Zazzle Store to Look At

While I was looking around on zazzle.com the other day I came across this great example of what you can do with the store functions.

Take a look at this great store and see what fun you can have creating products.

Cute N Comfy Online Gift Shop

T-Rex Wish I Could Drink This Beer Shirts by cutencomfy
Make your own tee shirts at zazzle.com.

Or Urban Vibes 

Urban Vibes Mug by Urban_Vibes
Create unique custom cups at Zazzle.

What has been Happening?

Over recent months I have been expanding my online businesses.


My online bookstore, Bretsuki's Books, at amazon.com marketplace has been pretty successful.  Turning over sevel hundred books in the first six months of business and the business is still growing.


I have also been continuing to create products for my zazzle.com stores. The biggest of these stores, *, has increased sales over 250% in the last year, March 1, 2013 until March 1, 2014.
My biggest surprise with my zazzle.com stores is the numbers of International sales. a full 60% of my sales in the last seven months have been from Europe, mostly Germany and closely followed by the United Kingdom.


The major seller has been with items using products bearing what you may consider United States icons, the U.S. flag and Uncle Sam have been very popular.

A Used Bookstore

Opening a used bookstore with amazon is very easy.

You can opt to sell your own items or you can choose to use the Fulfilment by Amazon service.

For the most part I use the Fulfilment by Amazon service because customers can use their Amazon Prime accounts to have goods delivered with FREE two Day Shipping and non Amazon Prime customers who spend $25 at the same time as they purchase an item from my store can opt for Free Supersaver shipping.

To get Free Supersaver shipping customers do not need to spend $25 at my storefront. All purchases from my store count towards the $25 total and purchases can be from several amazon store holders or Amazon.com itself.

My stor is also registered with Amazon to sell Internationally, so my sales are not just restricted to the U.S. but can be shipped to the rest of the world too. Raising my customer potential from about 300 million to over 6 Billion people.

Take a look at my storefront.storefront

Scare of the Week

Last week started pretty calmly. It was Labor Day weekend and pretty relaxed. I didn't realize as I prepared a shipment for my amazon store that it was going to cause a lot of worry over the week.

Being Labor Day last Monday, I was not able to send a box of books on that day so it had to wait until TTuesday to ship. All went well as the box containing thirty books with an approximate retail value of $300 moved down through California to Los Angeles with UPS.

UPS is usually very good at the shipping process, it updates its records regularly so I can follow all my shipments which normally take about five business days to travel from my base to my normal amazon.com fulfillment center in Indiana.

Well Thursday morning, I checked the status of my package. It showed an Exception had occurred.

Well if you read UPS's notes on an Exception it is pretty scary, an exception is described as bad weather, destruction of the package and loss of the barcode delivery note.

I went into panic mode. Visualizing my books scattered along the I-5 corridor, being torn to shreds by coyotes for den making material. It was awful. I held off contacting UPS straight away because I though there was a mistake and in a few hours it would change to In Transit again.

Late Friday there was no change to the status and so I called UPS and spoke to a great customer service operator. She took a few moments to track down my package. It had left L.A. Thursday night on it's way to Indiana, the package had however somehow slipped through the automatic updating system on its departure scan, triggering the exception warning.

I remained on tenter hooks all week-end as my package moved across country. It's next check-in scheduled for the shipping center in Illinois. It finally arrived there in the early hours of Monday this week, one day late but at least my scare was over.

Three hundred dollars worth of books now move on towards Indiana and the final destination for this journey and I can breathe again at last.

Preparing a Shipment for Sale by Fulfilment by Amazon

Amazon.com is not only a bookstore it is a wonderful opportunity for you as an online retailer to enjoy a possible source of income.

I have been a retailer with Amazon for several months now. Mostly selling textbooks from my recent college courses, but also purchasing some items for resale.

For me Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) is the easiest method to get my stock to Amazon's customers with little hastle and a great deal of potential profit.

Saturday : Shopping day. I will visit a goodwill or thrift store looking for new stock. I use a good local library too, they have a bookshelf for unwanted donations which they sell for just $1.00. My wife and I visit goodwill stores such as the Salvation Army too, choose a fairly prosperous part of town to buy from goodwills. The more affluent the neighboring districts the better the stock in the goodwill.

I buy several books, some fiction and a few inexpensive textbooks. One textbook in particular on the History of Western Civilisation catches my eye for just 30 cents. Later I find the same book advertised at $40 on Amazon sell your copy pages.

Saturday night when I get home I log onto Amazon.com to see what prices are being asked by other sellers on Amazon. Averages are around $3 or $4 per book from non FBA sellers but some like that textbook are priced much higher.

