Sony has a daily newsletter featuring big price cuts (usually!) on box sets and special sets. Yesterday they had the Monkees Seasons 1 & 2 for $49.99. Lowest price for new on Amazon was $164.00. Sales rank wasn’t the greatest – 198,000 in music, but hey, not a bad markup. Today’s deal is a special Black Keys release. Black Keys on Popmarket
Most of us are familiar with arbitrage. It’s just a fancy word for exploiting price differentials in different markets. Substitute, or update, markets with websites for today’s world. If you just sold a rare Lightnin’ Hopkins for $252 with some spirited bidding on eBay, pat yourself on the back. Then sit down and see if you can find it on Gemm. Order it, and wait for it to show up on your doorstep. As soon as you get, put out second chance offers. You may not clear as much percentage-wise this way, but it’s a nice way to pick up an extra $50 or $100. I sold a early Muddy Waters 78 on Aristocrat for $252 for a customer. We found a copy on Gemm for $100, put it in their eBay store for $225, and sold it in a month. We cleared about $75 after fees – not bad for 5 minutes work.
Obviously the above only works with higher priced records. If you found a place to buy $20 eBay records for $10, you’re only gonna clear a few bucks after paying postage, eBay fees, Paypal’s cut, etc. But I’d say anytime bidding goes over $50 bucks, go ahead and check – you never know!
When Whitney Houston died, I sold a few sealed copies of her first 2 lps for $20 – then I marked them up to $40 and sold those. I found 2 more copies on Gemm – one for $10, one for $12, both plus shipping. I snagged them both, relisted on eBay, and sold both that same day for $39.95 each. Many GEMM sellers never update their prices after the initial listing, so if something big happens – the person dies, or is in the news for some other reason – you can pick up the items, then resell on eBay or Amazon. One caveat – don’t assume just because you ordered it, that the item is on the way to you. Sellers are allowed a few days to confirm the order. So don’t list the item until you can confirm the item is actually shipped and in the mailstream.
Another way to play this game is checking the super sales at Amazon. Sometimes they’ll run specials on box sets, or on certain bands. About 2 years ago they had most of the Beatles catalog at $9.99 each with free shipping if you were a Prime member. (You are a Prime member on Amazon, right?). I bought a few hundred dollars worth, stuck them on eBay for $15.99 – $18.99 each, and cleared about $5 a cd, not counting my time. Look in their clearance section – sometimes box sets have been marked down drastically if they’re going out of print. You’ll have to wait until the all the sales are done and the price rebounds, but you can usually double or triple your money. Avoid fad artists – go for classic stuff that will last – classic rock, jazz, blues are always good choices.
Are you a Amazon Prime member? You should be – it’s the perfect solution for special orders. For $79 a year, with a free 30 day trial, you get free two day shipping on all Amazon-stocked inventory, with next day upgrades available for $2.99. Tired of being backordered on your special orders from Alliance? Look it up on Amazon as your customer is standing there, place the order, & take their money. I charge what Amazon charges, plus a $4 shipping fee which I keep. It’s easy and you can virtually guarantee delivery in 2 days, or next day if the customer is desperate.
Another great thing to use it for is if you forgot to order a new release. While Amazon usually limits you to 3 or 5 copies, that’s usually enough to get you through to your regular distributor’s delivery date. You can place your order up to 9 or 10 on Monday night and get it Tuesday whenever your UPS man shows up. If you really need it first thing, upgrade to overnight (though the cut-off is earlier, 5 or 6 pm EST – double check before you start counting on this to save your butt!). You’ll have it at 10 or 11.
One caveat – don’t use this to dropship to your customers. Amazon frowns on this and they will cut you off. Although their TOS on Prime memberships forbids reselling, so far I haven’t heard of anyone getting cut off as long as Amazon was shipping all items to their address. That’s where Amazon is making money – shipping all items to one address, not paying for 10 different shipments to 10 different addresses.
Here’s the link: . It comes with a free 30 day trial. Hell, if you do any kind of business with special orders, you’ll have that $79 paid off well before 30 days!
Go out and sell some vinyl!
Are you ready for Record Store Day? Here’s some last minutes things to check on to make sure you’re really ready!
1) Have all your product? If you’re in dire straits, make some calls and ask for Saturday delivery. Yes, it’ll cost you, but you’ll have the product.
2)Price all the product you have – and locate all the product you have! Make sure there’s no boxes stashed away in the office or back closet. Nothing like discovering Monday that long lost box of Stones RSD only releases!
3) Credit card paper – if you’re still paper dependent, make sure the roll on the credit card machine is full, or near full. If not, replace it now with a full roll and make sure you have more rolls. Place them by the register so you know where they are and won’t waste valuable time looking for it tomorrow. And if you replace the roll, make sure it feeds properly – you don’t want to mess with it tomorrow.
4) Ditto the above for cash register tape. Replace a partially used roll, have spares readily available, re ink the print mech, or install a new ribbon. You do have more ribbons just in case, right? RIGHT? Might be time for a Staples run tonight.
5) Check your bags – plenty of ‘em? Yes? Good. If not, add to the Staples list. You should stick bounce back coupons in all the bags so all those new customers have a reason to come back and see you. Don’t forget facebook address, website, phone, email, etc. so those new folks can easily get a hold of you.
6) Update your facebook, website, Linkedin profile etc. with extended hours if any for tomorrow, band list, special deals, etc.
7) Have signup sheets by your register so people can sign up for your store newsletter with their email address.
Good luck, and sell that vinyl!
Just got an email from Discogs – they’re raising their rates from 6%/8% to 8%/10% depending oh how you list your records and cds.
