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How to get rid of old stuff, sell it for more, and use Amazon as cheap storage
- murtza 13y agoInteresting idea. I looked up Amazon's storage fees [1]: $0.45 per cubic foot per month from January to September; $0.60 per cubic foot per month from October to December. If you are using this as a long-term storage solution you have to be careful because Amazon charges, "A semi-annual Long-Term Storage Fee of $22.50 per cubic foot will be applied to any Units that have been stored in an Amazon fulfillment center for one year or longer...Each seller may maintain a single Unit of each ASIN in its inventory, which will be exempted from the semi-annual Long-Term Storage Fee." [1]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200627230 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
- brucehart 13y agoFor comparison's sake, I recently rented a 10x10x10 ft. storage unit for $90/mo. or $0.09 per cubic foot per month.
- benguild 13y agoHere's are key differences: 1) Amazon's offering scales. There's no way I'd ever be paying $90/mo in storage costs without good reason. If I just send in a few things, it'll probably be a dollar or two. 2) Amazon has an inventory control system. You can request certain quantities of items be sent back to you at any point, for cheap. 3) Amazon allows you to use their marketplace as a way to get rid of the stuff, so your average storage costs decrease over time and end up being much less as long as your stuff sells.
- dangerlibrary 13y agoOf course, you get access to a much larger group of potential buyers than a storage unit. ;)
- giarc 13y agoYou don't count the guys of Storage Wars as potential buyers?
- pearjuice 13y ago>When rent is not paid on a storage locker for three months in California, the contents can be sold by an auctioneer as a single lot of items in the form of a cash-only auction[0] No, as you will gain nothing from it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_Wars
- alanctgardner2 13y agoYou get three months of rent. The trick is to have nothing of value in the locker, I suppose.
- easytiger 13y agoCan you get access to it after 2.9 months?
- nbouscal 13y agoUnless you're actually using every cubic foot of your storage unit (which would be a remarkable feat), that $0.09 figure is a bit off. Amazon only charges you for space you actually use, whereas a storage unit charges you for the empty space too.
- GauntletWizard 13y agoEven if you're only filling the floor 1` high, that's still an order of magnitude difference between the cost of a traditional unit and Amazon space. Not that Amazon doesn't offer some other advantages, but worth noting.
- nbouscal 13y agoHow's that? If you're filling the floor 1' high that's 1x10x10 or 100 cubic ft at $90, for double Amazon's price. Parity is 2' high. When I had a storage unit I think I was using about 30% of its capacity, which is cheaper than Amazon but also less convenient. Seems like a reasonable tradeoff.
- GauntletWizard 13y agoApologies; That's only for long-term storage, where the $.90/month per cubic foot is significantly less than the $4.24 ($22.5/half-year, ~$.49 per month) that Amazon charges past the first year.
- jjazwiecki 13y agoOk, so each box I store gets a unique ASIN (no long term fee) and I return my items to Amazon in sellable condition (full refund & I get back Amazon's referral fee). Totally trying this with old baby gear.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- kerpal 13y agoI never actually tried their warehouse fulfillment service but I swear by Amazon for selling used gadgets. Amazon gets a lot of traffic from consumers making it a great way to sell something quickly. I remember listing an used Android phone that was maybe two year old technology at that point. I went to list it and within a few hours someone snagged it at like $90. The only other route I've ever tried is Craigslist, which has worked out pretty well too. Asking for the same price you can usually have someone pick up the item locally and get every cent you are asking for if you're reasonable. I always price things about 20% more than I think I will sell through CL.
- vinhboy 13y agoOne thing that should be emphasized for anyone who has not use FBA before: The cost of shipping something to an amazon warehouse is REALLY cheap if you use their provided shipping service. I would say it's about 1/3 of the actual cost of shipping it yourself.
- hamburglar 13y agoMakes one wonder if you could ship things to other people cheaply by selling them to yourself through FBA with the other person's address as the shipping destination.
- laxatives 13y agoIf you try this out, please share how it works out. I remember interning there I had access to very cheap shipping (~30% FedEx/UPS rates). This seems like a neat way to get access to the same benefit.
- jjsz 13y agoIs it legal using this method to ship to other places as mentioned above?
