The Pro-seller experience: "double secret probation"

In addition to consulting, programming, web design, 10spotdomain and all. I have recently become involved with Amazon.with a Pro-seller account. I have a line of BBQ RUB products called Ivan of the Ozarks. I am a long time customer of Amazon and I have found over the years that Amazon is a reliable source for new and used goods, a few of my purchases include: Used out of print music CD's like the Who's Quadrophenia, electronics like my Cannon digital camera and my Samsung widescreen TV, and the last thing I bought was a some Stash Double Spice Chi Tea.

Amazon is not only a good place to buy things on the net but a great place to sell stuff too. They have developed a great marketing system for goods that all can share. Amazon of course gets a 'cut' of every sale making them super rich, but you as the seller gets the advantage of the huge eye-ball count of Amazon buyers out there. So if you have some old stuff you want to turn into money Amazon may be good for you.

You can sell all kinds of used stuff on Amazon but not toys. It seems that to list your stuff on Amazon your stuff needs to have a bar code. (I get my barcodes from BuyABarcode.com) If you have your own products like I do you can't use a regular account you have to get a commercial account. I don't have any experience with the regular low level type selling on Amazon I went right to the Pro-Seller account.

Caveats include: Pro-seller will cost you $40 per month - unlike the regular account which I understand is free - Amazon calls this a subscription fee. When you first sign up with Amazon's Pro-seller account as a new seller you will be on "double secret probation"  I am telling you all of this because I found out the hard way. When you sign up for stuff you don't really read all the big long legal agreements do you? I know I don't - I mean as far as I know I have sold my soul to Microsoft years ago with the click of mouse button.  No really I am calling it "double secret probation" because tech support at Amazon will not tell you how long the probation will go on they only give vague clues and just say that that information is proprietary.

The "probation period" includes many crippling indignities to your product listing like, your product will not show your price and sale price in most listing situations, and availability of your product will show as 1 Used and New designation rather than simply Buy New that the "featured sellers" enjoy. If someone does click on your crippled product display and moves to the product details page further sand bagging of your product continues - The details of your product listing do not appear with the photo and price of your product. You will find that right under your product Amazon has placed advertisements for competing products. Your product details appear much further down the page only visible after a page down or a long scroll.

Amazon does allow you to post a review of your own product - this is helpful so you can at least get the 5 stars to appear with your product - of course on the details page your review appears way way way down the page, I took full advantage of this and posted a video review of my product in an effort to get some attention from the eye-balls that might browse my listing but there is no tag indicating a video review is available just the same 5 stars any review will show.

Working around these problems is possible - Amazon does give you a lot of leeway way with the "product name" field. What you need to do here is put in all the information about your product that you can. So rather than just the name of the product, in my case BBQ RUB you need to put in all the important stuff, so now my product names ends up to be: Ivan of the Ozarks BBQ Rub - Big 6oz Jar - Special Amazon Introductory Price  Only $8.88 - click on the stars to see my video So take that! Put me on "double secret probation" I'll show you! I'm going on a road trip.

One last thing - Amazon doesn't plan to pay you for any of your sales. I don't know for how long but right now all my profit, from my sales, after all the Amazon fees, and the $40 subscription, after all of that, what  left is now in what is called  - "Reserve" so my balance owed is still $0.

Tune in again for the next exciting installment of this story. Will Ivan of the Ozarks ever get off of "double secret probation"?