The Dangers of Depending on Amazon and Google For Income

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   Lately I haven't been able to write much in my three blogs and Hubpages. Mostly, the reason is because I've been trying to learn about selling on Amazon and Ebay. Mostly, what I'm selling is books. Along with my lawn care job and this new activity, writing has taken a back seat. I thought I would elaborate in this post about this activity. 

   This blog is meant to be a place where I can speak what's on my mind in a more informal environment. Well, many things are usually on my mind, but in particular lately I have been thinking about selling books on Amazon. They have a program called Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), in which you send them your inventory and they will ship it to your customers when and if it gets sold. I've started doing this, but as of now can't say how it's worked. 

  The three boxes I've sent off to their warehouses haven't been processed yet. This week most of them should be processed and go live on Amazon to be sold. Not sure how it will work in the end, but if it's God's will I pray they all sell and I can make a profit. Also, I have started selling some books on Amazon and Ebay myself, what they call self-fulfilling. This because they are maybe older books which don't sell quickly, but are worth something. 

  At first, this activity really excited me, as I have always wanted to sell books and grow my buy and sell business along with my writing on-line. God did lead me to see the dark side of this venture though soon enough. What I found was that many people have been burned by Amazon. Many people get their accounts shut down for basically no reason, or for a bogus reason. Amazon at this point becomes their enemy and the people are helpless to talk with someone to even find out why their account was shut down. This happens all the time to people who have been selling there for years and have a good track record with Amazon. 

  So, this made me a bit weary of Amazon and their FBA program. This because, what happens is I send all my inventory to their warehouse and if they shut down my account for no reason given, then I have to pay .50 cents per item plus shipping to get the stuff back. And if I want it destroyed, I have to pay .15 cents per item. And from what I've heard, they don't really destroy it, but sell it themselves. So, this is likely partly why they are shutting down some big sellers, is so they can simply keep their inventory and sell it themselves. For instance, I read about one seller who had 55,000 new items in their warehouses and they shut his account down. He was unable to get the items back or even have the money to destroy them. 

   Ultimately, Amazon is a place to be weary of if you are a seller. Even if I could, I wouldn't make it my sole income, as they are not dependable. So, with this in mind I have begun to sell books on Amazon on a small scale, and have adjusted my methods according to this knowledge. 

   This is what I've been up to of late. I have my store fronts in the tabs section at the top of my blogs for Amazon and Ebay. 

   It's not easy trying to balance time between all the activities we have in life. As of now, I don't make much money writing and selling on-line, so I have to work my day job. Even if I was to make a good amount on-line writing and selling, I wouldn't want to completely depend on such companies such as Google, Amazon, and Ebay. In the end these are simply big machines that can gobble us up and not even tell us why. This is part of the virtual reality where life is impersonal and unreal for the most part. 

   I will try and balance these activities out and find more time to write. My blogs are important to me, and there is so many writing projects that I have planned to complete. If it's God's will this buy and sell business will have some success. It's a fun activity for me, but I have to keep it in perspective in the way I've laid out in this post. Maybe you are also trying to do the same thing and this helps. For now, I pray we can complete the activities of life and still keep Jesus Christ at the center at all times, not compromising for anything in this world. God bless.