- hamburglar 13y agoMostly joking, so someone else will need to try it out. :) My guess is that if it worked well enough for people to start abusing it, they'd close the loophole. As another poster points out, you still need to pay their transaction fee, so the shipping savings has to more than offset that in order for the trick to even be worthwhile.
- calbear81 13y agoI'm sure you could but you would have to pay the commission to Amazon for selling it through their marketplace and accessing their corporate account rates for FedEx/UPS. When I worked for Newegg, they were a major UPS client so the rates were significantly lower since with accounts this large they had to lower their rates to win the account.
- blueblob 13y agoDo they have heated garages for my car? :-)
- Apocryphon 13y agoI love the idea and sentiment. The pale font of the page's text, less so.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- res0nat0r 13y agoOne thing mentioned about the cables: Do you have to create entries online under your FBA account for every item you ship, or can they figure that out for you? I have tons of cables and other things I'd like to sell that is in good condition, but me spending hours upon hours looking up every model of cable / cheap item I have isn't worth my time.
- mcpherrinm 13y agoI haven't done it personally, but I did intern under FBA and so I saw a lot of the procedures and code that implements it. I'm fairly sure you need to figure out the ASIN for each item you want to sell, and label the product accordingly.
- res0nat0r 13y agoYup I thought so. I think that might be too much work for me to make it worthwhile... :]
- dmishe 13y agoIt's fairly easy if you can find that product in amazon db, or have a barcode
- res0nat0r 13y agoThe items I have that barcodes I'm not worried about, it is the rats nest of cables that I have really no idea what type they are that I'd like to offload and make .50c just to get them out of my hair and not feel bad about throwing them away.
- logn 13y agoFind a local hackerspace. They'll probably take them and re-use them or dispose/sell them for you.
- nitid_name 13y ago
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- 8ig8 13y agoI wish I could ship everything in my attic to Amazon and they would photograph, catalog and store the stuff privately. Then for some kind of low annual fee I could ship things in and out as needed. This service would include pre-scheduled shipments of holiday decoration. The problem I have is that I forget what is in my attic. On a few occasions I've purchased something only to find out I already own one. It was just buried in the attic and I forgot about it. If I try to buy something on Amazon, this service would remind me that I already own it and ship it to me. Besides the attic stuff, I also have small random, rarely-used things that I know I'll need in the future, but don't know where to store them so I'll find them in the future. Someone once suggested that I just keep a running list of items near the attic door. I tried it, but didn't keep up with it. It would be nice to set some kind of expiration of my stuff as well. If I don't request an item from Amazon Attic in 18 months, it can be sold. Maybe that's a way to offset my fees. Another idea... This could have a social aspect (what doesn't these days!?). I could give select friends access to my personal Amazon Attic catalog and they can borrow something, again for a low shipping fee. Amazon will send them a friendly email to return it and then charge them eventually if they don't. (YC, here I come.)
- wmeredith 13y agoIf you're buying stuff you already own, you may want to reassess some priorities.
- randallsquared 13y agoIt's stuff that 8ig8 doesn't know is already on hand. Keeping certain track of it takes more time than the repurchase is worth, for occasional use. A related situation is why lots of people have several identical pairs of scissors, can openers, and other things that they don't use every day: eventually, as you buy more of them, the time it takes to find one costs less than buying a new one. But 8ig8 has this problem with things that are hidden in the attic; just figuring out whether it is in there at all is painful.
- gknoy 13y ago
- gesman 13y agoAmazon needs to open new fullfillment facility to handle stuff in my basement + garage :)
- nikolak 13y agoSo technically, I could buy items cheaply on ebay or similar sites, ship them to amazon warehouse and sell it there for profit and also have them handle pretty much everything from selling to customer support? Or am I missing something and this wouldn't work?
- mooreds 13y agoTechnically, yes. You just have to know what to buy and how to price what you are selling. ("Oh, is that all?" says the broker who makes a living doing this. :) ) I had a friend who made decent money going to physical auctions and taking the items he bought and putting them on ebay (this was about a decade ago). Arbitrage is here to stay.
- mabbo 13y agoCostco membership + sales-tax free states + anything on sale. People do this. Takes a lot of time I suspect, but there's money in arbitrage. Just remember: the longer it's on the shelf, the more fees you pay. So yes, you may have found a great deal on something, but do you really expect to sell 500 in one year?
- tnuc 13y agoAn article that is short on details and has no fewer that 8(eight) affiliate links to Amazon. I am lost for words.
