Take this quick survey and let us know!

We’re meeting with Amazon on Monday and will be sharing your responses with them. Together we hope to identify how sellers use these recommendations and how Amazon can improve them to make them of even more value to you.

So please, share your opinions. This is a great opportunity for you to be heard and for you to help Amazon improve the experience for 3rd-party sellers like yourself.

+Paul Cole

To show you what I mean, I’ll share the story of an Amazon seller who wrote to us recently and then I’ll show how Sellery can implement his strategy.

My Amazon inventory is over 40,000 items. Most of my items are books. Also in my inventory are a few thousand other items that I drop-ship (none of these are books).

For my books, I want to  be the lowest or second-lowest off and not to be lower than $1.00. For my non-book items, I want to mark them up by 250% above my cost.

Is there a way to manage my books and my non-books simultaneously, even though each has unique pricing requirements?

The short answer is yes! And now I’ll show you how.

Start with Smart Lists

In Sellery, we’ll start by creating a “smart list”. Smart lists are groups of inventory items that grow and change automatically. For example, this smart list, which I called Books will contain all items that are books and as new books are added to our inventory, they’ll automatically appear in the Books smart list.

To keep things simple, since in this example our inventory can be divided into two categories, Books and Drop-Ship Items, we don’t need to create a second smart list.

I’ll show you why later on.

Creating a Pricing Rule

We’ll start by creating a pricing rule called Books and begin by filtering the competition. Without knowing more about the desired strategy, we’ll use a basic filter of simply ignoring the competition with a worse condition.

Then we’ll set a pricing strategy. This is where we’ll make a slight adjustment to our desired strategy, that will hopefully improve our business.

Instead of attempting to be the lowest or second-lowest, we’ll aim to be the second-lowest by pricing our item a penny ABOVE the lowest cost. This will allow us to be the second-lowest price and will hopefully prevent the race to the bottom that many sellers worry about.

Of course, we’ll also need to account for the situation where there is no competition to price against. In this case, we’ll set our price to be 300% above our cost.

The final part of our pricing rule will be our special case. It is here that we’ll tell Sellery to never price items below $1.00.

Now, no matter what the results of our repricing rule, the special case will ensure that we never set a price of below $1.00.

Now, we’ll create a pricing rule for our drop ship items; we’ll call it DropShip. Here, the only thing we will need to set will be a special case. That is because we want our price to be independent of our competition. We only want to set our price a certain percentage above our items’ costs.

Note: By default, Sellery sets your items’ costs to be $50% of their initial price. However, you can easily upload a spreadsheet containing the true costs for your items.

Pricing Overview

Now we’ll combine our pricing rules and our smart lists in the pricing overview.

Remember when I said that we only needed to make one smart list? That’s because in our Pricing Overview, we start by pricing our Books smart list using the Books pricing rule.

Then after those items have been priced, we’ll price everything else in our inventory, known in Sellery as Whole Inventory according to the DropShip pricing rule we created.

That’s it!

Review

By creating a smart list of our books and setting their price to be $.01 above the competition’s price (with a floor price of $1.00) we have managed to reach our goal of being the lowest or second-lowest price and will never price below $1.00.

By uploading our products’ costs, creating a pricing rule based on those costs and then applying that rule to the rest of our inventory, we’re able to reprice our drop ship items exactly how we had planned.

Getting Started with Sellery

If you’d like to learn how to translate your business strategies into smart lists and pricing rules in Sellery, send an email to sellery@sellerengine.com.

Or if you’d like to start your free 2-week trial of Sellery, you can sign up today. Mention this blog post to a member of the Sellery Help Team and they’ll double your trial. That’s a full month of repricing with Sellery, absolutely free.

Last week, SellerEngine VP of Sales and Marketing, Frank McBrearty (you may know his vineyard, Silas Wines) and Senior Account Manager Michael Butcher (you may know his sharp outfits and outstanding Sellery support) visited Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle.

They were invited to meet with a group of senior business development professionals from Amazon’s global selling teams.

Over two hours, Frank and Mike told the story of SellerEngine’s early years (over 10 years ago now) and talked about how Profit Bandit and SellerEngine Plus can help growing Amazon sellers.

Then they shared details about the hands-on professional services offered by SellerEngine Services, including emergency account rescue and international expansion.

Finally they gave a demonstration of SellerEngine’s flagship repricing software for Amazon sellers, Sellery.

