business sense
Selling Media on Amazon.com An ever-changing proposition
by Bob McCullough, Pawn Plus, Macomb, IL goldcrea@macomb.com
Selling media on Amazon.com has been profitable for our business for several years. However, as with everything in life, change happens. I’m not saying we don’t still make a profit with Amazon.com, but it has become much more difficult.
Restrictions
While Amazon.com has the legal right to restrict what is sold on their site, sellers have no way of knowing that an item is restricted until they go through the process of posting it. In the past, we scanned the barcode on an item and would get the price and the selling rank on Amazon.com. This allowed us some certainty that we could turn the item in seven days or less and allowed us to pay customers a higher price. Now, we can see the price and the rank, but we may not be able to sell the item on Amazon.com. For example, I found that Amazon.com restricts some 20,000 DVD and Blu-ray titles. I have always used a third party to manage the listings and orders associated with Amazon.com. My choice has been AMan Pro by Spaceware, spaceware.com. It appears that third party software, including AMan, is unable to warn that your product cannot be sold on Amazon.com.
My Workaround
I have found a workaround to avoid wasting time posting restricted items. If you log into your
Amazon.com account and attempt to list from there first, you will get a warning if the item is restricted. It adds another step, but in the long run it saves some time. In addition, we’ve noticed that that almost all titles by HBO or Warner Brothers are not allowed. We watch for items produced by the two studios and have greatly reduced the amount we pay for them. The problem is that some of these titles will be allowed for a short time and then restricted without explanation. Another challenge is that denied items may be listed by other resellers. Amazon.com claims the items were listed before they were restricted or that some sellers have been approved to sell these items. If you ask to be an approved seller, Amazon.com customer service says they are not approving new sellers of these items. The Amazon.com seller forums are loaded with threads about this very issue and no one is 100% sure just what is going on. To combat the issue, I am looking for another listing service at a cost that is reasonable for my company’s size.
Amazon.com’s most recent notice for items it will not list: The product you attempted to create a page for is currently suppressed so that it will not appear on our website. Because of this, it is ineligible for Amazon.com Marketplace selling. Products are suppressed in the Amazon.com.com catalog for numerous reasons. For example, Amazon.com prohibits the sale of illegal and offensive products. (For more information, please review our policy pages on Prohibited Content and Restricted Products.) In addition, products may be suppressed at the explicit request of artists or manufacturers.
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