The
I’m really into finding the weird little blindspots and commonly available “leftover” items that most people overlook. Recently, I’ve dabbled in selling vinyl through Fulfillment by
The first thing you’re likely to think is: People still buy vinyl? Definitely. Vinyl sales have literally doubled in the last 3 years. Doubled.
And vinyl is for sale on
But does it sell? Here’s my experience so far:
I’ve shipped in about 30 LPs over the last 3 months. So far I’ve sold…. One.![Thrift-Store-Records[1]](https://i0.wp.com/www.fbamastery.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Thrift-Store-Records1.jpg)
But that doesn’t tell the whole story. They cost me an average of less than $1 each. Every one is selling for $10 and up, and most are in the $20+ range. And the one that sold was priced at $30, netting me around $25. That came very close to covering my total costs at this point, meaning when any of the other 29 sell, its pure profit.
The experiment is still young, but so far it seems my approach with book sourcing works best with vinyl as well. I’ve been going for the weird and obscure titles (“STORY OF STAR WARS: RETURN OF THE JEDI”). But with vinyl, even the mainstays seem to have some value. There just don’t seem to be many people selling records on
I’ve limited my scope to records with barcodes only (about half of them don’t even show up on my scanning app), and I haven’t even ventured into the world of looking up records manually. If you want to take the time, there may be some serious opportunity there.
So far, the rules to selling records appear to mirror those of long-tail, poorly-ranked books: You ship a lot in with huge margins, and they will sell “every once in awhile.” But in the long term, you’re making your money back tenfold.
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Did you run into any problems with the albums getting damaged in the warehouse? I have about a thousand classic rock, funk and blues record. Some of them are sixty years+ and I would hate for them to be wrecked. Thanks!
No issues so far. Pack well.
I have a couple of albums I want to send in, and I was thinking as well of damage. I decided that I would add in a piece of cardboard to the back of the record, then shrink-wrap the two together. I would add in another layer of protection. Or perhaps a piece of 1/8-inch masonite cut to fit, then shrink-wrapped to the album. Overkill?
I tend to feel that everyone overthinks packing. Putting in the records in a carboard record mailer should be sufficient.
Hey Peter, I have looked for the answer to this question about selling lps FBA. Didnt find much that wasnt several years old, so of course I came back to my “go to” blog on FBA….FBA Mastery.
I want to send in a couple of boxes of lps and see how it goes. Ive been working in record stores and selling on ebay for many years but just started selling FBA about a month ago. So far ive sent in books and cds just to learn all the basics of listing,setting prices,packaging,shipping etc. I want to package each lp in a mailer like I was going to send it myself from home. The barcode will go on the outside. When amazon ships this to the customer, will they put the mailer in another box or just put a shipping label on the mailer itself and send it? I want it put in an additional box (unless they will take my barcode off. that way you cant tell exactly what is inside. What do you think?
thanks Peter I really have learned alot of the basics from your page. And so much more is available as i am able to adsorb it ll. Thanks for all the effort you put into it.
Jon
This shouldn’t be a problem, just write “ready to ship” really big on the outside of the mailer. That’s my approach, and its worked well.
Hi there. How in the world do we get approved to sell Vinyl through our FBA seller account? Thanks much