Amazon’s team was especially impressed with the robustness, power and flexibility of Sellery. They were wowed by the power of some of Sellery’s unique features, including “smart lists,” which are dynamic collections of inventory items that evolve with your inventory, and “megaseller,” which identifies Amazon’s offer using only information provided by Amazon’s MWS Products API.

+Paul Cole

Are you coming to SCOE in Seattle? It’s less than a month away.

Make sure to book your room at the Seattle Airport Marriott as soon as you can, the SCOE block is filling up fast!

Who should come to SCOE?

• If you sell on Amazon, Ebay or Etsy.
• If you’re looking to grow your sales.
• If you want to learn from experts in marketing, sourcing and more
• If you want to network with other sellers
• If you want to learn about the newest products and services that can help improve your business?

If this sounds like you, then you should come to SCOE.

Sign up now and pay the April price of $644. Register before May 18th to take advantage of this amazing offer!

What to Expect from SellerEngine at SCOE

We’ll be back at SCOE this year and we’ll be bringing some great surprises with us. In our next post we’ll look at how SellerEngine will be making SCOE 2013 special.

This post is not meant to be impartial. We want to provide the best Profit Bandit experience to everyone and don’t want to recommend something that will take away from that experience. There are no affiliate links in this article and we are not affiliated with the manufacturer of any bluetooth scanner.

Why Bluetooth Scanners?

In most cases, your smartphone’s built-in camera can scan barcodes with Profit Bandit quickly and easily. But a bluetooth scanner can allow you to scan faster and more accurately. No more focusing your camera on a barcode, just swipe the red beam from your bluetooth scanner.

Bluetooth scanners are particularly useful for when you’re scanning at library sale or any other situation when you’re competing for merchandise. Simply set an alert in Profit Bandit to vibrate your phone when you scan an item with a specific sales rank or profit. Then use your bluetooth scanner and scan until you feel your phone vibrate. You’ll be able to scan without constantly looking at your phone’s screen and will be able to scan faster than your competition.

Here are our 3 options for bluetooth scanners to use with Profit Bandit:

#1 – SerialIO Scanfob 2002/Opticon OPN2002

Top Choice

This is our top recommendation for Amazon sellers looking to add a bluetooth scanner to their scouting toolkit.

It connects easily with Profit Bandit and stays connected, scans quickly and is durable and dependable. It might seem a bit pricy at nearly $300, but it’s worth every penny.

As near as we can tell, the Scanfob 2002 and the OPN 2002 are the same scanner with different branding. However, if you are scanning on an Android phone or tablet, we recommend that you buy directly from SerialIO.

This is because SerialIO includes a free license for SerialMagic Gears with the Scanfob. When connecting your Android phone, bluetooth scanner and Profit Bandit, SerialMagic Gears is required. By buying from SerialIO, you’ll save yourself the $50 cost of the license.

If you’re using an iPhone however, you won’t need SerialMagic Gears to connect your iPhone and scanner to Profit Bandit. Feel free to buy the Opticon OPN 2002. It’s available on Amazon and sometimes you can find used models for significantly cheaper than the SerialIO price.

We also recommend this scanner because it has good battery life (many hours on a single charge) and recharges via a USB port on your computer. If your car has a USB port you may be able to charge it there as well. Despite it’s small size (it’s smaller than a business card) it feels well-made and ours has survived being dropped on the floor several times.

Final Thoughts:

1. The OPN 2002 and the Scanfob 2002 are the same scanner, just with different branding.
2. If using an Android phone, buy the SerialIO Scanfob 2002. It comes with the license to SerialMagic Gears that you’ll need.
3. If using an iPhone, the Opticon OPN2002 is the same scanner, just without the SerialMagic Gears license that you don’t need.
4. Do not buy the OPN2001. This is a USB scanner and will not work with Profit Bandit.
5. For iPhone users, this scanner has a small button that activates the on-screen keyboard when the scanner is connected. Other scanners we tested do not have this feature.

#2 – Microvision ROV Bluetooth Scanner

Android Only

The Microvision ROV bluetooth scanner is a great choice for an Amazon seller on a budget. Currently it sells for about $150 on Amazon, or about half the price of the Scanfob/OPN2002. One really cool feature of this scanner is that it runs on 3 AAA batteries. This means if you carry spare batteries, you’ll never worry about losing power while you’re out scouting.

Be aware that we haven’t been able to get this scanner to connect with an iPhone. We recommend it for Android users only.

