Selling On Amazon

Selling on Amazon is difficult. I know that there are books and videos on YouTube about how easy it is. The problem is they change the rules constantly. Once you think everything is great with your Amazon store, bam! They come up with something new that you have to fix, or eliminate, or change the wording as well as making up a new listing or they freeze your products from being sold. They also freeze your account for weeks at a time and won't pay you the money you've earned which means you can't pay your employees.

David has now been selling on Amazon for over eleven years and just last week and into this week, they have deactivated hundreds of our listings with the word "organic" in them. We removed "organic" from each listing and they still won't let us sell until we create all new listings.

Selling on Amazon is definitely a full time job just keeping up with all of their rule changes. Don't believe people when they say it is easy and there is nothing to it.

Selling On Amazon Is Not Easy!

Monday, November 9, 2020

The beautiful waves are loud from the condo porch. I love the beach.

Today is beach day! David has decided to take us to the ocean in Corpus Christi. He never does that. He needs to relax and work away from people for a few days. I packed us up yesterday and today we will leave for the Texas Gulf coast at 2pm.

We worked in the morning, waiting for a real estate agent to call to tell us the time we have to meet to see some property close to us. She finally called and said the property is not ready for us to see yet. We will get to see it on Friday. Had we known that earlier we could have left earlier.

We packed up the truck and drove for two hours and came to Padre Island in Corpus Christi. Sure enough, the resort is right on the beach. The beach has been fairly empty due to Covid. The resort has a beautiful pool which we went in but first I got in the ocean around 5pm. It was cold, but fun.

The ocean is gorgeous. I love watching the waves roll in and crash.

Back on the farm, Matthew found just 12 eggs. I guess the girls are protesting me being gone.

In the evening, we got in the beautiful heated pool.

The resort pool has a dolphin fountain in the middle and is heated.

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Look at the beautiful sunrise just outside our condo door this morning! So many came to the beach to share it with us.

I woke up early enough to capture the sunrise. It was chilly out there and for some reason, tide pools did not recede all day long.

This morning, I made fried eggs with our farm fresh eggs for breakfast. The night was rough. The bed is too soft, not firm at all. The couch is uncomfortable and does not have any type of recliner. All of the furniture in this condo sucks. It is cheap retro and not at all sturdy. There is no carpet. The floor is old tile with holes in it. There is dinner service for three in the cupboards.

On a positive note, the kitchen island is beautiful. I think it is marble. The refrigerator is large and the oven/stove is new as well as the microwave. Also, the location is great, right on the retaining wall above the beach. There is a small deck with two lawn chairs in front of each unit so I have enjoyed sitting there, watching the beach.

We went to a Walmart, several miles away and bought some more food and a few things we had forgotten. Then we came home and I went in the ocean and played. We ate sandwiches in the condo. After lunch, we went in the pool. The hot tub is cold but the pool was heated and very warm. We asked the people in the office to fix it.

At 2pm today, David's school friend from Leakey, Carrie, stopped by the condo to visit. She lives here now, right on the water. She asked about us selling on Amazon. We visited for over two hours and then she left.

We went to The Angry Marlin for dinner. It was okay. I had Sea Trout and David had a ribeye steak.

We ate dinner at the Angry Marlin on Padre Island.

Back on the farm, Matthew found a record 21 eggs with five of them being blue! This is a record!

Selling on Amazon this week has been slow and sales are down as they normally are in November.

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

This large tortoise lives at the Botanical Gardens in Corpus Christi. Isn't he cute?

This morning, we got up and I fixed farm fresh scrambled eggs and coffee. Then we went to the Botanical Gardens in Corpus Christi. There was not much to see. The lady said due to Covid they have not made any new purchases, not even in the souvenir store. We saw some plants and a few birds and turtles. That was about it. We left at noon and found a McDonald's and ate our lunch down on the ocean by the World War II ship, The USS Lexington. We were too tired to tour it but about 15 years ago, we did tour it.

Then we drove around to different beaches just to see them. After that, we got back to the condo and changed into our swim suits and went into the ocean. It was so cold and pretty rough. We did not stay in long. After changing, I sat outside on our porch, reading a book. David was busy with work...

This afternoon, the Texas Department of Agriculture cleared up the Organic certification. They told David that the word "organic" cannot be on anything that we handle unless we have our very own organic certification. This is costly and you have to go through a lot to get it. We won't be doing it.

Then, selling on Amazon got real clear at 4pm. An Amazon representative called David this afternoon while we here on Padre Island. She said no one can even touch a pack of organic seeds without having their own organic certification. So even though the companies we buy organic seeds have certification, we can no longer sell them as organic unless we have our own certification. We will not be pursuing that so our seeds, even though many are organic, cannot say organic any longer.

In order to keep our current Amazon store open, David has to de-list over 300 organic listings by tonight while we are still at the beach. We never take a vacation unless it is work related. This one was a rest for David and after paying all of the money to stay here for three nights in a condo right on the beach, David still has to work all night. The good thing is he has been taking the word organic off of his listings for quite a while because he had heard there could be a problem in the future. The future came very suddenly...

I got pretty chilly sitting outside so I came in to cook dinner while David was on the phone with the Amazon rep, talking about selling on Amazon.

Honestly, Amazon has a huge platform which is good for us. We make a lot of money for Jeff Bezos each year. They take about 50% of everything we make. We sell on our website as well, but more people love to shop on Amazon.

Following this latest ploy, we will branching out, selling on other platforms as soon as we get home and I get the chance to start up the stores.

