Whereas the previous two month’s of updates largely had to do with design and updated pricing calculator/features, this month’s updates focuses more on expanding the range of JoeLister in terms of what you can sell and where you can sell from. Here’s the primer:

1. MFN is now supported. Short for Merchant Fulfillment Network, MFN is when you ship products to customers directly from yourself. JoeLister makes this easy by making the eBay listing process exactly the same for FBA and MFN products; when this feature rolls out to everybody in a few days, you’ll see a dropdown toggle in your “Amazon Inventory” tab that allows you to switch from your FBA inventory and your MFN inventory.
2. UK + Canada is now supported. Now, you can use JoeLister to list + fulfill on www.ebay.ca or www.ebay.co.uk!

With these updates, we hope that everyone can take advantage of the cross-listing capabilities that JoeLister has to offer, in more countries than just one.

You might or might not have heard about the New York Times article that sharply criticized Amazon for its workplace conditions, but it’s there and it’s been causing a whole discussion on workplace ethics in tech companies. But worry not; I’ve aggregated a bunch of the relevant articles in a neat package for you to read.

THE ARTICLE THAT STARTED IT ALL

A scrutiny from the New York Times taking a look at workplace culture inside Amazon: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace

RESPONSES

A pro-Amazon post, attempting to refute details of the New York Times article: An Amazonian’s response to “Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace

Jeff Bezos’s own response to Amazon employees, giving his view on company culture at the moment: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Replies to Criticism on Workplace Policies

Reaction from a senior editor at Re/code, in an interview from NPR: Tech Industry Reacts To New York Times’ Amazon Exposé

A op-ed on New York Times questioning if the negative portrayal of Amazon’s workplace culture was valid or not: Was Portrayal of Amazon’s Brutal Workplace on Target?

An official, non-editorial article from the New York Times talking about the responses, including that of Jeff Bezos: Jeff Bezos and Amazon Employees Join Debate Over Its Culture

Hat tip to all sources for the articles, as this is, after all, an aggregation of all the news out there.

You’ve seen services that help you optimize sale strategies, services that help you list on multiple online marketplaces in Asia, Dash buttons that allow you to order one – that’s right, only one – kind of items from Amazon, and maybe a bunch of blue and orange circles representing data from JoeLister. But have you seen anything like 888Lots? Ok, maybe you’ve seen liquidation services – but 888Lots, with one heck of a distinct name (and a corresponding $88.88 “Lots Master” plan) does this online and pretty much all the time. Check it out. If only for features like “Mystery lot”, this guest post is a pleasure to read. 

888Lots: Who are we?

888 Lots is an online platform for liquidation sales and wholesale lots. What we offer for sellers is the opportunity to buy brand new merchandise from over 100,000 products in more than 30 different categories.

What we offer?

All kinds of different lots specially made to meet the needs of all online sellers.

Our lots and items:

• Low-cost lots – low-cost items perfect for flea markets

• Standard lots – all kinds of items on all kinds of prices

• Branded lots – contains only items from one brand

• Premium lots – higher per-item values, the lowest possible shipping costs and marketplace fees, and the highest margins possible.

• Lot of the Day – a special lot on a special price with a flat shipping cost of $8.88.

• Mystery lot – sometimes our Lot of the Day will be a Mystery lot which contains items without ASIN numbers and barcodes. Everything about it is a mystery, but the price is the real gem. You can expect to buy these lots on very low prices (sometimes even under $100!) considering the overall value of the items in it.

• Individual items – You have the opportunity to buy just one item instead of buying an entire lot. All of the individual items have high profits.

And if you are wondering how JoeLister can help, you should know that not every item can be sold on Amazon. That is where JoeLister can help you to maximize your profits: by allowing you to sell the items onto a different marketplace.

Details

All of our lots come with as much detailed information as possible, plus a downloadable manifest file with all of your lot content in it.

Detailed information to help you make smart buying decisions, such as:

• ASIN numbers
• UPC codes
• MSRP value
• OFF MSRP value
• Detailed manifest file with reviews rank and sales rank
• Item quantities
• Item descriptions
• Last known prices of the products
• Sorting by different item information
• and more

Our features

• The Negotiator – you can negotiate the price of each lot
• Bulk uploader file – you can download your entire lot content into a file, ready to be uploaded directly in your Amazon seller central saving you hours of work
• FBA profit calculator – FBA fulfillment profits and fees in real time on our website
• Email notifications
• Dedicated sales representative

How we work?

Our plans and pricing

Our team has come up with three subscription plans to meet the needs of all of our customers. You can find more about them from the picture below or if you visit our website.