However, another drawback to this scanner is that it is quite large, about the size of an average smartphone and substantially thicker. If you’re looking for a bluetooth scanner that’s small and easy to carry, this might not be the best choice for you.

Final Thoughts:

1. Recommended ONLY for Android users. In our tests, did not connect with iPhone.
2. A good value at less than $160.
3. Bigger and bulkier than more expensive scanners.
4. Runs off 3 AAA batteries.
5. SerialMagic Gears is not included.

 #3 – Unitech MS910

Not Recommended

This is another low-cost bluetooth scanner, with a current price of under $150 on Amazon. But unlike the Microvision ROV scanner, the Unitech MS910 works with both Android and iOS.

However, we do not recommend this scanner. It is about the same size as the OPN2002/Scanfob 2002, but it is much lighter and feels much flimsier. We are not sure how it will hold up over months or years of scouting.

Additionally, the scanner only has a single button. To make the on-screen keyboard appear on your iPhone, you’ll need to scan a barcode (included with the scanner). This is a huge hassle and is an inelegant solution.

Finally, the connection between the scanner and phone (both iPhone and Android devices) was tenuous at best. We were able to connect the scanner, but the connection dropped quite often and was very inconsistent.

Final Thoughts

• Low cost and low quality.
• Inefficient to use, especially with an iPhone.
• Frequently dropped connections.
• Not recommended.

Conclusions

If you feel like you need a bluetooth scanner to improve your Amazon scouting we recommend that you invest in an OPN2002 or Scanfob 2002 scanner. These are the most reliable, most user-friendly and in our opinion, best scanners on the market.

If you can’t afford the $300 price tag for these scanners, consider whether you really need a scanner for your business. You may be better served by investing that money into inventory or other aspects of your business.

If you have any more questions about bluetooth scanners or anything else, email support@profitbanditapp.com.

Of course, I was very intrigued by the title, but that was nothing compared to what I saw next.

A buyer had ordered a used copy of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Strength to Love from a 3rd-party seller. When it arrived he opened the book and inside saw an inscription signed by Dr. King himself!

Click the image to view the entire album.

Wow! What an incredible find! And I thought I was lucky the time I found an autographed copy of Dick Vitale’s book in the 25¢ bin at my local bookstore (sadly, my mother threw it out when I moved away from home).

Estimates put the value of the book at around $2,000.

I hope all of you booksellers out there reading this remember this story and double check your inventory before you ship! You never know when you’ll find something special.

Of course, discovering a signature like this would be like winning the lottery, but carefully checking every piece of inventory is important for other reasons, too.

You might not find an autograph, but ripped pages, vulgar doodles, stains, scribbles, highlights and notes in the margins are all surprises that your buyers won’t be posting to Reddit!

Shipping uninspected merchandise can lead to negative feedbacks, A-to-z claims and increases in your ODR. And this goes for more than just books! Toys with missing pieces, incomplete electronics and anything else that isn’t perfect is a customer complaint waiting to happen.

So remember:

Check before you buy.
Double-check before you ship.

That’s key to being a successful Amazon seller. And a little luck doesn’t hurt either.

+Paul Cole

Last we had heard from Sue, she turned $100 cash into $5000 in profit in under 4 months.

We’re very proud of Sue’s success and feel that she is an inspiration to everyone in the Amazon seller community. So we asked her for her Top 5 scouting tips. Here’s what she had to say:

#1. Create a record keeping system…

Have a system in place BEFORE you buy inventory.  This is the #1 most important scouting tool/technique in my opinion.

I use a spreadsheet to track item name, date purchased, where purchased, rank at time of purchase, category, date sent to the warehouse, shipment name, number of MF/FBA sellers, date sold, profit, ROI and more.

My system wouldn’t be perfect for anyone else but me, so take the time to create a system that works for you. And stick to it!

#2. Shop smarter…

Establish your own personal set of buying guidelines.  Everyone’s guidelines are different, and yours should always be changing based on your results.

But start with a set of guidelines. Here are some ideas:

• You want to always purchase inventory in the top 10% of the category.
• You want to avoid selling items Amazon sells.
• You want to avoid inventory with more than a certain number of FBA and/or MF sellers.
• You want to sell items that only NET you 100% of their cost after COGS/fees.
• You don’t want to sell anything under $25.

