A Quick Post: A Child’s Perspective – Buy More

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There was not much time left this morning and the bulkier posts that are being drafted are still quite long way away from public exposure, however one little thing I learnt from one of my daughters today was, that Children are not yet fully corrupted by the boundaries the outside world and there is some very interesting thought processes to be picked up from them.

The example is this: As she was leaving the house with mum, the flowers we had out the front that were absolutely beautiful had passed over, her mother said they were ‘gone now’, she pondered it from a few moments and responded with ‘Buy More?’.

Brilliant and why should we not buy some more? They really did look beautiful, so what if they last a week with a frost?

Quick Content Creation with MailChimp Webinar @ 9:30 GMT

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Update: If you missed it, you can catch up with Dan’s presentation here http://blip.tv/file/1670781/

For those not aware, I am quite an avid fan of MailChimp, you can see my earlier article on this fab tool Email Marketing, Why & How you Can Set up Your List In Minutes with MailChimp and tonight they have a ‘Quick Content Creation‘ webinar at 9:30 GMT.

It’ll be only 30 minutes, their webinairs are normally really good and they have an array of previous recordings. You can register here for tonight event https://www2.gotomeeting.com/join/497742107/106367259 and you never know, it might provoke you to actually mail out and interact with your email list at such an important time.

See you there!

Seth Godin on Good Marketing – Marketing Upside Down?

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Wow, I wished every Monday started off with an interview like this, I think I should go looking for an interview like this every Monday, as Seth turns the traditional thinking on its head.

Who needs another webstore? Who needs another book shop? Who needs another, another, another… Find 2000 people interested in a certain area and then find them the product they are looking for, completely turns what we class as the normal world upside down.

Interesting comments in part three on the e-Myth book, I reviewed the e-Myth book recently, Seths thinking doesn’t render the thinking useless, just that he indicates that things have moved on since it it was written. For those who have read the book, I can still imagine walking from the reception to the dining room at the Hotel and sipping coffee with Sarah and her thinking of her orchard and how its going to feed her chain of yummy pie stores.

Did I buy his book ‘LINCHPIN‘ after watching this interview, you betcha!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The original article is here and Seth’s blog is here

Cheaper Toys than Large Retailers? eBay UK? I’m Not Buying It

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Have just been reading an interesting article by AuctionBytes called ‘eBay UK Says It Has Cheaper Toys than Large Retailer‘, but I’m not buying it. Not Toys, I have two kids, but the indication that redundant staff maybe behind the trend.

Quote:
eBay cited unnamed retail analysts who believe that redundancy (layoffs) may be behind the trend, “with former employees unable to find jobs setting up their own businesses instead.

animagic-daisyNow the reason why I am not buying it, is because generally the Toy distribution network is based upon distribution rights management, in short you normally have one company distributing in one country and another in another.

I know this because trying to sell toys across multiple countries is a minefield and the toy manufacturers are exceptionally anally-retentive when it comes the Internet. Its only in the past year that some MD’s have opened up to the ‘Internet’ being a viable sales channel.

The other reason why I am not buying this, is because the greatest danger (to price) is not ToysRus or similar going ‘eBay’, its their suppliers, the ones that run the distribution networks you need to be looking at.

As the old blood dies out, new, more open minded figures will move in, when this happens (and it will, given enough time), that’s when the whole toys selling-floor-plan will change.

Two Blatantly Excellent Marketing Ploys, One Really Cheap, One at £10,000

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Morning, firstly a very Happy Friday. I am not entirely sure, but I have in the past few years been in love with Fridays, there is something special about them, I don;t even work in a traditional office environment, so its not the office atmosphere that kicks in, its.. something about Fridays.

McDonalds A Winner

Anyway, in a break away from the cell more commonly known as the office, I darted off to grab a pot of black gold (that’s coffee for those non coffee lovers), while sipping away and I noticed a stack of papers on the bin. Eh? Morning papers? I was reading How to Grow Your Business: For Entrepreneurs book at the time, but two people in front of me were happily reading way.

I ignored it for a bit and carried on reading, on the way out and emptying the tray (yes I was a Mc Muffin eater today) I took a closer look at the papers, they were yesterdays 3 star Evening posts. Amazing, they’re recycling ‘yesterday, yesterdays’ news for todays consumption.

What a stroke brilliance, yesterdays papers, recycled to use today and they’ve done nothing and exploited a product that would been previous;y trashed or put back in for recycling.

