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.