I assess my books according to the Amazon guidelines. I ainm to buy Used Like New or Used Very Good. No Highlighting on pages, all pages fixed in the book, no margin notes or other writing in the book if possible. The history text was only good on the scale, cover creasing and a tear to the front piece but for 30cents still a bargain worth over $5 to my assessment.

I then set my prices. I aim for pricing like with like so I look for the same quality of book  sold by an FBA seller and price at least the same price as they do or a if there are several FBA sellers in the same area sell at the mid price. ( A book at the same quality selling for $5 from one seller and $6 from a second I price $5.50 )

Why not sell lower you may ask?

Lower prices are often counter productive on Amazon.com. Amazon buyers want low prices, yes, but they also want quality. Pricing too low suggests to the buyer that the quality is not there and so stay away from the lowest price sellers.

You also really don't want to start a price war with other Amazon sellers. You force them to cut your margins and they will do the same to you. They may have deeper pockets than you and cutting margins means the seller with the deepest pockets wins.  Let them keep their margins and price accordingly then everyone wins.

Sunday. I set aside about an hour to prepare a box for shipment. With about twenty books to process, entering the stock into the Amazon website takes about forty-five minutes, after a little practice, all you need is to enter the quality, your seller number and a price and quantity you are shipping.

Pack the box carefully and tightly so books cannot move. Print out the required packing slip and put it inside the box on top of the books. Seal and print-out the Mailing form. This is a barcoded address label and UPS shipping label complete with barcodes and tracking numbers. I also make a second copy of this information for my records.

I choose to have Amazon pay for shipping initially, they will charge your credit card in about five days or take payment from your sales, but a thirty pound weight package can be shipped via UPS for only $14, a vastly reduced charge when compared to usually shipping rates.

All you need to do then is take the packaged books to a UPS collection point or give the package to a UPS driver. UPS will collect from your home or office but that does incur a special charge not covered by Amazon and is not worth the expense.  If you are receiving a delivery via UPS anyway the charge is also waived.

Sell on Amazon

Several months ago I was on Amazon.com and followed the link to allow me to sell on amazon.

Following the link took me to a choice of two pages sell less than forty items per month for free or if I wanted or expectedd to sell more than forty items there was a fee just under $40.

I opted for the less than forty item option.

I was able to go through the large amazon catalogue and find items such as textbooks that I had on my book shelves.

There are certain restrictions to selling on amazon.com so be aware of what is allowed, items such as clothing are restricted but you can sell books, gourmet foods, toys and children's items. I have sold books in my own business.

Choice of how tto sell comes in two forms:

1. You can advertise the item and when someone buys it from you amazon send you an e-mail  informing you of the sale which you must then fulfil, dispatching the product within a specified time. Amazon also estimate postage fees and charge the purchaser an additional amount for your mailing costs. This method is a little similar to using eBay.

2. You have the choice off sending your items to an amazon warehouse. This means that you have to mail a package of items to the specified warehouse giving you an upfront cost. Amazon hold the item on a until sold basis, when a customer buys your item it is deispatchedd directly from the amazon warehouse to the customer as any other amazon order. The benefits for you is that you don't have to store dozens of items and that when your item is advertised it gets prominent listing in the amazon other sellers option page and can be included in free amazon Prime mailing offers.

I have used both systems and am finding option 2 a real benefit with better sales and turnover.

Amazon pay you quickly at the end of the week in which the item is soldd and also pay the cash directly into your bank account.

The only problem with using the amazon jholding the product method is that you have to wait several days for the item to be delivered to amazon's warehouse. That items are held securely and are elligible for amazon Prime increases interest. Customers trust amazon more than the inddividual seller so use the service to your advantage in order to increase your turnover.

Key to Multiple Streams of Income

Having multiple streams of income may sound like a lot of work. Don't you have to juggle several businesses at one time?

Well not exactly. With proper planning some income streams will almost take care of themselves. For instance consider investments in stocks or bonds, they don't need lots of work to deal with. In fact the less work you do with those after your initial purchase the better as leaving them alone is more cost effective,
Spread your time  evenly over those income streams that require you deal with matters regularly. So blog often on successful traffic generating blogs. Take care of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), update your skills as required, it is surprising how skills quickly dull as you don't use them.

Keepp a diary for ideas. It may just be a notebook. As ideas come to you for products, services, blog posts or such, write them down in outline straight away. Most ideas you can forget, but your notes will allow you to remember the real gems.

Check your idea diary regularlyfor ideas. The more ideas that you note down the more ideas you will get. It is surprising how once started the flow of ideas comes more easily.

Accept time  as a real cost. It can  take several months for an idea to bear fruit with a small cash stream. Keep working the paying streams and only let them go if they don't show a real return after two years at least.