Econsultancy A Winner

The second one, is far more expensive, but so blatant, I love it. See the Econsultancy facebook page and take a read of the text down the right hand side:

We believe this’ll work, so Econsultancy CEO and Co-Founder Ashley Friedlein has gambled donated a £10,000 prize fund to keep you interested. The top 20 ‘influencers’ (defined by the amount of revenue generated) will take a share of the winnings as follows:

‘Human’, humorous, marketing, the best yet and its not even lunch time.

Whatever you are doing, be aware of whats going on around you, you never know when you’ll spot a brilliant marketing idea, sometimes they can be free, inexpensive or cost £10,000.

Enjoy your Friday and let it be a Happy one.

Complete Disappointment @ eBay Austin Reed Outlet

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This could be simply compared to paying absolute top-whack money to locate your store in a shopping mall or popular high street location, with its perfect location and an insanely high volume of passers with a 100% chance of walk-in custom. Just like it is being featured as an eBay Outlet in fact, but without the top-whack money outlay.

Giving the physcial store  a fantastic front-of-house display, spending decent money of staff and designer time to create a brilliant display set-up, with this season’s designs, for both her and him, plus the accessories, stands and covering it from all angles of entry (shop displays are very rarely hit straight on, always need to be angled sideways to capture walking custom).

But then forgetting to replicate the style in the inside of the physical store. Tatty shelves, everything boxed up and not on display. Just left in a heap on the floor. Like a Kwik-Save from the 1990’s.

Yep, you’d never do it on the high street so why are you doing it on the net?

austin-read-ebay-shop-front.jpg

Austin Read eBay Shop Front

Yes, the front of house does have issues, but thats minor when you compare it to when you leave the front page and enter a category, try it and you’ll see this:

austin-read-ebay-shop-inners

Austin Read eBay Shop Inners

Its completely lost its style, that fab looking store front, that front of house display, you know the one, the one that can make or break a retail shop… its.. gone.

There is a gaming term, that is most apt for this, its called the *face palm*, you know the action, place your head in the palm of your hand and move you head gently side to side.

As you can see from the two purple links, I was looking for shirts (my shirt spend is almost as bad as my book spending habit on Amazon currently), the inner templates are OK, but are lacking a close up shot of the fabric, that’s a big thing for me when buying a shirt, the fabric.

It would take someone less than 30 minutes to put a nice header together, probably even less then that as you could almost copy the one from the home page.

Look, this took me < 1 minute in Paint, see how much better it looks?

austin-read-ebay-shop-inners-better

Suggested Header

Going from the shop home page, to a category page is such a shock to the browsing buyer. Remember they’re[customers] crazy creatures and do not like being scared, the same if coming from an eBay listing to a shop category page, it would be far less distressing with a header in place.

Do not let your buyers think, buyers thinking is a bad idea, make it easy for them, make it a common experience, make it simple.

eBay: Doing ‘Whatever is Needed’ to Keep the Seller Entertained.

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Following on from eBay Conspiracy Theory Overview : Part 1 I am sure that eBay do what-ever is needed, even if it costs them sales overall to keep sellers entertained on the eBay platform.

Think about it, DSRs, best match, duplication policy being rolled out right before Christmas, numerous other ‘we’ll panic the **** out of sellers’ with these changes right before a holiday season, they have all been released at really awkward times for sellers.

Best match was a monkey last year with it being tweaked into the holiday season, this year, this statement sums it up:

eBay –  eBay continued  to perform well (especially given the softness we saw in the first 10 days of November due to the duplicate listing policy impacts) and came in at 8.1% for November, way above October’s 5.5%.  Like Amazon, eBay has benefited from a strong secular e-commerce holiday selling period in November.
Source: Channel Advisor

Basically US sellers were screwed over (that’s harsh I know, but imagine if you were a US seller and eBay did this to you right before Christmas) just before the busy season started for vast majority sellers. Look at the date, for goodness sake ‘POSTED OCTOBER 26TH, 2010’. The UK had this (although slightly differently) last year, LAST YEAR. Come on, was there any need to do this at the end of October?

Selling on eBay could be a lot simpler, look at Amazon, they have it down pretty well when products exist in their database, barcode or ASIN, quantity and price, what more do you need?

Well you need everything apparently, every single toy and moving goal post to keep sellers entertained on the eBay marketplace and crucially not on other marketplaces, like Amazon for example.

Why else would such stunts be pulled so close to Christmas?

