Up and Running

November is the month the Messengers web site comes due. While trying to find a way to use it as a forwarder to the blog instead of a full site and save some money, I rediscovered that I can have a second web site for no additional hosting fee. I vaguely remembered it from when I set it up, but I'd forgotten the details. I'd have to pay $24.99 a year to register another site. That includes a privacy fee that hides my home address. To make that site a business site, I'd need to upgrade my plan, which would cost a couple of dollars more a month. Basically, for about $50 more a year, I could launch a business site for the company and process sales that way with no Amazon fees. I've been thinking about dropping the Messengers site altogether and saving the money. Now I'll keep it around and work out the accounting later so the business pays the hosting fee and I pay the $24.99 yearly registration for the Messengers site.

How's the business going? Tuesday I shipped 52 items to Amazon. They made me split the shipment into two boxes, one for Delaware and one for California. Shipping was $12.15 total, which breaks down to just over 23 cents per item. There were three of this chess game not eligible for Prime. I may list them for merchant fulfilled if I can make the profit work. I'd need to buy a case of bubble mailers. The business can afford it, but I want to get some sales first and expand. My goal is to have the business pay for itself, although just getting started makes that not possible yet.

There's some bad news. A 5-pack of a game I hoped would be my best seller turned out to have a listing that didn't come up in any of my searches for it. It only appeared when I scanned the bar code to add it to my Amazon inventory. Some other extra or missing listings occurred for other items, but it was no big deal for those. When I was initially researching the 5-pack, one main listing showed up, a version that Amazon sells with a great sales rank of 1600+. The listing for my versions said "Currently unavailable". My plan was to make it available and skim sales off Amazon's with a slightly cheaper price. Not any more. The price on the surprise listing is several dollars less than it should be. Automatically, about $44 of the profit I was hoping for seems gone. The good news is that I can use the bar code scanner for searches just like a mouse or keyboard to try to avoid this happening again. Assuming I have the UPC code, of course.

To make the kind of profit I need, I need to buy things by the pallet. It turns out pallets ship on trucks with a lift gate that looks something like this. I'd have to have a forklift to remove the pallet. Or something cheap like a pallet truck or a straddle stacker. For storage I'd need something similar to this. A metal building is another option. A concrete foundation would cost extra. Once I made enough, I could get a cheap pallet truck and get by without the building for a while by putting a pallet or two on the porch. Not elegant, but it would work.

Remember the missing shipment to Amazon that never went on sale? Yesterday I submitted a ticket. It was answered automatically. "We have confirmed that the following units are missing from the fulfillment center..." and "We've initiated a reimbursement of $14.92 for the missing units." Initiated does not mean made. It means started the investigation process.
I had two items in the shipment: a Barbie learning game and an ACT study guide listed for a combined price of $26.54. After subtracting all costs, I'd have made $4.17, assuming they sold. The reimbursement gives me a profit of $3.23. Today they credited me the $14.92.

I don't know if it was because of the missing shipment, but Amazon processed my Delaware package last night. It only arrived yesterday around noon. It's supposed to take 24 to 48 hours up to 72 hours to process and longer during the holiday season like we're in now. I have 41 items for sale minus one that sold today. First sale! It's not listed as sold yet, but it should be within 48 hours, if the buyer doesn't cancel for some weird reason. Profit's about $3.42. Between the reimbursement and the sale, shipping charges are all covered, even for the missing one. I should see a small deposit.

The California box of 11 items should arrive Tuesday.