In my recent post, I talked about the two different repricing methods available to Amazon booksellers: manual repricing and automatic repricing. I also mentioned that I had switched to the latter repricing method.
How did I find the process of automating the repricing aspect of my bookselling hustle? In short, daunting.
Why? Well, partly because I had always doubted the idea of letting a software control the prices of my inventory that I’ve worked hard to source. So much so that I didn’t even consider using one until I had about several thousand books.
But mainly because, when I decided to switch, I found that there were too many repricing products on the market. Which, of course, only added to my anxiety about finally getting a repricing software.
But after trying a few products, I decided to go with BQool Repricing Central, the subject of this post. Read on to find out how it fares in terms of pricing, features, usability and more.
You will find this article helpful if you are sick of manually repricing your inventory of books and you want to free more time.
What is BQool?
BQool is a SaaS (Software as a Service) company that has a range of products that aim to help Amazon Sellers. In addition to repricing, it also provides seller feedback, product review, and product research solutions.
We are interested in BQool’s repricing solution called the BQool Repricing Central, which allows you to:
- Reprice your inventory automatically by letting you create and apply custom repricing strategies
- frequently reprice your inventory, every 5 to15 minutes
- Protect your profit margins with its embedded profit calculator
- View analytics and reporting options, listing data such as rank, offer, Buy Box win proportion etc.
- Control when a repricing rule is applied
- Import your InventoryLab purchase price into BQool
The full set of features is definitely a pull factor. But BQool Repricing Central has become a popular choice for many sellers because it is:
- always improving its products, which has enhanced its reputation
- no longer exclusively for Amazon sellers selling new items but also sellers selling used goods
- has excellent customer support
But people mainly choose BQool because it’s competitively priced compared to its key rivals.
BQool repricing central pricing plans: How much does it cost?
There are three BQool Repricing Central plans on offer, based on the number of listings you want to reprice.
Here are BQool Repricing Central’s pricing plans in a nutshell.
- 1,000 items: $25 per month
- 5,000 items: $50 per month
- 7,500 items: $75 per month
The above plans have a repricing frequency of 15 minutes.
If you want to reprice your items even more frequently, they have an additional plan. It’s their most expensive plan at $100 per month, for which you will be able to reprice up to 10,000 listings every 5 minutes.
A discount of 10% is available if you pay upfront for 12 months. Personally, I don’t think that’s enough of an incentive to pay annually.
How does BQool Repricing Central’s pricing compare to that of its competitors?
The pay-per-month BQool Repricing Central plans are on the whole cheaper than most of its competitors, especially if you have a large number of books in your inventory.
For example, if you have just under 7,000 used books in your inventory that you wish to reprice frequently, you’ll find that repricing them with BQool costs $75 per month.
This is:
- $157 per month cheaper than with Xsellco
- $15 per month cheaper than with RepricerExpress
- $74 per month cheaper than Informed.co (formerly AppEagle)
The only repricing software for repricing books I can think of that is significantly cheaper is RepriceIt, which charges only $29.95 per month to reprice up to 10,000 items. The downside, however, is that RepriceIt only supports the Amazon USA marketplace.
All-in-all BQool is competitive in the pricing department. But how does it fair in terms of features?
Key BQool Features
BQool Repricing Central has definitely come a long way. It never used to have a comprehensive feature set and only a handful of sellers actually used it.
More recently, however, it has morphed into a serious repricing solution. It now provides all the things you would expect from a repricing software such as repricing templates, reports, manual file uploader and so on. More importantly, you can now reprice used goods based on sub-conditions.
Let’s look at the key features in more depth to find out whether BQool is right for you and your business.
Automatic Amazon repricing
As a schedule based repricing software, BQool Repricing Central automatically reprices your inventory according to the rules you set. The core feature of any repricing software, of course.
If you are selling new items, you’re in luck because BQool has some repricing templates that you could use right away. You can access these templates by going to ‘Repricing Rules’ in BQool Repricing Central.
Using one of their templates is a good starting point because you can edit it until you’re happy.