So my point is?

eBay have proven they will do what ever is needed to keep sellers entertained with the eBay market place. I’m not saying this is a bad thing for eBay, its a brilliant coo, but from a sellers perspective, its a minefield, but also a fantastic opportunity for those sellers who can move fast and take these changes on.

I fell into this trap a few years back, stop looking art DSR’s, stop looking at your feedback every 2 seconds, screw it, what counts is sales, profit and converting existing customers into repeat ones. Anything else is peripheral junk.

Be fully aware of the game that is being played. Work the system, rather than bitching about it. As such, I’ll shut up now :)

eBay Its a ‘Trust’ thing : Part 2 – Always Selling

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In my earlier article where eBay and Amazon were being compared directly (you can see the article here eBay V’s Amazon – Its a ‘Trust’ thing).

Today (was a while back now) at the top of the inbox an email from eBay ‘Who says nothing is for free, username?’ OoO another free listing day, nope, just the spam that we had been expecting from the announcement that eBay were trying to reinforce that trust is an issue on eBay.

eBay Shop With Confidence

eBay Shop With Confidence Mail

Let me be constructive here and let me point out a few things that makes this email more than just spam, but a great email:

  • Its branded towards eBay.
    This sounds like a no-brainer, but I have seen some shockingly crap’n’ugly marketing emails lately that have bared little resemblance of the companies brand. So sounds really daft, but 10/10 for making it look like the corporate brand.
  • A clear message
    Again sounds really daft, but having a simple message to convey is much easier and is responded to much more than some long winded paragraph.
    Keep an eye out on the net for reinforcement lines like these:
    You can Shop With Confidence < Header Line
    We’re Here to Help you < Reinforcement
  • Suggestive Icon
    Now this is the bit I love, the mere ‘suggestion’ that you could ring eBay is a brilliant ‘calmer’. Its like displaying your phone number in listing templates and on the website, the customer probably will never ring it, but feels reassured that its there if needed.
  • Clear Call-To-Action
    Now this is genius and needs to be learnt from. eBay appears, that they did not actually want the reader to read the rest of the information, just tell them that it existed.
    Why? Simple, look at the two call-to-action buttons, the much larger one, the real one, is twice the size of the smaller, on-topic one. If you were give two seconds to click which one would you hit? Now where do you think it goes? Brilliant!

I rant about this a lot, but buyers are idiots, its your job to guide the customer where you want them to go, knowing where you want them to go is paramount, eBay in this case knew exactly what they were doing, pulling a PR trust and safety stunt, BUT pulling off a massive coo, by slipping past mask of the email and turning it into a buying experience. Absolutely brilliant. Now, how do we do that with your email marketing?

OK, I’ll Leave ToysRus on eBay Alone. Well May be…

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This is quite an old article now. I have considered removing it and I have edited it slightly since. However I decided that it would be better to leave this and the other articles on the site, as with anything, experience is only learnt through fire, this was one of those times where I could have done better and approached the subject more tactfully.

I’m leaving it, as it shows I’m just a mere mortal, like us all.

Thats right, I’ll definitely not mention any of following:

Listing titles are being heavily wasted

I covered this off previously in the post called SuperDryStore The Wasteful eBay Listings where they were also wasting their most important asset too (besides the unhealthy amount of ‘Daily Deals’, *coff*).

Picking on a random item ‘Playmobil Firefighter’s with Water Pump’ racks in at just 39 chars, that leaves 16 beauties or 29% wasted. Now times this by +10,000 items, thats a lot of potential lost.

Its really easy to deal with adding extra chars in excel, obviously humans with decent product knowledge are best, but as a temporary measure, you can readily create your own formula in excel that combines cells together. If you use the LEN() function, you can work in layers, here is an example from a recent project:

=IF(A2="","",
UPPER(
IF(AD2="something",IF(LEN(E2)<48,"something "&E2,IF(LEN(E2)<48,"UK NEW "&UPPER(E2),IF(LEN(E2)<52,"UK "&UPPER(E2),E2))),
IF(AD2="something else",IF(LEN(E2)<48,"NEW UK " &E2,IF(LEN(E2)<48,"UK NEW "&E2,IF(LEN(E2)<52,"UK "&UPPER(E2),UPPER(E2)))),
IF(LEN(E2)<48,"UK NEW "&E2,IF(LEN(E2)<52,"UK "& UPPER(E2),UPPER(E2)))
)))
)

In many cases, the eBay listing title and its restrictive 55 chars is a benefit to sellers, as it makes them think about the important keywords and can ‘sometimes’ (I say this very loosely) have a positive effect on website titles and Amazon titles. Although for both of those marketplaces, I’d suggest altering them, if you’re using excel or similar to create titles, you can be extremely coy in the titles that are created and make many variations easily from the same source keyword sets.

