Section C.1. Amazon Auctions and Marketplace
Amazon (www.amazon.com) doesn't put a lot of effort into supporting the Auctions section of its site, but Amazon Marketplace, which lets you list items at a fixed price, is a great place to sell books, music, movies, and electronics (more on Amazon Marketplace in a moment). To find Amazon Auctions, you have to scroll way down the home page, keeping an eye on the left-hand menu, until you see the Bargains heading. The Auctions link is right beneath that heading. Or you can go to Amazon Auctions directly by pointing your Web browser to http://auctions.amazon.com.
On Amazon, listing fees are ten cents ; when an item sells, sellers pay a sliding-scale closing fee similar to eBay's FVFs (Section 5.3). You can relist once without paying another listing fee; after that, it costs you. Buyers pay for their purchases through Amazon's checkout, so you don't have to mess around with checks or pay PayPal fees.
But if you're really interested in finding good buys or in selling merchandise on the site, Amazon Marketplacenot Auctionsis probably the way to go. Shoppers browsing Amazon can find your item from the product page, as shown in Figure C-1. Amazon Marketplace doesn't charge a listing fee; when your item sells, you pay a 99-cent flat fee plus a commission of 6 to 15 percent, depending on what you're selling. If your item doesn't sell in 60 days, Amazon removes the listing and charges you nothing. (You can relist it if you like.) To list your items in Amazon Marketplace, go to www.amazon.com; then, in the navigation bar, click Sell Your Stuff.
|
Note: For a monthly fee of $39.99, Amazon sellers can open a Pro Merchant account, which includes benefits like nonexpiring listings, waiving of the 99-cent flat fee, a bulk listing tool, and the ability to create an Amazon zShops storefront. (zShops are individual storefronts for people who sell on Amazon, a lot like eBay Stores (Section 7.3).
![eBay[c] The Missing Manual](/icons/blank_book.jpg "eBay[c] The Missing Manual"){kind=icon}