A Southwell Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 I'm not sure what the rep was talking about, Amazon does allow you to create variations on a product although the spreadsheet is far from straight forward in that regards (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200795320) Again, if you have all you product data in a spreadsheet, it is just a question of converting it into a the format used by Amazon. Are your products likely to be sold already on Amazon or are you manufacturing them yourself? Do you have EAN / UPC / GTIN / Barcode numbers for your products? It is worth getting into - we've found that Amazon out performs eBay around 8 orders to 1. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
citroen999 Posted November 6, 2012 Author Share Posted November 6, 2012 I'm not sure what the rep was talking about, Amazon does allow you to create variations on a product although the spreadsheet is far from straight forward in that regards (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200795320) Again, if you have all you product data in a spreadsheet, it is just a question of converting it into a the format used by Amazon. Are your products likely to be sold already on Amazon or are you manufacturing them yourself? Do you have EAN / UPC / GTIN / Barcode numbers for your products? It is worth getting into - we've found that Amazon out performs eBay around 8 orders to 1. we manufacture ourselves.. similar wall art and tshirts/hoodies are already on amazon havent got the barcodes yet as i am holding off until i am ready. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Southwell Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 We'd be more than happy to take a look at this for you if you would like either as a one off fee, a fee per product or a % of new sales that way you can stick with the manufacturing or, supervising the manufacturing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SportsTrophy Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 If you have that many items to sell, why are you using eBay & Amazon with their horrendous fees. You could have your own website and save a fortune. You should still use eBay to generate leads. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
citroen999 Posted November 24, 2012 Author Share Posted November 24, 2012 If you have that many items to sell, why are you using eBay & Amazon with their horrendous fees. You could have your own website and save a fortune. You should still use eBay to generate leads. you are missing the point with ebay and the amount of listings ie. one listing has 3 sizes and 17 colours so thats 51 variations but you only pay for one listing = 5p , and not the 51 variations i have have 1800 listings with 42000 variations, so 1800 x 5p = £90 per month + £49.99 = £139.99 theres 10% on the final selling price, and finally paypal fees which are around 2.9%. the "own website" subject does my head in... heres why.. cost, too expensive. quality, theres more rubbish out there than good in my opinion. will it get me any more sales, yes probably but how long before i earn my money back. every new business and his dog think they have got the best product and think customers will flock to their website... 1000s invested and nil return, we have seen one on this forum this week. so for the moment i will stick to ebay and amazon, no need for SEO, its done, no need to pay for a flashy website, its done.. the ebay fees are reasonable in my opinion, the fees are unreasonable when you dont put margin across your product. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hollylolly Posted November 25, 2012 Share Posted November 25, 2012 ill do it!! lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FACEBOOK Posted November 26, 2012 Share Posted November 26, 2012 //////////////////////// Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
citroen999 Posted November 26, 2012 Author Share Posted November 26, 2012 Hi Citroen Just quickly looked over this thread. It seems that you are clear where your business currently stands and your present role within it. You may have been going a while but it appears you are stuck between the stages of start up and the first phase of growth. If you wish to grow, you simply must relinquish the employee reigns to someone else so that you can concentrate on efficiency, generating more revenue, sourcing and introducing more product lines or whatever, and to focus on how to get the overall job done cheaper and faster by building systems and developing better structure. You need someone good, not cheap who can do the job you did far better than you could. Hire smart. Your business will only be as good as the people you hire. You don't have to employ at first, just outsource but find someone good. If you have a good grasp on your cash-flow, don't concern yourself too much with the cost of good help in the beginning, it's more important that you can leave the person and trust them to do a great job leaving you free to focus on the important stuff. You must permanently delegate your day to day task related responsibilities on to the shoulders of someone else. You then in effect move into a management role for this person and simply need to communicate your vision and strategy to them on how their help is going to allow your company to grow identifying their goals and objectives and the steps to achieve them. Once you agree on this, they are accountable and you can leave them to it. You have to involve others if you are to grow. Once you are in full growth, you can make the odd mistake with new hires, but initially, your first new hire will have a dramatic impact on the make or break of your growth so you absolutely must get this first new person right. Hire someone good that has the right skill set for what you need to leave them in total control. Your job now is to increase customer value and increase your client acquisition. If you are to grow, you will need a website, as much for the list building and database of existing customers who you can continually promote and market to with your brand, without the ongoing costs associated with amazon and ebay. They are great entry portals into your main website and should be seen as front end. Your main brand and database size and value of customers is probably your main asset and the bigger this gets the more your company is worth when ready for sale. Once your revenue increases, you can start looking at some seo and ppc management, again, don't do this yourself, hire good people with proven track records and outsource. If you can go on holiday for a month, two months or even a year, controlling the entire operation with a few calls on a mobile phone and it make no difference to the performance and growth of your business, you have implemented good structure. You can't possibly grow or focus on a winning strategy to position yourself as a market leader without a brand, or build better business relationships, profitable joint ventures and finding talented people to gain an overall competitive advantage if you are wasting your day listing items on ebay. What do you want to be, a little cockroach or an online retail powerhouse. Just joking, good luck with your business. hi thanks for that... to be honest i knew i needed someone ages ago and i had come to a bottleneck as regards sourcing new products, listing them, prodcution and finally shipping.. but as i did it all myself its hard to let go and trust someone. Your post makes perfect sense and i said to the wife i need to manage the buisnes not work in it, if that makes sense i looked at pay rates and was disgusted really, it got to me how low they were but from a business point of view they are ideal so i had a barrier to overcome in my head... the first thing is i need to move out of working from home, family life and business life dont mix under one roof when the kids come home at 3pm.. so we now have an office at Rido at Magna, Rotherham.. move in there december secondly spoke to my best friend over the weekend and got talking and he says he will help and work for me, he has strange shifts and can work in the day. We have agreed wages and he his happy, i'm happy as we have been best mates 30 years and i know i can give him a key and leave him to it.. so 2 main areas that were holding the business up have now been addressed thanks again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FACEBOOK Posted November 26, 2012 Share Posted November 26, 2012 //////////////////////// Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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