Wow, Wasted Subtitles

Obviously a eBay freebie, because no normal seller would waste these little gems so extensively. Again using the section called ‘Subtitles, WTF?‘ in the previous post, using the formula:

Seal | The | Deal

Should work quite well, lets face it, its unlikely that each will have their own special subtitle, so a common approach is needed and of course for those daily deals, a hand written one can be employed. But for now, anything is an improvement.

I’m not in a creative mood currently, I’m sure you can use the similar process I used and knock up a winning subtitle.

Think About The Shipping

Using the image to the left, which is the shipping box from one of the eBay categories [4631] and then look at one of the toysrus listings and you quickly spot that as soon as customer selections expedited or free shipping, the listings are gone from the results, that’s BAD.

This is where covering as many bases as possible is really important, to the point, I may have let loose a naughty one to cover 50% more bases in this post by abusing the new and used options.

Sooo with this in mind, if you can load a sensible shipping price into the item and offer a free shipping option by default, then add at least one upgrade option an expedited service too.

I’m not even going to go-there for international deliveries, the feedback is already too hammered to even contemplate suggesting this, plus it would probably not be a wise decision and would be better run from stock held locally in the local countries (plus knowing what toy distribution is like, it would be a damn nightmare) .

For those not aware, the free shipping options does not appear to carry the same kind of weighting to best match as eBay would like to lead you to believe, it helps for sure, but its not a hugely important factor. I’m suggesting a free shipping option purely on the basis that as many item specific options need to be covered (and then some).

Item Specifics

I’m not saying much on this, at least they’re marked as new. A great job of categorisation has been done, so for now, no comment. Categorisation is secondary to the listing titles being correct. I do rant about item specifics quite a lot, they’re important, but I have always classed the order of importance as titles > categorisation > item specifics.

Although saying that, I do suspect I am now wrong, and categorisation and item specifics need to be swapped around in the order of importance.

*coff* the toys categories support custom item specifics, at least setting brand on the majority (most haven’t, I checked) of items would help.

Listing Design

I’ve already gone on a bender on this, you can see the full break down here, if only a single change could be made, add the shipping ( if CA can total prices?[doubt it thinking about it] total order price to the ‘Our Price’ box, so a total cost of ownership can be quickly worked out in ones head.

Please note that buyers are idiots, making them think is a bloody stupid idea, so give it to them on plate.

It is your role as the business to provide clear, informative details so that a buyer can make an informed decision, that this item, really is the right item for them. Never forget this.

eBay Shop

At least it has a header and I do like the extra boxes that have been added to the left navigation, although a custom landing page would be a better idea.

Ask your self this:

If you were to walk into M&S and they piled every item infront of you, what would you do?

Not a lot right? Wood for trees and all that? Exactly, when entering the front of a store, people need to be guided in a decompression area (this ‘decompression area’ is from Why We Buy, brilliant book that, finally gave a name to it) so that they can then navigate themselves to the right area (I am not saying don’t make offers here, just do not overwhelm the idiot, err I mean buyer).

Last one feedback

Yep, you knew that one was coming… Get the wallet out and get on the phone and bribe your way out of this mess.

Negatives, attract negatives.

They always have done and always will do. Anyone remember the Shu screw up a while back? I have never seen sooooooo many negs left in such a short amount of time. At least follow them up with a constructive personalised comment for goodness sake. Admitting you made a mistake is the first step forwards in anything.

Summary

Sooo, use every one of the 55 chars you get for listing on eBay, its the most important asset you have; If you’re using subtitles, ideally they should be personalised to the inventory you are selling, or carry a reinforcement message for the companies USP’s, sorry my bad, ‘Unique Selling Points’.

Break the click-loss battle over that left hand bar in the eBay navigation and work it to your advantage, in some cases being smart is your only advantage, dumb-brute-force also works too as clearly shown above.

The listing template isn’t even worth mentioning in detail, it my frank opinion its been done really poorly and I would have expected better from the companies involved (Channel Advisor, eBay and I suspect GSi had a hand in this somewhere).