The resort hot tub still is cold. It didn't get fixed this week. We will be checking out at 11am tomorrow and heading back to the farm to get busy with work, heading up to the holiday season. If you would like to order some of our seed sets as holiday gifts, let me suggest that you order from our website for the most inexpensive way to buy our seeds.

Back on the farm, the line to our city water broke so our guys had to repair that. This cut off the water to our home for several hours.

Matthew found 17 eggs today. He worked on Amazon into the night from home, just like David did from the condo.

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Three guys were parasailing in front of our condo. It was so cool to watch.

I woke up at 5am and could not get back to sleep so I finally got up, got dressed, and went outside to say goodbye to the ocean. Then I came back in and David was awake. I made breakfast--fried us up some farm fresh eggs again. After that, we packed up, cleaned up and checked out of the condo, loaded up the truck, and took off for home at 8:35am.

We got home at 10:30am. I unloaded the truck and unpacked, sorted laundry, and started the laundry.

Meanwhile, because we are selling on Amazon, David rushed off to talk to his people and get things done on Amazon before they shut our business down. Yesterday, the woman he spoke with gave him two days to get it all done. All of our inventory has to come back from Amazon and we get to pay the $3000 to get it here. The envelopes all have to be changed with no mention of being organic and get new barcodes. So, as you can see, selling on Amazon costs a lot of money when Amazon changes the rules several times a year.

Also, the Texas Dept of Agriculture said that we no longer can have any mention of our seeds being organic anywhere, which means we also have to take down all mention of the word "organic" on our website. Fun times and plenty of job security for sure.

It is nice to be home. I have laundry going and I am working in my home office. Karen is working in the store, taking organic off of the website. I need to set up several new stores off of the website and off of Amazon in case they do shut us down again so we can have multiple streams of income. Selling on Amazon and other platforms will be exhausting in every way over the next few months as we fix things and add product to other platforms, including our website.

Friday, November 13, 2020

Today was another busy workday of fixing and selling on Amazon. Unfortunately, someone got the fix instructions for the Amazon problem wrong and showed others the wrong way to do it so we ended up with multiple Amazon listings but no one realized it until the middle of the night.

It turns out we are having a company Thanksgiving potluck on the day before Thanksgiving. I have no idea why they chose Wednesday. Then on Thursday, we are hosting some family here and again on Friday and Saturday, we are hosting other family members.

Not to mention that we have to go into San Antonio tomorrow and again on Wednesday. Tuesday is my birthday and the company birthday lunch so it promises to be a very busy two weeks.

If anyone is thinking of shopping here during the Thanksgiving four day weekend, you can do so online only. We will be busy with family visiting out of town so we will be closed Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, November 26 through November 29. We will see you on Monday, November 30 at 9am.

Saturday, November 14, 2020

David woke up at 2am this morning realizing that all of the corrected Amazon listings done yesterday are wrong. He contacted some of our people by text asking them to work today. One came in and a few worked on selling on Amazon from home.

I cleaned the chicken coop and I was totally exhausted by the end of it. Then I showered and David told me that we were meeting with the real estate agent two lots down immediately. The house there has been vacant for years and our property was once a part of that farm. The house has good bones but a lot of work needs to be done. For seven acres, a trashy trailer and an old messed up home, they are asking $335,000.00! That is insane, although we would love to have the property. However, the property between us is still owned by someone else and right now, he has a contract for the seven available acres so it looks like a no go.

We came home and got to work. So much to do. Plus I did laundry. In the evening, I collected 18 eggs with three blue ones. It got pretty hot today. Svengoolie was good tonight and the cool air started blowing in as I put my chickens away for the night.

A dump truck brought another ten yards of garden soil for the new garden beds that were built while we were at the beach.

Nacho built several more planters for an herb garden while we were at the beach so more dirt got delivered today.

It is not finished yet, but the guys worked on building us a much better greenhouse while we were gone. It is high up this time, instead of too low. It honestly looks just like one of those very expensive high tunnels, only it is made with PVC pipe. Hopefully, it will get finished next week.

Selling on Amazon and getting everything fixed on the computer has taken precedence over everything else unfortunately. If we don't take care of it first, selling on Amazon will be a thing of the past as they will shut us down.

Our new high tunnel. All of the debris and shelving came out of our old greenhouse and will go into the new one for plants once it is finished.

Sunday, November 15, 2020

Happy Sunday! I woke up to what sounded like someone constantly throwing things into our metal dumpster, which is close to my bedroom window. Slam! Wham! Bam! So I got up, put on my robe, and quickly walked out to the front porch where I continued to hear the noises. I got to the steps and no one was at the dumpster. The wind was blowing pretty hard and it kept lifting up the dumpster lid and then dropping it back down. So that is how I started my Sunday. How about you?

David and I did most of our Thanksgiving shopping today. There were no big turkeys left so I had to get two small ones and a small ham. We still need a prime rib but they don't have them at Walmart. Maybe we can find one in San Antonio like we normally do. We have three Thanksgiving meals to prepare for and it all starts in less than ten days!

We had a Taco Bell lunch and it was pretty good.

It is cool and breezy as I type this and it is 4:30pm. I am watching my chickens as the neighbor guineas visit them.

Five different hens laid eggs in this nest during the same day. Crazy when we have 20 nesting boxes.

I just went out and collected the eggs. I got 18 and four are blue. Looks like the guineas from across the street are headed to the street so I guess it is time for them to go home.

I did not think about selling on Amazon today and neither did David because he is asleep in the den, trying to make up for loss of sleep from the last two nights. Our son, Matthew, did think about selling on Amazon. He told us that he worked on it some today. Not sure about anyone else working on selling on Amazon from home.

Return from Selling On Amazon to Farm And Business Life

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