My Amazon September Selling Strategy

The months of September/October are often the months when my Amazon business sells the most in the whole year. Yet they're by no means my most profitable, I even make a small loss on some things that I sell. Why do I sell things at a loss? Why do I appear to miss big potential profits on my high volume of sales? There is a half-logical reason that'll be fairly obvious to most readers but that doesn't occur to many. The 1st September - 31st October are the only 2 months in the whole year that my Amazon business sells books for a very simple reason. Unless you're a book expert or are prepared to spend endless hours scanning their barcodes for a rare bargain at car boots, regular books aren't profitable unless sold in huge volumes. There's just too much competition to drive down prices and crush sellers' margins. However, if you're not interested in their profits and are prepared to sell them for next to nothing (often 1p per book), books do sell incredibly well on Amazon. Certainly in bigger volumes than anything else I sell. And my reason behind this backwards & illogical selling is that through the year, and definitely in November/December (for the obvious reason), toys are the things I sell most of. To protect buyers from disappointment when buying critical Christmas toys, Amazon has rules that sellers must have sold and dispatched a certain number of orders (numbers depend on what type of seller you are). The orders don't have to be specific to toys though, they just want proof that you can handle volume selling. So if you have a dozen high ticket toys that would fetch a high price at Christmas, selling loads of books before November will allow you to sell them for your inflated Christmas profits. Without the books, Amazon will suspend any toys you're selling for 2 months and you'll miss the years biggest demand for toys. I welcome any comments or alternative strategies, just comment or email me.