EBay And Beyond

THE 30-DAY CHALLENGE DAILY JOURNAL - DAY 2-7 Beginning Selling Books on Amazon, eBay and the Internet Buying Books To Sell On Amazon Using Skip McGrath’s Book: “How To Sell Used Book on eBay, Amazon and the Internet”

What I didn’t expect was the piles and piles of books. For me, it was overwhelming. Also, they were generally placed in categories, but mostly mixed. So cook book, murder mystery, best seller, 1940 law book were all together. The first day I spent time in the Children’s Book section. I found several pop-up books. My mind went blank - did Skip recommend pop-up books? (Suggestion to Skip:  How about a downloadable cheat sheet that you could carry to the book store?)  So, I relied on my intuition - and having raised two children that loved pop-up books - I purchased 3.

I found 3-others in different areas. They had a sale that day, so the books cost me a total of $3.50.

I rushed home, went to Amazon.com and selected “Books” category and quickly typed in the ISBN. All the pop-up and other books were selling for $8.00 - $14.00. This was my lucky day.

I went back to the same thrift store the next day to hunt down all the pop-up books I could get my hands on. There had been a couple dozen. NONE were left. Not a pop-up in the bunch.

Lesson: Purchase books you like in a thrift store when you are there because they could be gone tomorrow.

DAY 3: I went to a local Barnes & Noble book store and looked for discounted books. They were loaded. My problem: They were all gigantic and weighed a ton. I just wasn’t sure of my shipping costs and I didn’t have any supplies to ship these larger books. Many were selling for $9.95 and less. I purchased nothing and decided to research how much Amazon gives you for shipping these and get some boxes ordered. I shall return.

Lesson: Book Stores have large and heavy books. Check into this before you go there and learn about shipping and how much Amazon reimburses you for it.

DAY 5: I had a comment posted on my blog telling me to stop guessing whether a book was valuable or not and go to http://www.asellertool.com/home.html and for $5.00 a month I could look up the ISBN’s on Amazon right on my cell phone while I was at the store. I think I had an epiphany! No more guess work? No more should I buy this? I went to the web site and signed up for the free 7 day trial. It took all of 5 minutes. I then added a bookmark to 3 URL’s given me to my cell phone and I was armed with a lethal weapon for shopping. Suggestion: Call your cell phone provider and sign up for at least 1MB internet monthly service. I have presently looked up about 38 books and have used 38% of my 1MB. I will probably increase that service next month. It cost me $5.00 mo. to upgrade the cell phone service.

Lesson: Use technology to help you make smart choices

DAY 6: I visited a “Family Store” where they had about 3 rows of used books. This store was loaded with finds. I selected 15 books, sat down on a couch they were selling, and proceeded to look up ISBN’s on my cell phone. First book - 3,455 selling on Amazon for 1 cent. I put it in the NO pile. The second book was a field guide that told you how to research a dead body found somewhere. It talked about bones and forensics. It was like new with some underlining. There was 1 on Amazon (NEW) selling for $145. There was 1 (USED) selling for $49.00. This definitely went into the YES pile. My goal was to make $6.00 - $8.00 per book.

Lesson: Go into any store you think they might have used books. You may be surprised.

DAY 7: I now have a little over 50 books. I will begin listing them this weekend on Amazon.com, so stay tuned. I have decided to put together an Excel Spreadsheet to keep track of all these sales. When this blog is done, I will include it as a download for you. I did cost accounting for manufacturers for 15 years in Chicago. If you have Excel, you could use this as a template to keep track of your sales, direct costs and non-direct costs and a final profit.

Here are a couple of suggestions from Skip McGrath left as comment #3 on the first post.

Hi Sally:
Good luck with your challenge. Looks like you are off to a good start. After reading your blog - here are a couple of comments.

1. Be careful rejecting the large heavy coffee table books. Some of them are quite valuable. Even if you lose a couple of bucks on shipping you can make some good money. Now that you have your cell phone tool you can check those prices too.

2. Try books both on eBay and Amazon. For some reason books from a really narrow niche sell pretty well on eBay. I don’t always get a higher price on eBay but I often get a faster sale. Remember the lesson on turning your inventory over faster for profits. The other category that sells well on eBay are “how to” books of almost any topic.

3. Take a look at listing your books on eBay in the new Fixed Price format. eBay is having a fee sale from now through the end of the year in that format. I have listed a few books that way and they turned over pretty fast.

So good luck - I will be watching to see how you do.
Skip McGrath

Tags: Amazon, Books, Selling, Used Books

THE 30-DAY CHALLENGE   DAILY JOURNAL   Beginning Selling Books on Amazon, eBay and the Internet          Setting Up Strategies

The time has come. I have decided to start selling used books online. I recently got my hands on a copy of Skip McGrath’s new eBook “How to Sell Used Books on eBay, Amazon, and the Internet”. I will make this my bible for the duration. Skip has promised me that he will look over the journal and add his comments and suggestions to what I hope will be a profitable venture. He will be the expert and I will be a guinea pig. Once the 30-day challenge is complete, I will publish a downloadable PDF eBook so that it may be helpful to you if you decide to start selling used books.   Before I just run out and start buying dozens of used books, I decided to make up some ground rules.   I will NOT spend more than $100 for my initial book purchases. This should work well, since most used books stores in Chicago sell their inventory for an average of $1.00 ea. I will pick only books that are in top notch condition. I mean they have to look brand new. No marks, bends, scratches or writing inside. I will concentrate on smaller, lighter weight books vs. the heavy coffee table volumes. Until I start listing and understanding how Amazon.com accounts for shipping costs, I will be cautious. I will purchase in a wide variety of topics such as children’s books, specialty cooking books, old books from 1940’s will be acceptable. I will purchase no more than 10 at a time, return home and research the value, then return to the store to select more. Since this is all new to me and there are literally millions of books out there, I want to gain some confidence in my choices.. I will keep track of all my purchases and expenses incurred during the sale. I want to make sure I am making some decent profits from this. This will also include the time I spend on this project. I will list more books on Amazon.com because there are no listing fees and the product doesn’t expire in 7 or 30 days. So, I can just keep adding to the listings. Books listed on eBay.com will more than likely be sets of books. i.e. Andy Hardy mystery novels. Come back tomorrow evening and I will have a report for you on my first day of shopping. The ups and downs.

Tags: Amazon, Books, eBay, Selling, Used Books