Amazon Marketplace offers income generating opportunity

Howard Lake | 10 August 2001 | News

Amazon.com has introduced a new service that charities could use to sell donated books, CDs, videos and other products.

Amazon.com now allows you to sell second-hand versions of the products it sells new. Even better, it will list the availability of these second-hand products on the same page as the new items. If you register, Amazon will then handle the payment should anyone want to buy your item, and then credit your account with the sale value, minus a commission and postage fee.

The new service offers interesting possibilities for charities that wish to sell donated items to an international audience. It is expect that the Marketplace system will launch in the UK on Amazon.co.uk soon.

Amazon’s commission is not small: it charges $0.99 plus 15% of the sale price. However, in return, there is no set-up or monthly listing fee: if your item doesn’t sell after 60 days, it is removed from the site and you are not charged. You can always relist it. More importantly though, Amazon is effectively providing a free advert for your item on its very popular Web site.

As a method of selling both collectable and run-of-the-mill secondhand books, tapes, CDs, videos and DVDs, this is certainly worth looking into.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.