Great advice - thank you!

by Anonymous
(Location Unknown)

October 18, 2012

Very illuminating - thank you. I'm a complete novice to selling on Amazon, and (as a buyer), had always wondered how come there were so many items priced at (in our case) £0.01.

Now I'm selling my own CD collection, and facing the challenge of setting a price (which is how I found your piece - it seems to me that what you say has equal application for CDs).

The immediate temptation is exactly as you describe, to pitch at a penny/cent below the current lowest price. But that really is self-defeating, and denies the value of the item being sold, and any value-add around it.

Great stuff - thanks again.

Response:

Hello Anonymous;

Yes, the same principle applies to CDs, DVDs, and VHS tapes. The dreaded "race to the bottom" impacts these three product categories, as well as books, particularly hard.

The reason is that there are so many novice sellers in these categories who don't know any better than to engage in price wars with each other rather than set a reasonable price and wait for the sale to come their way.

They think that they absolutely must capture the very next sale or they'll go broke. Frankly, if their business is in that bad a shape, they have other problems that are far more serious than not catching the next sale.

Don't be in too big of a hurry to sell your CDs. Research the market, pick a reasonable price point and move on to the next project or task. The sale will come, and if you're patient, you'll even make a decent profit.

If you can learn that kind of discipline then you'll have a significant competitive advantage over your competition that will serve you well as your business grows.

Joe Waynick
Bookseller, Author, Mentor