Here’s Discogs rundown on their pricing increase (excerpted from their letter)
To enable the hiring of additional staff and improve our level of service to you, we’re going to be increasing Marketplace selling fees effective May 1st, 2012.
Items sold on or after that date will have the following fees:
8% for Standard Listings
10% for Product Search Listings
(a $0.10 minimum fee will remain in place)
Invoices sent on or after May 1st, 2012 will now be due 10 days after the invoice date.
The other change is the sped-up oayment for your invoice. I sell little music there, so this won’t affect me much. Besides, eBay gives you ten days as well, so this isn’t any huge thing.
Good luck, and sell more vinyl!
If you need more storage, need to share with others, or just need emergency backup for your files, here’s a quick link to Dropbox – you’ll get a free 500 mb and I’ll get a free 500 mb for helping you out. You can build up to 16 gb just by sharing with friends.
Here’s a roundup of the places I use, or have used in the past, to sell my vinyl online.
First up is the 800 pound gorilla in the room – eBay. For the rare items where it’s hard to set a price – obscure local Northern Soul 45′s, deep groove original pressing Blue Note lps – eBay is the place to set the price, since the buyers determine the final selling price. If you have popular, in demand titles, this, along with Amazon, is still the place. For obscure items waiting for the right buyer, this is also a good place to list it. Unfortunately, eBay’s fees keep getting higher and higher. If you have a store with 5000 items, this will cost you $50 for the storefront and $250.00 just for listing every month. And that’s before you sell anything. Tack on another 15% – 20% to cover selling commissions – and don’t forget eBay takes their cut out of your lowest shipping price too! I still use it for the rare items, but for obscure stuff that needs to wait for the right buyer, I’m sticking more on my own website. I still keep some up on eBay just to let people know that I stock blues, jazz, and Northern Soul.
Number 2 on the list and closing fast is Amazon. Listing is lots faster, especially for barcoded cds and lps. If you have more than a few hundred, it’s worth becoming a pro merchant for $40/month – you won’t pay the extra closing fee. They charge a 15% commission, a closing fee of $1.35 per item, and a 99c fee if you’re not a pro merchant. I wouldn’t list obscure stuff on there – it’d get lost, nor would I list auction quality items there. For classic rock and r&b, I’d sell it there rather than eBay. If you have mainly cds – look into their FBA program – saves you lots of work. Amazon handles all the shipping – the added dollars you can add to the selling price since your item now qualifies for free shipping more than covers their fee. I haven’t tried this with lps yet. I’ll give a report on listing lps on FBA next year.
GEMM – no listing fees, takes a 15% cut. They’ve upgraded their search, but problems still dog it. People don’t list consistently so it’s hard to compare – The Beatles vs. Beatles vs Beatles, The all show up differently. For more obscure titles, it’s not a problem as there are only 1 or 2 listings. But for more popular titles – say you’re trying to locate a particular pressing of “The Wall” by Pink Floyd, it becomes more problematic. Sales also seem to be lacking over there – I’ve only had one sale in the last 3 months. You upload your bulk listings in an Excel format, so if you’re already inventorying your records or uploading to another site in that format, you might as well list them here too.
Discogs – this is the newest site I’ve tried. See my early review last week. Easy to list – as easy as Amazon. Search still leaves something to be desired – the more obscure stuff is not in their catalog and prices don’t seem to be best. No listing fee, only a final value fee of 6% to 8%, and you handle all the payment issues with the customer. Sales also seem to be slim – some Neil Young vinyl I listed hasn’t had a sale in months.
Craigslist – If you just want to get rid of a bunch of stuff cheap, this is the way to do it. I wouldn’t fool with trying to list stuff individually for $5 or $10 – you’ll end up sitting around at home twiddling your thumbs waiting on no-shows. But for getting rid of 50 or 100 at a time, this is a great way of doing it. I usually get 25 cents to 50 cents a record on classic rock, a quarter a piece on r&b and other rock outside of classic, and up to $1 or $2 apiece on jazz. List some titles in your ad so people get a feel for what you have.
There’s some other sites that do vinyl as a sideline – Etsy and Alibris come to mind. And there’s tons of other auction sites out there – but I think the number of sites outnumbers the bidders on them. A lot of them just seem to be a bunch of friends trading amongst themselves. I wouldn’t waste time listing there.
My friends at Omega Music told me about this site. I went ahead and listed about 100 items on there this week – here’s my review and early thoughts on using it.
Registration is free, as is listing. You pay a 6% to 8% final value fee. You set up your own payment terms, postage costs, and related items. Once you set those parameters, you’re ready to list.
It can’t get much easier to list items than on Discogs. All you do is type in the artist’s name and title (if it’s a band like the Beatles that has tons of records – you just need to type in the artist’s name if they only have 1 or 2 lps). On the right hand side, Discogs pops up its choices for your search. Click on the one that has the correct label and catalog number. All the info regarding personnel, track listing, year released, etc. has already been entered for you. Just check off the menu for vinyl condition and sleeve condition (they use Goldmine grading standards), add a note in the comments box – I use this to expand upon condition, noting why that lp is vg, or whatever – and your price. Click ok and you’re done, off to the next one!
When someone buys your lp, you get a message from Discogs. From there, you send an invoice to the buyer with the proper postage for foreign or combined lp purchase. and then they pay you. There seems to be a fair number of non paying buyers – a little annoying – my first sale was cancelled due to a npb.
I’ll list a few hundred more this weekend and see how it rolls. The advantages are no listing fees, no store fees, and only a 6% fvf. Disadvantages seem to be slower sales. For the casual seller, this site is probably great – list a couple crates of records, then sit back and let the sales roll in. For me, an internet only seller, it’s a good way to get rid of lower priced (under $25) stock that is too good, or too obscure, just to do dump in a wholesale lot or at a yard sale.
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