Wow and those negs, if you ever get this issue, get the wallet out and start bribing, its Christmas time as well, any seasoned idiot can work out what motivates people this time of the year, use it and abuse it.

As Big as Big Boys – How Appear to be Big on a Shoe String

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Looking BigLooking big is really quite easy on the internet, all it takes is some time, some cunning and a nudge in the right direction. Follow this step by step guide and you’re look like an established or corporate business in next to no time.

Here are some key page names you need to create and add to your site, ideally linked from your footer area on all pages (except the checkout if possible):

  • Press Office
  • Affiliates
  • Meet the Team
  • Careers, Recruitment or Join the Team at Company Ltd
  • Partners
  • Store Locator (if you have a trade or customer collections site)

Even if you do not have a press office, affiliate network set up, a team (other than the parents & pet cat), partners or a store. Get these pages up.

Get the Email Addresses Sorted
First off, with any decent hosting account you get a load of email boxes or forwarders, create a selection of email addresses, press@, affiliates@, careers@, store@ and forward them all to your main email address. It doesn’t matter that these go to the same email address, its the message they convey.

Press Office
For the press office, write a little blurb, here is a great example, minus the link to the PR company, make the contacts name up or even copy Donna’s name.  70% of that page is one fat image, do the same.

Affiliate Network
Even if you don’t have an affiliate network set up, lob a page up offering 2.5-8% of sales to affiliates, you never know you might be approached before you go looking to join an affiliate network.

Meet the Team
A personal favourite of mine, get some half decent pictures taken, I didn’t say pay for them, you’d be amazed what  you can do with a phone and the grey scale setting in photoshop, just check my about me page. That was me taking the pee in Tesco’s sporting a pack of ‘spam slices’.

Talk you friend, mum and dad to get in as well, a short bio, although if you don’t want to go the ‘family’ route you may want to alter their surnames.

If you’ve got any accreditations, lob them on. I used my MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) logos for my eBay stuff, although for the best part it was pretty much unrelated, but looked FAB!

Careers, Recruitment or Join the Team at Company Ltd
More of a personal preference here, if the company you wish to create has a more relaxed feel, go for the ‘Join the Team @ Company Ltd’ , otherwise name it careers or recruitment.

You know the drill, we’ve all looked at sites we’d like to work for, google them and copy/paste and edit a few lines.

Partners
Always a firm favourite, if you shift, sorry I mean market branded goods, then include a few logos and make the impression that you work with these companies, even if there is someone in the middle (a few times probably). If they’re unbranded, brand them and knock up a logo in paint.

Store Locator
If you have premises, then this is a shocker for both the website and any marketing materials, if the buyer has no intention of visiting, a picture of a shop, office, warehouse or tent will reassure the customer, you’re real. Oh and include a google map, they’re free or just screen shot and paste the image in.

A big tip here is include the phone number and email address in clear sight, customers will normally always phone or email rather getting off their butts to come in.

So your website should have a cracking footer line up now, the above should take no more than 15 minutes per page (thats 5 min’s googling, 5 min’s pasting, 5 min’s editing).

Press | Affiliates | Meet the Team | Careers | Partners | Store Locator

It looks swish doesn’t, almost a ‘real’ professional company that you always were. You’ve now paved the way to these departments in you business structure, all in an hour or two. What its says to the customer, ‘is these people are real’. Get over that hurdle, the rest is easy.

Show Our Age
Talking of easy, thats not the end yet, here is a quality chestnut, under you logo, do just have some cheesy by line, include the date the business was established.

Ask yourself, which sounds better?

  • I Love My Feet
  • I Love My Feet | Trading Since 2006

Thought so, do it. It adds an immediate age to the company and puts the browser at ease, this is a defo a tick if using right under the logo placed in the top right hand corner, no fancy text, just plain Arial or similar font face.

Facebook & Twitter
Include these pages ONLY and ONLY after you beefed it up, spoken to the entire pub and got Aunt Bessie to hit the like button too, get at least 100 likes before trying to promote it to people you do not know.

You’ve seen the pages & invites, ‘come see my Facebook page’, its got 1 fan and some ‘hello’ post, watch the dust balls ride on by, they’re clicking the back button. You want something to model for this, see MyProtein’s facebook page, its got some FB guru company beefing that one.

Warehouse or Store Picture
Take a look here on Google for some ‘warehouse‘ pictures, pick one and include it in your listing, about pages or on the site footer. If you actually have a warehouse and even a team of staff, ike em out and take a picture. Only takes a few mins and the staff get to see daylight.

