Travel Rewards Credit Cards Cash Back Credit Cards 0% Balance Transfer Credit Cards It can be easy for Amazon customers to assume they're always getting the best price. As a matter of fact, that's exactly what the marketing geniuses at Amazon want you to do. They don't want you to compare prices with Walmart; instead they want you to perceive them as always having the lowest price. They do this by pricing a few, popular items lower than Walmart does in an effort to build your perception of them as a low-price leader. By knowing which items undercut Walmart's pricing — and which don't — you can become a more informed shopper and save money in the process. Spotting the loss leaders at Amazon is not hard. After all, they want you to find the lower prices for their marketing to work. A recent study from Boomerang Commerce showed that, in an effort to be perceived as a low price leader, Amazon purposefully undercuts the Walmart price on products with a high star rating.

(A high rating is anything over four stars.) By analyzing millions of orders over the years, Amazon has realized that a great way to build loyal customers is to beat the competition on products that people are gobbling up due to the glowing opinions of fellow shoppers. Use this to your advantage by gravitating toward products with at least a four-star rating, especially when there are at least 50 reviews. It's a bit of a follower's mentality, but you'll find it really does hold true, especially when shopping for small electronics, toys, and video games. Another category of products that Amazon sells cheaper than Walmart is highly visible and popular items. In other words, items that have a lot of buzz around them and are often featured on the Amazon homepage or highlighted on specific product category pages. Again, the perception of having the lowest price means a lot to Amazon, so when a product has a lot of eyes on it, Amazon will tend to price it lower than Walmart. Examples of some popular and highly visible items that consistently beat Walmart include the popular Fitbit Charge Activity Wristband, Dyson vacuum cleaners, Keurig coffee makers, and the Jawbone Wireless Speaker.

Amazon obviously can't undercut the Walmart price on every product. With Walmart's enormous buying power, and reputation for pressuring suppliers to lower prices, it simply can't be done. This means Amazon often raises the prices on other products to make up the difference. These "other products" are items that are not very glamorous in nature and tend to be more "needs" than "wants." If you score a great deal on a HDTV from Amazon, beware of add-ons like cables, wall mounts, and screen cleaners, as they're typically marked-up. Free Moving Boxes From Home DepotOther examples of add-ons that can be marked up include things like a wireless mouse when buying a laptop, and a protective case or charging station for your new Kindle. Furniture Warehouse Sale In SingaporeIn many cases, Amazon will try to pad their profits on these add-ons making them not such a great deal for shoppers.T-Shirt Ride It Like You Stole It

Amazon has the reputation of being up to 20% more expensive than Walmart when shopping for household items like laundry detergent, paper towels, toilet paper, and the like. While this margin is definitely getting smaller in recent years, you'll still typically end up paying more compared to Walmart and Costco. If you are going to shop for household items at Amazon, I highly recommend signing up for their Subscribe & Save program, which allows you to get items sent on a monthly schedule with free delivery. The best part is you'll get 15% off your total when you have at least five items in your monthly subscription plan. The extra 15% savings brings Amazon very close in price, or in many cases, under the Walmart price for identical products. The problem with buying brand name apparel from Amazon is they rarely mark down prices and seldom have coupons. You'll typically score a much better deal by shopping at discount clothing stores like TJ Maxx, Ross, and Marshalls.Not only do all three sites offer free shipping, but they also regularly have coupon codes in the 25% off range.

For example, a new pair of top of the line women's New Balance 990V3 running shoes is selling for $149.95 at both Amazon and Shoebuy, with free shipping. But with a little digging, I found a 20% off coupon code for Shoebuy, bringing my total down to $119.96 — a price Amazon can't touch. While having the perception of being a low price leader is something Amazon strives for, it's up to us, as smart consumers, to see through the charade and always do our due diligence when making significant purchases. This means always price comparing, looking for coupons that'll beat Amazon pricing, and understanding the types of products Amazon purposefully prices higher than the competition. Do that and you're guaranteed to always find the lowest price. Have you noticed Amazon offering certain items cheaper than the competition?So my book about travel came out last week! Think about buying it directly from me:  This Book Is About Travel .mobi (Kindle Version) or This Book Is About Travel .pdf.

A pretty exciting time.  I’ve decided to write a few posts covering the launch and lessons I’ve learned. I self published it (wrote, designed, marketed and even did the layout for it) and am really proud of the project. This post is about the where the sales of the book are coming from, and why Amazon takes 48% of digital book sales.  I thought Amazon was the BEST for indie authors, right? We will get into that later. for the travel section. It started off with 17 straight 5 star reviews and a slew of people sending me pictures of the book, my book, on their devices.Feeling great as an author.  A few months ago I ran a kickstarter for the book to raise the funds to be able to focus on the book, and people from around the world kicked in. That is a lot of people showing a lot of support for me. So I wrote the book.  Finished up with 25 chapters and 52,000 words.  So, in plain terms, book book length.  A lot based on blog posts and places I visited exploring just what the last two years of my life were living on the road.

