For the first time in 10 years as an Amazon seller, I decided to rent some office space and hire an employee to list books.
In this video, I go over:
- A tour of the office space
- The cost of the office space
- The benefits of working outside the home
- Why I didn't want an employee to work from my house
- Why I didn't want to outsource the listing process
- My employee's listing procedure
- How I hired her
- The benefits of having someone source and list books
- Working on the business instead of in the business.
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Hi Nathan,
Great video. Congrats on getting office. I wanted to know what changes you made to the sourcing process since the fee changes. Can you share what parameters you now use when purchasing to adjust? We are basically passing on these changes to the customers, but have tightened up our parameters and always curious to hear how others adjust.
Thanks. I have not changed my parameters on sourcing yet. I’m am putting more focus on my Repricing settings though.
What is the person you hired costing u?
About how many books do you process a week?
I pay her $14 an hour. Right now she’s working 10 hours a week, and she gets around 400-500 books out the door per week.
Is she an employee or contractor? Do you offer her any benefits?
She’s an employee. I have my bookkeeper cut her a paycheck every two weeks. Yes, she has benefits: She only has to work 10-15 hours a week, and she gets to work in that room by herself with no boss:)
What state ate you in?
Florida
could you construct a formula showing how to cost out a book that reflects the
new costs that AMZ has put in effect recently, Using the base cost of the book
at $2.00. Would probably look something like this.
cost: $ 2.00 + …..+….+…..+……+…..= $$$ TOTAL COST
Hope this is clear. I think that this would be a help to all AMZ book sellers.
Great deal on the suites! I am working on getting someone to start sourcing and going using your perimeters. Just bought the new scanner for that person and will set it up. I love the idea of, out of the house. Wife is not ready for that! keep up the great info!! Jim
Thanks Jim!
Really nice setup. It seems that book prep is minimal. If you don’t shrinkwrap your books, do you sticker the covers themselves? Do customers ever complain that a dust jacket is ruined from the sticker or do you not sell old collectible books?
Yes, the stickers go directly on the back of the book. I’ve never had a customer complain about this. I don’t sell old collectible books.
Thanks for the video! I love those little brother printers too!
Thanks! I love my Brother laser printers:)
Nathan,
Unrelated to your post, but I wanted to ask if you’ve been having problems lately with FBA shipments getting received. Everything I’ve sent in the past two weeks are just sitting at fulfillment centers and nothing is happening. I have no new books in inventory since Valentine’s Day. That’s half a month of living off my old inventory. I have heard other sellers saying they are experiencing the same problem and I wonder how widespread this is.
No, I haven’t had any problems getting my inventory received.
Regards,
Nathan
Where would I find an office suite like this? Love the fact that one door opens to the outside so you can haul in your stuff, and another into the corridor.
I found the suites on Craigslist under Housing: Office/Commercial.
Thanks! I had tried googling Office Space (my city) and Office Suite (my city) and was only coming up with super expensive stuff. I’ll try Craigslist.
Hi Nathan,
Great info as always. I wanted to hire a book sourcer as well. What are the rules you set up on fbascan for your sourcer?
Thanks.
Hello Sophia,
I have my triggers set up in this free ebook.
https://booktothefuture.com/booksourcerguide
Congratulations on your office space. Your rent is truly affordable. This would be much harder where I live(Eastern end of Long Island). Again it comes down to profit. but you are young and investiing in growing your business., so, the time and effort and temporary loss of profits should pay off. Complicating this of course is Amazon’s recent money-grab; the fee increase is significant.(I think its going to drive a lot of people out of the book business) Wonder if you would care to comment on additional sources of revenue outside of AMZ?
Hello Larry,
I also have revenue from my Scanlister software plus affiliate marketing income from blogging & sending out emails.
As for the fee increase, I calculated the FBA fees for 380 sales after February 22nd. Then calculated the FBA fees for 380 sales before February 22nd. I found that on average, the FBA fees went up by $1.45. Yes, that’s significant, but I don’t think it’s a deal breaker.
Do you pay for Workers Comp too?
Hi Nathan, how are your paying your listers? through W2’s or 1099?
Just finished watching your video and I noticed that you didn’t mention that the books were put into poly bags before shipping them out. So my question is, Do you polybag them because I thought that was necessary to ship into FBA?
I’ve sent over 250,000 books to Amazon, and I’ve never poly bagged them. It’s not necessary and a time waster in my opinion. There may be exceptions…if you have a set of books or if they are extremely valuable.
Nathan, a couple of questions about employee monitoring:
1. Are you there when she lists, and if not, how do you know that everything that goes into that room gets shipped rather than the “good” books going home with the employee for their own profit?
2. Same question for the sourcer…how do you know they’re not skimming off the good books?
Can you tell I have trust issues?
Truly interested in your answer, thanks!