My Amazon Spending

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I was buying books online before the web. That sounds impossible, but believe it or not there was a company that allowed you to telnet into its server, search for, and order them. Books have traditionally been expensive in Ireland. Retailers had high margins and books were priced based on IEP/EUR equivalent of UK prices. There is no VAT on books in Ireland so they could be safely imported from the US without additional taxes.

I've been looking at my Amazon spend over the past years. My account details in Amazon list pretty much everything I've bought. It's been instructive. The main thing I've learned is that I probably need to buy less and read more.

Some of the figures are staggering. In 2007 I spent well over $1000 at Amazon. That was all books. I can't buy DVDs and CDs at Amazon.com. That doesn't include any books I might have bought at other sites like Barnes and Noble. My buying habits have changed. Amazon.com was my long term favorite, but Amazon.fr's free shipping in France has proved attractive. Now that Amazon.co.uk offers free shipping to Ireland my spend there is up.

2000 was strange year. I was actually living in the US then so you would think I would have spent more. I did a lot of shopping online in 2000, but not at Amazon I guess. I was a member of one of those 12-CDs-for-a-buck clubs, and so I ended up spending a lot on CDs, but not at Amazon.  2011 is shaping up to be a quiet year. I'm broke. Maybe I should start selling at Amazon.

The chart above is a class example of a misleading one however since three different currencies are shown in the same bar. US Dollars, Euro, and Pounds are not the same. An accurate chart would convert all the values to one currency before rendering the bars.

Comments

Colin Manning said…
As expected my 2011 spending was way down. I spent $94 at Amazon.com and only €41 at Amazon.fr. However Amazon.co.uk attracted a lot of new business primarily because of the free shipping to most of Europe. I spent £293 there in 2011. I expect to spend even less in 2012. Also there are a few other online holes for my money. Already in 2012 Debenhams.ie and Zara.com have gotten their hands on almost as much of my money as Amazon did in all of last year.
January 24, 2012 at 11:23 AM
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