Buy within your guidelines, track the data, and watch what works and what doesn’t.  You will make mistakes.  Let the data help you to not make them again.

#3. Know when to take calculated risks…

Buy outside your guidelines from time-to-time.  Track the data, and again, watch what works and what doesn’t.

You will make mistakes, but you will also find some great new inventory that you wouldn’t have found otherwise.

#4. Don’t settle for inventory that’s just “good enough…”

Look for the real winners.  It’s better to come home empty handed than settle for “good” inventory. Good inventory sits around gathering dust. Great inventory sells!

Wait for the great stuff.  Your “great” inventory will be defined as your successes.  What do they have in common?  Rank?  Competition?  ROI?  Use your data to discover this, refine it, and repeat.

#5. Track. Every. Single. Piece. Of. Inventory.

If I buy 50 units of the same item, there are 50 entries in my spreadsheet.

Inconsistent tracking can be worse than not tracking anything at all. By tracking every piece of inventory and every sale, you’ll begin to see patterns emerge.

Before you know it, you’ll be buying smarter than ever before. And that means you’ll be making more money than ever before.

Post your scouting tips here or on Facebook and we’ll enter you to win a $25 Amazon Gift Card.

+Paul Cole

This week in Amazon news, Jeff Bezos invests in Business Insider, Amazon changes the way authors work, Walmart threatens Amazon’s success and some big retail brands are growing faster than Amazon.

LuluLemon, Williams-Sonoma, American Apparel Grow Faster than Amazon – Amazon has long been known as a company that grows faster than e-commerce as a whole. But in Q4 2012, several well-known brands grew at a faster rate than Amazon. What do you make of this? Is Amazon’s growth slowing down? Are other companies catching on to Amazon’s secrets?

The Effect of Amazon on Authors – This is an interesting article that looks at the ways that Amazon’s success has caused some writers to change the way they work and write. Writers are now connecting more correctly with their readers and have more direct control over the publishing process, thanks to the Kindle. What do you think?

Two Threats to Amazon’s Earnings – This article predicts that the upcoming (and already here for many) internet sales tax will give Walmart an edge over Amazon. Do you think this will be a big deal to customers?

Bezos Invests in Business Insider – Last week, Jeff Bezos invested in BusinessInsider.com. Interesting move. I think it’s great to see more money put into online media. And it’s great that the money is coming from a trusted and respected source. What online company would you invest in?

Share your Amazon news stories by leaving a comment here or posting on SellerEngine’s Facebook page.

+Paul Cole

And the answers varied, from just a few hundred dollars to a few thousand.

And it reminded me of Sue, a SellerEngine Spark Winner. We gave her $100 to work with and we last checked in with her a few months ago. I figured it was time to see how she’s been doing.

Since December she’s grown her initial $100 into nearly $5000 of pure profit in her pocket. And her profit would be even higher, but she’s been investing a portion of her profit into more inventory.

As of this writing, she has an additional 65 unsold inventory items that could be worth over $1000 in additional profit!

Some other amazing facts. A single $100 bill has ended up allowing her to buy nearly 350 pieces of inventory and her sales have had an average ROI of over 250%.

Sue’s fantastically dedicated and meticulous, tracking her profit down to the penny. But those are skills that I know anyone can develop.

And there’s no better way to learn these skills than to challenge yourself.

I’d encourage everyone reading this to start with $100 and see how far you can go. If this is something you’re interested in, post a comment here and if there’s enough interest maybe we can organize a fun contest!

And don’t forget about SCOE in Seattle from May 30-June 1. Use discount code SELLERENGINE to save $75 on your registration. Learn more about SCOE.

+Paul Cole

It’ll be taking place at the Seattle Airport Marriott from May 30th to June 1st. It’s going to be the best place to connect with from hundreds of experienced Amazon, Etsy and Ebay experts, not to mention learn about products and services from dozens of outstanding vendors, including us here at SellerEngine.

The agenda is up and it’s looking great already! Check it out!

You’ll be able to demo Sellery, try out Profit Bandit and learn about how SellerEngine Services can help your business grow.

Ioan Mitrea, founder of SellerEngine Software will be giving the keynote address on International Growth Opportunities for Amazon Sellers. We’re looking forward to sharing with all of you how you can take advantage of Amazon’s commitment to global sales.

And if you’re ready to register for SCOE2013, use the discount code SELLERENGINE at checkout to receive $75 off.

Hope to see you there!

+Paul Cole