If, however, you want to use BQool Repricing Central to reprice your inventory of used books, I would suggest creating your own custom rule. This is straightforward to do. Simply hit on ‘Repricing Rules,’ then ‘Add New Rule’.
I would encourage you to play around and create your own rule and test it out on a small sample of books. This way you can see if your rule is doing what you intended it to do. If you need some inspiration, you can view my custom repricing template by click here.
Built-in profit calculator
One of BQool Repricing Central’s features that I like is its embedded price and profit calculator. It calculates a Min Price that is profitable after considering your costs and desired profit return. That’s pretty neat.
To enter the cost a product, go to ‘Manage Listings’ and add its cost in the ‘Cost’ column. Then click on the calculator icon under ‘Min Price’ column and enter the ROI or Profit Margin you want to make. And hit the refresh button, which forces the calculator to calculate a profitable Min Price.
Calculating Min Price in bulk
If like me, you buy and sell loads and loads of books, you will find entering the cost of each book impossible. The good news is that you can enter an average cost in bulk. The average used book that I buy costs about £3, that’s including other expenses such as supplies, fuel, food and so on.
To enter the cost of your inventory in bulk, go to ‘Manage Listings’, then select ‘Set Cost & VAT’ from drop-down menu named ‘Bulk Actions’.
Then all you have to do is enter the cost and hit ‘Save’.
Now you need to set the profit you want to make. You can do this by selecting ‘Set Min/Max Price & Rule’ in the ‘Bulk Actions’ drop-down menu.
I like to go for a 100% ROI. So to do this, I set the Min Price based on ROI.
Now the selected books have a Min Price that makes at least 100% ROI.
Analytics and reporting
BQool Repricing Central’s reporting is nothing special. It provides all the essential analytics and reporting options including average sales, units ordered, Buy Box win percentage, and so on.
Interface / user-friendliness
When I first started using BQool I did not like its interface because I thought it was cluttered and busy. I wasn’t the only one, a lot of people who start using BQool are put off by its interface.
Having been using BQool for two months, I actually don’t think its interface is too bad. Yes, it’s intimidating at first, but if you give it a chance you’ll find the website is actually easy to navigate and the features are easy to use.
Overall, I think its interface could be improved to make it more intuitive and user-friendly. But its pricing structure and capability as a repricing software compensates for its ‘clunky’ interface.
Support
Like most good Amazon repricing solution companies, BQool has excellent support available. If you ever need help, the company provides phone, live chat, and email support.
Understandably, to reach BQool’s phone support team you’ll need to email them to book an appointment. And sadly, their live chat is not 24/7 but you’ll be able to contact them between 6 pm PST to 4 am PST (2 am GMT to 12 pm GMT) from Monday to Thursday.
In terms of the quality, I’ve only had to use BQool’s support on a couple of occasions (a good thing). And the support I’ve had received was good and I haven’t had to wait too long to connect to an agent, yet.
It seems like the support teams know and understand BQool well. But if you have queries regarding specific repricing strategies, don’t bother contacting them. Their support team has a limited knowledge in that department — which is understandable.
But the thing that I love most about BQool’s support is that it has a lot of helpful tutorials and other online resources. So comprehensive that you probably won’t need to contact them.
Conclusion
Look, I’m not trying to persuade you into automating the repricing aspect of your bookselling hustle. You can do okay if you reprice manually as I did in the early stages of my bookselling career.
But if you want to do well and make serious money in the used books business, you should consider getting a repricing software as early as possible. Time is precious and burnout is real, so automate repetitive and tedious activities.
To conclude this post, I would recommend getting BQool Repricing Central, which has been working well for me. It’s a tool that I use daily and one that does everything you would expect from a repricing software. And the best part? It won’t put a dent in your bank account.
BQool Repricing Central free trial
Still not convinced? Well, BQool has a free 14 day trial period where you can try BQool Repricing Central and Feedback Central. The great thing about this offer is that you don’t need to give out your credit card details. If you don’t like it, you can just cancel it.