Selling on Amazon isn’t as easy as people say it is!
In keeping with our BoomersNextStep belief that baby boomers can thrive on making career changes and should not let age stop them from following their lifestyle dreams, in the post below I proudly announced that I’ve been practicing what I preach.
I’d been searching for a way to continue to make an income once we decide to retire from our “real jobs” and were free to travel as and when we wanted to. I started learning about selling on Amazon, and this blog post was written when my first product had just been launched on Amazon. It was a challenging, exciting, scary, inspiring, fun, frustrating, but mostly delightful journey, except for the fact that it didn’t really work out for me as I had hoped.
The sad tale of an expensive business failure selling on Amazon
What went wrong? Amazon kept changing the goal posts and I didn’t manage to keep ahead of their changes. They had a major change in the way they promoted products, and it made it more difficult for small business to compete with the big companies. As with any business, unscrupulous people “played” the system, and in this case people were paid by bigger companies to write negative reviews about their competitors.
Design problem
Another problem for me was the design of my product. It was designed to be packed inside itself, forming a small pouch. Amazon is very lenient with their returns policy, and returned items are put back for sale if nothing seems to be wrong with them. In the case of my product you couldn’t see anything wrong with it if it was packed back into its pouch. Consequently when it was resold customers received damaged goods. I’d be upset about that too.
Any regrets?
So do I regret my venture into selling on Amazon? Not really. I wish I had made more money out of it, but I learnt a lot and actually enjoyed the experience. I think if you are venturing into unknown territory you have be prepared to be resilient and I have learnt that I am.
It is now sold out and I have closed my account but I’ll still share the Press Release with you. It was a great product and fortunately we still have a couple of bags left that we use all the time when we are traveling or going out to a festival or other day outing.
Press Release: RovEasy Selling on Amazon
Many Baby Boomers go traveling, enjoying their freedom from child rearing or work commitments. However one Baby Boomer couple transformed their European vacation inspiration into a new travel solutions brand, RovEasy, and have recently released their first product, a lightweight backpack.
Meets the needs of wise travelers
The new RovEasy daypack is designed to meet the needs of the savvy traveler. Weighing less than 6oz, the pack folds with ease into its own internal pocket in seconds, small enough to be easily transported in a handbag or coat pocket. The daypack features classic styling with high quality fabric and once open is a comfortable size for adults of all sizes to carry their daily travel necessities.
The idea arose from inconvenience
Principal of Clarity Travel Solutions, Jenni Proctor, explained “We were thoroughly enjoying our travels, but because of the changeable weather we started the day wearing jackets then needed to remove them as the temperature rose. It was inconvenient carrying jackets around all day in our arms but we didn’t want to carry a backpack on our backs all day, even when it wasn’t needed.”
“For convenience we bought a lightweight backpack that could be carried in my handbag or my partner’s pocket and then unfolded it when needed,” Jenni said. “It became the most useful item we had on our holiday, but we were unhappy with its quality and felt the design needed improvement so we decided to design one that would really meet our needs.”
Now selling on Amazon
The RovEasy daypack is selling on Amazon at a special introductory price. For more information please have a look at RovEasy daypack on Amazon.
Meanwhile these intrepid Baby Boomer travelers are planning their next holiday and their next product to ease the inconveniences and enhance the ease of traveling.