- stefap2 13y agoThe whole article sounds like an advert. TGTBT
- simonw 13y agoHow do books work? Can you just bung a bunch of old textbooks in a box and ship it to them? Do you have to package them separately at all, or put stickers on them, or do you literally just stick them in a box? Are there any mobile apps for scanning barcodes on books and automatically building your Amazon catalog?
- benguild 13y agoIf the books have a barcode/ISBN, you don't even need to label them. Obvious items can just be sent through, but the labeling is an extra charge. If you have duplicate items or nondescript items (like various wires), you should label them.
- Jacqued 13y agoI tried to do it and, in France at least, you have to package stuff yourself. Which is THE hassle in selling things online. Having to package stuff is precisely why i just throw it away, I mean why bother losing 1h of my time buying a package and sending it for some menial money value. You're better off selling them for pretty much nothing to a local bookstore with a Used section, i think. Quicker, less hassle, and well it can help the bookstore too...
- mabbo 13y agoAmazon will give you barcodes to put on them. Print them, sticker them. Doesn't take long. Costs more if you make Amazon do it. The barcodes uniquely identify the item as yours, and not someone else's or Amazon's.
- binarysolo 13y agoJust remember guys: useful for small footprint, high value line items that are mass-produced. (Conversely, not so useful for old items with low resale like clothes, or craft one-off items, or big things like furniture.) When your object of question hits a low-enough dollar value that your opportunity cost for making a buck off it exceeds your time value, why not donate it to a Goodwill instead. :)
- wikwocket 13y agoDonating it is often a great idea. Don't forget the tax writeoff, which depending on your bracket is kind of like gaining 25% of the "retail value" of the item!
- wffurr 13y agoIt takes a lot for itemizing to work out. You either have to give more than ten percent to charity, or have other sources of itemizable expenses.
- sparky 13y ago> other sources of itemizable expenses The interest payments in the first half of most mortgages get you close to the standard deduction. Only works for owners, but it's still a relatively common one.
- sokoloff 13y agoAnd your choice of state income tax or state sales tax. (for most people state income tax is far higher, and f easier to determine/prove.)
- wikwocket 13y agoYes, if you pay a mortgage and property tax, you should probably itemize. And/or if you have a lot of medical expenses. Or, if one has a corporation (for freelancing, a SAAS, whatever), maybe the corporation could donate the stuff instead? I'm not sure how charitable donations work for corps, but might be worth exploring.
- chavesn 13y agoThe OP suggested that it's a bad option for phones. But Amazon offers something else for higher-end items that worked great for me,"Amazon Trade-in" (http://www.amazon.com/Trade-In/ http://www.amazon.com/Trade-In/). You start by finding your product in the store, and they give you prices for different condition levels. You pick a level, checkout, ship your items for free, and await receipt and review. If accepted as the condition you picked, you get an Amazon gift card for the amount. They might even upgrade your items to a higher condition. If not accepted, your items are returned, free of charge. The only risk is the waste of time. A month ago, I traded in two nearly-3-year-old iPhone 4's. I listed them as "Good". Both were accepted and one was upgraded to "Like New" for $20 more. I got $380 total, which I was extremely happy with.
- benguild 13y agoAs I wrote on my blog's comments: "True, but I've found that Amazon trade-in's prices are usually very conservative. For such an old handset I'd have sent it to Amazon's warehouse myself. For newer stuff that's falling in value, even though eBay's fees amount to about 12% in the end for electronics (last time I checked)... you can usually get the most for it there if you need it to sell by a given date for the maximum return. Also, I do want to point out that Amazon is essentially just doing what you'd be doing here ... offering it for sale as a used item. You can do that yourself and make more of a profit if you're setup this way."
- CalRobert 13y agoUnfortunately Amazon flagged my account as fraudulent, I can only assume because a previous tenant in my apartment evidently ripped people off. We received their mail for some time and most if it seemed shady. It's been a year but I cannot sell. There is no appeal, and no recourse. I've had an account with Amazon for more than half my life (something like 12 years) but no dice. Too bad, because this sounds handy. Kind of wish they had even a halfway decent competitor, though.
- logn 13y agoKeep in mind that addresses get normalized and also it's ultimately down to the mail carrier to deliver something. So you might be able to alter the mailing address to have it recognized as something different to Amazon but still practically the same for carriers. Or maybe ask your landlord to re-number your unit or let you use the leasing office as your address.