Our Vision

We believe that hard work and service quality is the key to a successful business. Everyone on our team is dedicated to bringing you the best liquidation service. From our warehouse managers to your dedicated sales representative and our developers, we are constantly hearing from our customers and members to tweak and polish our platform so you can enjoy a smoother buying experience from the moment you register to the moment you make your first sale.

If you want to be part of our journey to become the most advanced liquidation platform, sign up now – for free – at our website: 888Lots.

Your JoeLister visual of the week: a representation of percentage FBA inventory listed on JoeLister. The circles highlighted in orange represent more than 50% of FBA inventory listed on JoeLister, and the blue are listings with less than 50%. The size corresponds to the percentage.

We can also do this with last week’s visualization, by the way. In this one, anyone with more than 2,500 items in FBA is represented by an orange circle. The size corresponds to the amount of FBA items. 

An array of small buttons to take over your house, one click at a time. 

We like to think of ourselves here at JoeLister as helping people through automation. We’re making it easy for you to list on both Amazon and eBay, and we do that by taking care of a lot of things that you otherwise would have to do yourself manually (creating listings, fulfilling orders across platforms). With the dash button, Amazon now does the same. Well, not really. Sort of.

From the Verge: 

“When Amazon announced the Dash Button back on March 31st, it seemed like an early April Fools’ joke: it had made a button you can buy that would place an order for something — a single, specific product — whenever you pressed it. But the Dash Button was very real and designed to be a convenience for helping people reorder commonly used household goods, like toilet paper or laundry detergent. They were initially available for free to Prime members, but only by invitation. As of this week, they’re now available to be purchased by all Prime members for $4.99 each.

There are 18 Dash Buttons so far, with buttons for Glad bags, Bounty paper towel rolls, Smartwater bottles, and Gerber baby formula, among others. Each button represents a specific brand, but from within that brand you have some choice over what product and what quantity you want to order whenever it’s pressed. (That means you won’t be stuck getting fruit punch Gatorade every time you press the Gatorade button and can move onto something more sensible like Glacier Freeze.) Frivolous as it is, the Dash Buttons certainly seem like a convenience for household staples that you regularly need. Just don’t accidentally hit it when you’re still stocked up.”

We’ll save you the work: if you didn’t click the link up there already, you can go here to see the page for dash buttons.

S/O to Amazon for the info, and Verge for the article. Oh, and Amazon for the buttons.

Or as they like to say sometimes, “The ChannelAdvisor of Asia”. This post, written by our friends over at Branch 8, highlights the platform they’ve built to facilitate e-commerce transactions in Asia. If you’re interested, head over to Branch8 and register to be on their priority list. 

Ever thought of going beyond your current markets? Ever thought about selling to markets in another part of the world? What if you could do the exact same thing that you’re doing, but reach customers in Asia? All this given it is hassle free and minimal work? Get ready, because we’ve finally found the solution for you.

Market in Asia

You’re probably an expert in selling on e-commerce marketplaces like eBay or Amazon in the US if you’re working with JoeLister. However, the market in Asia is completely different. Where eBay and Amazon dominates 80% of the US market, in Asia, the market is completely fragmented with no market leader. It means if you want to increase your sales, you’ll need to list on multiple marketplaces, which means increase in work.

More than that, the Asian e-commerce market is to hit $1 trillion in revenue and have 1 billion online shoppers in the next couple of years.

That’s why we’re here. Branch8 is here to help you increase your sales with no additional work.

What is Branch8?

We’re a website that help sellers to list and manage products on multiple e-commerce marketplaces. We hope to be the one place for sellers to sell on every marketplace in the world.

You can imagine Branch8 as the ChannelAdvisor of Asia. We’re connected to 15 marketplaces with current focus on Lazada (The Amazon of South East Asia), Qoo10, Linio, Jumia and Amazon. We’re looking to integrate an additional 1 marketplace per month.

Our platform has 3 Basic Features and 3 Advanced Features:

You can to go to our website to learn more about these features.

What about Logistics and Shipping?

You’re probably asking if the shipping is safe and will it take a long time. You would imagine that shipping from the US to Asia would be a big hassle, but there’s been an increase of shipping providers developing and refining the quality and time it takes to ship from the US to Asia. We’ve figured this out with our partners. It would take 1 to 2 weeks to reach the marketplace customer and rates are quite competitive, so rest assured that we’ve gotten this big puzzle piece figured out for you.

How Does it Actually Work?

It’s 3 simple steps:

1. Ship from Amazon to Branch8’s dedicated shipping providers
2. Branch8’s shipping providers will relabel and ship out to Asia
3. Once the item has been delivered, you will get paid

Come Be Part of the Priority List?

We’ve recently opened up our service for sellers to go on a free 3-month trial to help us test our advanced premium services. We’re hoping you be part of this as well. So it’s simple, just sign up!