May 29th, 2007
Sell Your Products through Amazon without a distributor
If you run a label or put out your own band’s CD and you have limited distribution, you now have an easy way to get your titles into Amazon.com. Through Amazon’s Advantage program, you can easily set up your releases to be sold on one of the world’s biggest online retailers. I recently set up an account to sell some of our releases that are not being distributed by Navarre/Koch and the process was pretty painless.
You only need to follow a few steps:
- Go to Amazon.com/advantage
- Select Amazon for Music and click Apply Now
- Fill out their application and begin to add your title(s)
- Wait for an approval of your account
- After receiving an order, ship the number of copies requested to Amazon
Amazon Advantage is only recommended if you don’t have a distributor who deals directly with Amazon. It is a bit of a ripoff as they take 55 percent of the retail price. If you retail your CD for $13.98, you get $6.29. There is also a yearly fee of $29.95 so if you decide to sign up, you might want to consider working with other labels or bands in your area to make that yearly fee negligible.
Although it isn’t the greatest deal, it is highly recommended that you make your titles available in their marketplace. We have had titles sell hundreds of copies through their site.
Written by Virgil Dickerson
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On May 29th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Sean-Michael Dore said:
This is something I really should do… but 55% is crazy.
On May 30th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Greg said:
Keep in mind once you have your release listed with them you can go around them and sell it for a lower price ( and keep a higher a %) in their Marketplace listings.
You could have it listed for 13.98 through Amazon, but list it yourself for 12.99. Then when people see the listing they will see “‘Buy it directly from Amazon for 13.98 or buy it used/new from….” Then you list yours as new/sealed for 12.99. If someone buys you keep 9.25 plus get 2.98 shipping credit= 12.23. You get 6 bucks more to stock and ship it yourself. Shipping is what, 2 bucks. So selling for $1 less you keep $4 more to stock it yourself.
On May 30th, 2007 at 9:57 am
phil said:
does anyone know how this would work if two bands/labels got an Advantage membership together as suggested. I would like to do this with someone else, but I am worried about the fact that you only register one business name…is that info separate from the information used to search by label? is there any way to get both labels info onto one account so we can both be in the system?
On May 30th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Corey said:
This guys ^^^ is clever.
On May 30th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Virgil Dickerson said:
phil, I highly recommend having multiple labels set up a single account. I don’t see amazon catching anyone that does this. You would in essence be acting as the distributor for any number of bands/labels. I currently sell 6 different label’s releases through my advantage account.
On May 30th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Frank said:
You’d be much better off selling as an individual seller than this shitty advantage program. Not only will you make more per release, but you’ll also get the names and email addresses of all the people buying your product giving you bonus marketing opportunities down the road with future releases. The Advantage program doesn’t give you that information so you really don’t know who you are selling too. In this day and age you need as much info as possible to promote your label. Stop giving it away to the corporate greedy giants.
On May 30th, 2007 at 11:33 am
alyosha said:
hey, if you want digital distribution as well as your cd’s sold online, I just found out a way to get 5 songs uploaded to itunes for free. Guitar center was doing this promotion for memorial day where you just go to http://www.tunecore.com/account/signup - set up a free account and then enter the code “Guitarcenter” when they ask for you to check out and you get the 5 songs for free. it was supposed to be a memorial day celebration, but the offer doesn’t expire for like 2 years! TuneCore is supposed to be really good for getting your music up in online stores, its worth checking out.
On May 30th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Virgil Dickerson said:
frank, I agree with you, but when you are a band that doesn’t have a title in Amazon, I think the advantage system is your only way to have your item in their store. I agree that Amazon is taking way too much, but if you have no other way to get your titles in their store, it might be your only option.
On June 1st, 2007 at 8:35 am
Tommy said:
The problem I see with running multiple and seperate labels out of one advantage account is that your finances get all mixed up. Amazon isn’t going to do seperate deposits for seperate releases. I think it’s worth raising the price of your products on Amazon to try to cover the Advantage membership rather than to spend the time working out the difference when you get paid by Amazon and in the tax season.
On June 1st, 2007 at 9:20 am
lowstring » Options for Selling Your Music Online said:
[…] Myspace is becoming a popular site for music, and I actually have been finding bands that have better Myspace pages than regular websites, so it is not surprising that Myspace has recently offered an online music store add on that you can incorporate into your profile (or any other site for that matter). Myspace relies on Snocap to handle the sale, storage, and download of the music. Sign up is free, but Snocap does take a cut of each sale. From what I could find on the Snocap site, they charge $0.39 per download….. Ouch! So if you are selling an album for $9.99 you would actually only end up getting about $6. BUT the kicker is that you set the price at which you want to sell your music. So Snocap’s Mystore is an option, with a plus being you can incorporate your “Mystore” into any site, not just Myspace. Amazon.com’s Advantage program will also allow you to sell your CD online (not digitally though as of yet), but they will charge you $29.95 per year, and a %55 commission. IndieHQ has a good write up of selling through amazon without a distributor. […]