- celeryreally 13y agoI would be very suprised if Amazon didn't have a very sophisticated address normalisation process (in Australia, there are several pieces of software that can process generic user provided addresses, and return a specific delivery ID ["DPID"] that ties to an explicit delivery location).
- CalRobert 13y agoI've tried that, as well as different addresses, but now it appears I am tainted for life in Amazon's eyes, as is my gf. Honestly it's really annoying.
- CalRobert 13y agoYet they're fine with letting me buy stuff from them...
- MWil 13y agoThis is hilarious to me because I sold three things today on Amazon and thought on the drive back from UPS, this should be getting more press how easy this is. I sold a laptop though which is the only item I'm worried about being returned. Luckily I listed it as not having a battery and not having a hdd so it's already listed as not in working condition.
- kreek 13y agoThis article got one thing wrong; "eBay's fees can be kind of a rip off" should be "eBay's fees ARE a huge rip off". That combined with the removal of negative feedback for buyers is why you should try Amazon rather than sell as an individual on eBay.
- voltagex_ 13y agoBut only if you're in the US right? I'm sick of eBay too, but they bought the "Australian" Gumtree trading site as well so there's really no alternatives.
- droidist2 13y agoTrue, somehow sellers in China can get by selling items to the US for less than a buck on eBay, shipping included. I never understood how this worked. Just mailing the same little item within the US would be like 2 bucks, plus eBay fees.
- pjc50 13y agoThe postage thing was explained a while ago somewhere, possibly HN: there's no "settlement" between international postage services in the normal sense, and there's a HK postal service that will ship to the US for pennies. Once it arrives in the US postal service, it's their cost to deliver it.
- droidist2 13y agoAhh, that explains it. Thanks.
- stretchwithme 13y agoBest thing is to not let things sit around after you stop using them. The chances that someone else can use them just keeps dropping. And you can't use the space it takes up, which is probably the most expensive thing about old stuff. If you pay $2000 a month for 1000 square feet, every square foot costs you $24 bucks a year. An old PC taking up 3 square feet for 5 years costs you $360. And, sure, it probably was going to be empty space. But we do need empty space, just as we need white space. All the clutter has a psychic cost.
- hsitz 13y agoThanks to benguild for the blog article. I had seen used books in Amazon price lists as shipped by Amazon and qualifying for free supersaver shipping, but I'd never gotten around to finding out how this "fulfillment by Amazon" worked. I looked at the info on Amazon's website and I still have a couple questions. (1) Amazon charges a fee of something like $0.42 per pound when shipping. Is this just for supersaver shipments? Or does it also apply when Amazon collects from the customer for standard or expedited shipping? (2) I see Amazon charges fees for storage and shipping, but I don't see where they take any percentage of the sale. Am I missing something?
- mrgordon 13y agoThe seller fees are separate from the fulfillment fees and are typically another ~15% of price + shipping.
- locacorten 13y agoCoding is dead. When the top news on HN is how to make $5 selling used computer cables on Amazon, you know coding is dead.
- dminor 13y agoPretty sure coding is alive and well - maybe HN just isn't the place to talk about it anymore.
- argumentum 13y agoAmazon S3: Simple Stuff Storage
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- csense 13y agoInteresting. They do need to advertise this better because I had no idea this service existed.
- thekevan 13y agoThe top comment is someone wishing this was a totally different service which ends up in people either mentioning other startups which do something like that but not quite the same, or what it is like to store things in SF.
- Grug 13y agoBookmarked.
- lchitnis 13y agoReposting on Facebook. This is great. I've always wanted to do this on Amazon but found I had this great inertia in finding out just how to go about doing it. It seemed like a big hassle, but it really isn't. This article simplified it.
- edandersen 13y agoHere is the link to Amazon Fufillment without the referral tags: http://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon/benefits.htm http://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon/benefits.ht...
- mikeweiss 13y agoFrom experience, if you want to sell something that is used and is in poor condition, don't sell it on amazon... when people buy things used through Amazon they expect it to be Like New, even if thats not what the description says. My simple tips for selling online: New/Like New -> Amazon Used/poor/missing things -> Ebay
- mrtunes 13y agoIs there something like this for Canadians? I dont think we can use this service.