Cindy Shebley

With the dog days of August many people are just not buying. They're outside, on vacation, or simply loafing and enjoying the warm weather.

That doesn't mean you should slow down however. This is the time to get busy.

List inventory - start looking at how you can take advantage of back to school and the upcoming fall season. Prepare your fall promotions, even write those fall newsletters. When things start cooling down - sales will start heating up.

As you've often heard me say "look to the successful and model yourself after them" and one model of success is Amazon. They're already gearing up and announcing new features and selling tools for third party sellers.

If you sell in Toys on Amazon (or hope to) they traditionally restrict sales in the Toy category for the forth quarter. This year Amazon announced that they will lift the restrictions if the seller uses Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon). You can read the whole announcement on Steve Weber's blog: http://www.weberbooks.com/selling/2010/07/amazon-issues-guidelines-for-holiday-toy-sales.html

Amazon also announced a new shipping feature for third party sellers to streamline the shipping and notification process. If you are a Pro Merchant you'll notice an new button that will allow you to print shipping labels through the dashboard for seven cents. It's a wonderful idea - the seven cents will be well worth the time spent.

However, if you sell on both eBay and Amazon - I still say you can not beat using Stamps.com - I love the service, I can pull in all my inventory from multiple eBay ID's and my Amazon sales, as well as pull in the sales from my website through PayPal. This, to me is a must have service if you intend on selling in any volume this year.

Cindy

PS: The "Easy eStores Open Your Own Online Internet Store Shopping Cart With Wordpress CD is now on Amazon. You can have a site up and running this holiday season.