The book itself is a critique of travel these days, and the preorders say a lot to say about the way people read books. So 51% of the orders were for Kindle.  I love my kindle.  I can see why.  I was amazed to see iBooks so high.  I thought .pdf would do better, although I don’t know many people that read books on a computer.  Note I didn’t offer .epub / nook until people asked for it, so take that with a grain of salt. So let’s fast forward a few weeks.  Book is on sale and I launched a snazzy website with the help of the guys at What Cheer.  It looks like this, but you can check it out live here. The book is on sale for $9.99 (I was betting that it was equally hard to get a $10 customer as it was a $1 customer).  I worked my ass off on it and thought, hey, $10 it is.  I read a lot (a book a week in 2011) and that seemed like my personal upper limit, but something I would expect to pay. So how did the sales do? Kindle CRUSHED on sales.  People have their credit cards stored in there and the user experience is amazing.  

Nook is dead last again, not sure what to think of that.  iBooks is at 11% and .pdf at 12%. So as an author, I should focus on Amazon Kindle 100% right?All my energy went to the amazon link (like this post on Facebook): So the push worked and my supporters got behind the idea of getting me to #1 on the Travel Bestsellers!It feels great having your content out there and even better when people are enjoying it (and telling their friends). So, I’m at the end of my week, time to see just how the sales ended up and how much cash I’m taking home for a few months of work. Wait, Amazon pays out the worst?  This can’t be right! They are the best right? I dig a bit deeper and find this little gem: Avg. Delivery Cost ($) 2.58. So for every $9.99 book I sell I, the author, pay 30% to Amazon for the right to sell on Amazon AND $2.58 for them to deliver the DIGITAL GOOD to your device.  It is free for the reader, but the author, not amazon, pays for delivery.

The file itself is under their suggested 50MB cap Amazon says to keep it under at 18.1MB. The book contains upwards of 50 pictures and the one file for Kindle needs to be able to be read on their smallest displays in black and white and their full color large screen Mac app).  Amazon stores a ton of the Internet on S3/EC2, they should have the storage and delivery down.  If I stored that file on S3/EC2 it would cost me $.01 PER FIVE DOWNLOADS. Hat tip to Robby for that one. Use Amazon to run your website: .01 to download a file.  Use amazon to sell your book: $2.58 per download + 30% of whatever you sell. Amazon’s markup of digital delivery to indie authors is ~129,000% Now that isn’t 100% apples to apples, as it includes 3g delivery (whispernet) of the files but gives me no way of knowing how many devices downloaded via 3g. My book has a lot of pictures. It is about travel after all, it should have those. Double checked the compression of the files, everything looks to be best practices.

File size be dammed, this sucks. How do the other services stack up to this? which is a new service.  They take the credit card fees and you keep the rest.  So for that $9.99 I keep $9.25. Payday is once a month. They host the file for free. No DRM but I like it that way. Apple is actually quite good at a flat looking $7 per $9.99 purchase.  They host the file and their iBooks Author is fantastic for book creation.  Their app store customer service is about as bad as I can imagine (no phone, email or ticket support).  You have to play by their rules and their rules happen to include error messages that block your book from being published with the descriptive “Unknown Error.” As a testament to their not giving a single fuck, their “Contact Us” is a FAQ with no way to send a message. The book looks amazing on iPads through iBooks though! I would spend some time on Nook but it seems you all are not, so just passing over it. Don’t buy my book on Amazon.

Or do buy it. (UPDATE, I put the .mobi on gumroad) I could sell the .mobi file through gumroad but Amazon blocks commenting and rating for those customers that go around their buying habitat. I’m super happy with the project but really hate how much management of this type of stuff, time I could be working / consulting and actually making a $. Are books just really loss leaders for the authors careers? Big adverts in the fiction section? Not something I thought about until this part of the process. Shouldn’t writing a book be about creating the best user experience for the reader and honoring the art of story? I’d like to think the latter. We need more art, more stories.  Self publishing seems to be a great enabler of this (and the creative class), but damn Amazon, you sure know how to take a great feeling and turn it sour. So want the kindle version and don’t want to give Amazon 50% of the sale?  Buy here and I get 95% of the sale. UPDATE #2 Welcome Boing Boing.