I’ll stop here, I hope you’ve taken on board the point of this blog post, if you are to be big in business, then you need to give the impression that you are big in business, even if you’re not.

Who said this was TameBay, AuctionBytes or Similar?

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I had quite an interesting chat on Skype with a previous colleague last week, apparently I am getting bad press at eBay for ‘dissing’ their enterprise clients.

Speaking openly, it did cause me a few restless nights (it was really hot at night as well, Malta is not far from the equator and over 20C almost every day, I managed to completely miss all the snow, pity…), however I decided the following:

  1. I don’t want to work for eBay (believe it or not, never have done either)
    As such, as long as I am sensible (calling the design ‘shit‘ was probably a little too much in hindsight, apologies (but it still sucks)) I am going to carry on pointing and making fun of ‘botched’ jobs.
  2. I have no intention or desire to replicate ‘Tamebay’ or AucitonBytes.
    Tamebay is great, I love Chris & Sue’s views on ‘happenings’ in this arena, but its not me. Sorry, if you were expecting fluffy nice-ness, if it sucks, it sucks, why should I say anything different?
  3. Advertising
    It was also suggested the selling advertising space, sorry no. I would indicate that there are too many disclaimers on ‘other’ sites and I am only biased solely by my own opinion. If i want to recommend something I will do it personally, openly and crucially with the reasons why (like mailchimp, its fab).
  4. I also need to be ultra careful when it comes to clients & acquaintances, although I do my best to ensure I am translucent to outside parties.

Purpose

For those unsure on the purpose of this blog, take a read of Project Matthew Ogborne, quoting a section from this page:

If it wasn’t for a client of mine and great friend of mine who gave me a stark kick up the arse a few months back, I’d be keeping all this all to myself. Enjoy it, this is a professional nut case in action. Stand aside.

As Lisa said, its the application of ‘Matthew Ogborne’ that counts, anyone can point and poke but you[me] got the know-how, nows its for you to explain why and where and educate these people.

My point Is…

That there is a lot to be learnt and to continue learning from, pointing and making fun is the easy part, actually suggesting corrections and adaptations is a completely different ball park, what I regard as ‘my ball park’.

People have implemented my suggestions, made serious cash and also passed off them off as their own, this time around, you get them fresh, in their raw form to do with as you please.

Now, wait for tomorrows post…

A ‘Merrier’ Christmas on Amazon – Fudge the Item Weights

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If Amazon read this, it’ll probably piss on any chance I ever had for working with/for them. But keeping with the no-holes-barred approach I set out here, here is a tip that no-one will tell you, mainly because its dirty and underhand, but hey it works!

The Background

This only works if you know that your competitors on Amazon use weight based rules, its a basic flaw in the way that inventory is created in Amazon, by having lots of people able to edit records, then there is a margin of error, based upon this, we are able to force an error in our favour.

I say that this only works when ‘they use weight based rules’, this is because the Amazon shipping method setup for merchants is very primitive, you essentially get two options, weight based or item based and also only works for non BMVD (media like DVD’s etc) items. You can see the Amazon help pages on this here.

Its also imperative that you are not using weight based shipping yourself, if you do not alter this, then you’re screwing yourself. Again see here on how to alter them.

Spotting if we have Chance to Weight the Odds

You can normally spot what method your competitor is using on Amazon by checking a collection of items, preferably look at something that is intrinsically very heavy and something that is very light and seeing if the postage changes. If it does, Housten, we have a winner!

Altering the Weights

There are a couple of options that we can use, we can either edit records manually one by one, use a script such as an iMacro to alter them in turn, page by page, an update file or use an import/export from your software provider.

My biggest tip is not to go overboard with the weight increases and definitely not to do everything. Instead, pick on a selection of items and alter their weight so that it becomes unreasonably expensive for shipping.

If you have enough time, then picking a single item and working out their shipping with multiple weight edits could be very advantageous, you would know then sweet spots and because to create a simple calculation in excel to push each item over its barrier.

Summary

I hope you have realised how dirty this is, however realised that it could make or break someones Christmas.

The key to this is not going overboard on weight changes, setting something from 100 grams to 1 tonne isn’t going to work (well it may do, but expect it to get picked up) and for gods sake, if using the Amazon update files, ensure you write ‘update’ for the update type, its too easy to wipe data and always keep a backup and a record of the changes made, just in case you need them back later.