Last month I wrote this article about experimenting with Amazon’s FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) programme – where the basic idea is that sellers ship a load of products to an Amazon warehouse, then Amazon do the picking, packing and postage for them. I’ll try to remember to do a more detailed report when the dust has settled and the Christmas rush is over, but for now let’s just say that the experiment appears to have been successful. In fact it’s been so successful that I have scored a “Christmas number one” this week, and here is my screengrab to prove it:
As shown in the screenshot, my personalised Christmas letter bauble is now officially an Amazon Best Seller.
When is a #1 not a #1…?
OK, it’s a bestseller in a subcategory of a subcategory of a subcategory. But I’m still taking it as a win!
It was hard work, though. In order to get to that stage I’ve had to sell a lot of bauble ornaments. And in order to get to that stage I’ve had to make a lot of bauble ornaments. For six weeks in the run-up to Christmas it felt like my whole house was a mini factory full of baubles, wood sheets, ribbons, boxes, and wrapping materials. My family became my factory workers, and my cat became very confused.
The final batch of ornaments was only processed by Amazon yesterday (21 December), so maybe that’s too late for even Prime customers to order my products. But in the meantime I’m just going to bask in the glow of having achieved a Christmas #1 in the charts.
They keep selling out, so by the time you see this they might all be gone again. And in that case it won’t be worth looking at any of my shops. But for just this brief window in time, I’ve been able to achieve a bit of an ambition to be a chart-topper on Amazon.
I guess my target for next year should be to try to reach #1 in a higher-level subcategory. So instead of Handmade > Home & Kitchen > Home Decor > Decorative Accessories > Ornaments, I should aim for Handmade > Home & Kitchen > Home Decor? Hmm – maybe that’s a bit too ambitious…!
