Selling Kindle Fire Tablets
Unless you were living under a rock the last two weeks you probably heard about the Kindle Fire sale and Membership Rewards promo from Amazon. It started out as a great sale and then turned into an amazing sale when MilestoMemories broke the news you could actually purchase 40 kindles for “dirt cheap”.
I ended up purchasing 30 when it was all said and done, 20 of which I sold. The other 10 were purchased for personal use or sold to friends and family at cost.
Where I Listed Them
Let me start by saying I despise float and I am seriously lacking in storage space so I wanted to sell these as soon as possible. I realize holding them until the 4th quarter would have been the prudent choice, but it was never a real option for me. Hopefully Shawn can write up how he does with his Kindle sales, if he holds them to sell for the Holidays. Then we can compare and see if it made a difference.
I also despise meeting people for sales so I did not really consider Facebook Local or Craigslist and went with eBay.
How I decided on Pricing
I only ordered 5 Kindles with my first order since I was worried about market saturation (first mistake). With the fear of saturation I went to market as quickly as possible and listed my Kindles minutes after purchase (great decision). Trying to entice people for a quick sale I listed two 8’s at $49.99. The first one sold within 30 minutes. I immediately increase the price to $54.99 and went on to sell another one within an hour or two. These sold a lot quicker then I thought they would. This left me with the dilemma of not being able to ship for two days waiting on my shipment to come in from Amazon. It was also unclear at this point if Amazon would cancel duplicate orders etc. This made me hesitant since I didn’t want to have to cancel a whole bunch of sales if Amazon canceled my orders. I decided to stop selling until I got the shipped notification from Amazon (2nd mistake).
By the time Amazon sent me the shipped email the market had been flooded and the prices dropped some. If I had kept selling I would have been able to keep it at the higher price, but you live and learn. I was also focusing on the Kindle Fire 8’s at this point thinking they would bring the better return (3rd mistake).
Throughout the week I continued to place orders as more Kindles sold. The market was fully saturated but they were still selling at regular intervals.
The Results
I have broken down the results for the Kindle Fire 7’s and Kindle Fire 8’s. The Kindle Fire 7’s actually brought in a better return, mainly because of shipping costs. I was able to ship the 7’s at under 16 ounces. This allowed me to ship them anywhere in the US for $4.30 using USPS first class mail. The 8’s were heavier and were much more costly to ship, especially to the west coast. I was unable to locate padded flat rate envelopes for these at my local post offices so I shipped them out at a much higher cost (4th mistake).
As you can see I got more then double the return on the 7’s. After the first few days I pivoted to selling 7’s almost exclusively. I even maxed them out, purchasing 5 of every color. My total sales breakdown was 12 of the Kindle Fire 7’s and 8 of the Kindle Fire 8’s. I was able to slowly raise the price of the 7’s as I continued to sell them. The final two I sold were the my highest priced sales at $35.95 (and they were even the yellow ones!!!).
What I would Do Differently
As you can see from my mistakes tallied above there are a few things I would do differently:
- I have now ordered some USPS padded flat rate envelopes and will make sure to always have some on hand in the future. I can not count on my local post offices to keep them in stock. Had I used these when shipping some of the 8’s it would have saved me around $20.
- I had beat everyone to market but my starting price was too low and my stock was too small.
- That leads me to wishing I had placed a larger first order.
- Realizing the 7’s were selling better I wish I would have ordered 20 from my wife’s account as well. By the time I thought of this the sale was dead.
- I had a couple of double orders from people and I decided to combine the units into one shipment. It would have actually been cheaper to send out each Kindle 7 separately. Combining them made my life a little easier but cost me some profit.
- The Kindles were selling quickly which means I was probably priced too low. I waited too long to start increasing the prices. My final sales of $35.95 seems like the top end of the 7’s market. I had them listed at $36.49 and they were not selling until I lowered them down to $35.95.
- I should have purchased Amazon gift cards with my ink to cover the purchases and increase my points earning. My Blue for Business card from Amex got me 2.3 points per dollar, so it wasn’t terrible, but 5x UR would have been better.
Conclusion
All in all, I would categorize this as a success. My profit was $164.60 on $402.40 in purchases getting me a rate of return of 41%. I also earned close to 1000 MR points for the purchases.
I definitely learned some valuable lessons that should help me in the future. One question left unanswered is should I have waited until the 4th quarter? That question will be answered soon enough!
Have you started selling your Kindle Fire purchases or are you holding them until the 4th quarter? Let us know in the comments.
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[…] How I Did Selling Those “Dirt Cheap” Kindle Fire Tablets […]
I really enjoy reading this post and I also learn something from all the comments. Thank you for sharing your experience. Although earning $146 doesn’t seem a lot but little money adds up, isn’t it. Everything counts.
Thanks Jenny. It adds up for sure!!!
Good Post.
I have 40 sitting at home. Still debating on Christmas gift of my staff or sell them for profits.
Decision Decision !!!!
They do make a really nice gift!
EXCELLENT post. Thank you!
Thanks for reading and commenting dave!
All that time and work spent ordering them, unpacking and repacking them, listing on ebay, printing labels, and going to the post office, etc. etc. for $146? It’s fun to beat the system, no doubt, but this just seems like really low return for a decent (although not a ton) amount of work. Just open more M&T bank accounts.
M&T has pretty much dried up 🙁
I would say I put no more then 3 hours into this. $50-60 an hour is ok with me. Also remember I didn’t include the money or points I earned buying more for family and friends. And if I did it again I could have made 3000 UR and an extra $20-30. So I think the lessons I learned are valuable as well.
Not a huge win but definitely not as time consuming as you think it was. To each their own though – everyone has their “hourly wage” they are looking to make.
Thanks for the post. In my opinion, the biggest question is, how many trips to the post office did you make. The lines for me are frequently really long. $146 profit and 1k mr isn’t much if you had to go to the post office 5 or 6 times
I had probably 4 trips to the PO which is a mile from my house. They have a parcel drop box so not much of a hassle.
It is easy to print postage at home and the tablets are small enough that you could drop them in the blue boxes you see at street corners, strip malls, etc.
The flat rate padded mailers are only available online, so don’t bother wasting time going to post offices and crossing your fingers.
Good to know – I ordered a couple packs which should be here this week for next time I need them!
Pro tip Don’t forget to order legal sized flat rate envelopes. You can fit more in (just byob. bring your own bubble wrap)
Awesome – thanks for the tip Dave….I will use it next time for sure!
Reminds me of when you could double dip with Sears GC’s on Discover portal + 1st year doubling. I profited $250+ on SEVERAL Surface Pro tablets. Definitely my most successful reselling endeavor.
Ahh the good ole days 😉
I ordered all mine with Amazon GC purchased on CardCash with Ink so maximized points and saved 2% there. I also used the JetBlue portal for 3x as well. I’ve had great luck selling them locally on FB marketplace for $30 for 7s and $45 for 8s. 7s have moved very fast with most being purchased by parents for kids. I’ve also sold a few to friends at cost and will save a few for Christmas gifts.
Awesome! I didn’t have time (or the desire haha) to meet up with people to sell them. I was pretty sure that would be the best profit route. How many were you able to sell? Nice work!
So far 15 to general public another 5 to friends and family at near cost. They seem to be moving at a pretty good clip.
Awesome – you should crush my numbers then 🙂
Update: Last evening a very kind lady bought all my remaining Fire tablets in one cash transaction. $30 for each 7 and $40 for each HD 8. I believe she has a resell shop or flea market booth. In any event, this was an excellent deal and very profitable.
Awesome news! I probably should have focused on selling them locally