Amazon going well, velocity question

[superstealth]

I've had an Amazon account for around 3 years..just sold a few books for the first 1+ years. I then went on and off for awhile, had less than 10 feedback. I then sold over $2000 in one month and no problems. I should have known the importance of feedback because I only got about 5% of people leaving it.

Time goes by and just selling books here and there, $100 a month if that.

Now I'm selling other stuff...
1st mo $750+
2nd mo $2500+
3rd mo $3000+
this month on track for $4500+ although I want to do about $7500

Still going and have added on another 50+ feedback all 5 star. Done many $>500<1000 withdrawals and at least one or two $>1000. The most I've gone for in a day is around $800 in sales. Hundreds of successful orders. Same day shipping, tracking on everything.

I am holding myself back on selling because I don't know how much to push the limits..the account is old, a lot of good feedback, etc.. I'm looking to get up to around $20k/mo but wondering how fast to get there. Also wondering if too few products or most of your sales on one product is bad

edit: this also isn't a stealth acct

[ovidiu]

If you are approved for 5000 or so a month, I think you should be OK for over 10 grand. I only remember ever hitting one velocity limit, with automatic approval. I have done over 16 grand in a month, several times, and I think your account should be fine for your planned sale levels. Just be sure to manage negatives as they are certain to pop up with so many sales. I've written elsewhere about having a little customer service sheet that you print out and include with orders, so that your customers realize that giving you some arbitrary neg is like walking up to you on the street and shooting you in the head.

Needless to say, this does mean being careful about your conditions (easy way to get negs; overstating conditions or not cleaning items before shipping them), being sincere about customer service, and at all times being polite. Even if your customer is an idiot (and you will have idiot customers), you can correct them politely without resorting to insults, veiled or otherwise.
-Ovidiu

[superstealth]

I just went over $5000+ in the past rolling 30 days so see how it goes...by next month I will be well past 100 feedback and past 90 days of heavy selling (for my account) and after that I think I will feel a little better about ramping it up.

I've had some dumb customers, most people get pissed about not combining shipping costs..I've had some refunds but less than 5% per month, refunds that I don't even require them to return the item so straight losses for me.

So you think I will get hit with a limit around 5000 a month or per 30 days? That will be this month if not now. Do they look at what your selling and say to them selves "uhh uh" or just check your metrics/feedback/tracking...

What I don't get is why are there so many just launched sellers in items that you would obviously have to know about before you jump on Amazon selling..did they all get suspended or something? Makes me cautious..do they suspend for drop shipping or whats going on

[ovidiu]

I think you'll be OK and I don't see any reason why you would get a limit of any kind. I only sell in the software category, basically. I think other categories are harder to survive in mainly because they are so trigger happy about suspending and sellers often overstate the conditions of their items, making Amazon ever more suspicious.

As for all the new sellers, I don't think all of them are previously suspended users. Look at some of the lame IDs they use, like calling their seller account after the only item they've got for sale. Just some newbie who was googling something they owned, stumbled on the Amazon listing, and figured they hit instant paydirt.

Ovidiu

[superstealth]

Well I will continue on my steady increasing sales and update next month