to put ads (I guess both Ebay and Amazaon have those) for your product and sell it off for half the price?

I'm not addressing that she might have to fold her business. I'm only addressing the being stuck with inventory part. That makes it sound like she had to throw it away or something.

Yeah, sellers do that all the time. You can liquidate. There are also Facebook groups where sellers bulk liquidate.

The fact that they were stuck with inventory in the garage just means they had no idea what they were doing.

"Stuck with" is a colloquialism. It's just saying that she'd planned to make X profit and instead will end up with a loss. There's plenty of ways to make a loss: sell it at a discount (near or below what you bought for) or spend so much effort making sales that your opportunity cost is more than your profit. The article's point isn't about how she's going to get rid of her useless inventory, so it just uses the shorthand that she's not selling at Amazon and has no immediate profitable back-up plan.

Sears.com also allows 3rd party sellers. But again the volume is orders of magnitude less.

Honestly, there are a lot of screwballs in the Amazon marketplace, and as a regular Amazon customer, I'm quite happy that they stick up for me. It's also clear that Amazon needs to improve their system for vendors. Shutting a vendor off without some form of human contact or rapid appeal will ultimately hurt their marketplace.

I once had to file an A to Z complaint, and the vendor called me personally asking me to cancel the complaint. In this case, the vendor was a bit of a screwball and entered into Amazon that he shipped me the entire order. I only received part of my order, and after a week of emailing back and forth, I realized that the vendor never had the missing item in stock.

On the phone, the vendor pushed really hard on me to cancel my A to Z complaint. I flatly told the vendor that Amazon listed the item as delivered to my address, and he never shipped it. I then told him he needed to work with Amazon to resolve the problem. He should have never called me in the first place. Instead, he should have been able to work out the problem with Amazon.

At that point it became clear to me that Amazon might be a bit too heavy-handed with vendors. Even though the vendor was clearly in the wrong, and clearly a screwball, the fear in his voice of an A to Z complaint made me suspect that Amazon is too heavy handed in handling disputes like mine.

If there's anything I've learned from selling on Amazon, it's that both buyers and sellers are willing to pay a premium for the smooth experience that Amazon provides.

Literally everyone benefits. I honestly don't know how Ebay, PayPal, and retailers stay in business.

There are some strategies to prevent Amazon from destroying your business, but you have to be very careful.

I know people who make 3k+/month with a 3-5k+ investment. They don't really care that it doesn't work anymore for that specific product after 4-5 months. The ROI is crazy. But most people don't know how to do this properly and lose money. For these people it's basically gambling and I wouldn't recommend it. It's hard to pull it off consistently.

edit: OT - is it just my perception or is HN more interested in passive income sources lately? (also making passive money with SaaS like the projects on indiehackers.com)

Being interested in passive income is a new trend, over the past 10 years. Nothing wrong with it, but everyone I know with spare money and a little ambition is trying to flip houses or buy rental properties. Or sell things for Amazon. Or run a delivery chain for Amazon.

Looking for passive income is not a new thing, investing and rent-seeking are pretty classic ideas

Where I grew up small businesses could be "turned off" by the local government at the drop of a hat if they competed with the businesses of the well connected, the owner offended the wrong person, etc, etc. It would all eventually be "made right", sometimes in court, but because most business was seasonal many businesses would fold in the time it took for things to be "made right".

Is having an algorithm flag you and ruin your business and source of income with no warning and inadequate recourse really that different from the status quo?

Yes, substantially. There's a legal record and accountability to voters (thin as it is) in the scenario you describe.

And here, there's a trail that leads to Amazon as the cause for disruption. In both cases, interested parties could know who was at fault but the result is the same: such catastrophic loss during the run of "the process" that the seller is out of business regardless.

Yes. Government, even moreso local governement, is supposed to be subject and an expression of the will of the people. The multinational corporation is barely so.

When the company screws you over, you'll have no recourse. This is the libertarian dream.

Amazon can't send cops to my house if I decide I'm gonna keep selling my product on eBay or register for a new Amazon seller account. If you keep trying to run a business that's been condemned by local government eventually cops will show up and stop you from running that business.

The stakes are lower in the case of Amazon. You're not renting shop space. You're not sitting on as much inventory. You can jump ship more easily (kind of hard to relocate your business to another location). The trade-off is that they can also kick you out more easily.

Complain to the company's management. Organize other customers to shun the company. If it is really an example of gross negligence or overreach on the part of the company, their customers will care and hold them over the fire for it.

The company exists to make money which it can only do by servicing those who use it. It may gain a lot of power with a monopoly, but it must still provide its service or die.

I know a couple of people who have done this with some success. It’s basically a game of front-running since you’ll never compete on price, unless you own the factory or have a real sweetheart deal.

Your only hope is to pick up the pennies on your race to the bottom, especially with your platform (Amazon) liable to compete with you, in addition to some very hungry foreigners who can live off of much less than you due to pitching power disparities.

[meta] 4 popups + 1 "read more" + 1 autoplay video on mobile. The experience is quite subpar here, probably the worst offender I've seen in a while.

Edit: added 1 extra popup that appeared on changing tabs to write this.

Reading this , selling on Amazon sounds like online gambling.

As soon as you start to win they cut you off.

I'm an amazon merch seller. Less risk but still crazy rules. I had a successful shirt, then copycats sold my shirt for less. I made a complaint to take down their shirt, and amazon took down my shirt instead. No matter how many times I email them they won't undo that.

Amazon is also not fighting for customers, afaik. If something goes wrong, they dump you instructions on how to make it a task for the local police. And then they repeat this again and again.

I call it 'Dancing with the dragon'. It's thrilling most of time and you sometime think you tamed the Dragon. But you only get burnt once ...

Is there a startup opportunity here for a company that focuses on being an Amazon substitute for suppliers that have been kicked off Amazon?

People who drop ship stuff and/or resell bulk inventory for chinese manufacturers act as conduits for copycat and/or counterfeit merchanidise.

Warning autoplays video. Blocked site.

I use a Chrome extension called Mute Tabs By URL (1). It doesn't stop the video, just mutes the audio. Quick and easy to add sites.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mute-tabs-by-url/b...

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