Amazon.com is a great place not only to buy books for cheap but also a great place to sell books that you no longer need. Which means, if you want you can make Amazon a gold mine for yourself and your family and create some needed closet space.
The Program
The great thing about this program is that unlike an auction site, there isn’t a listing fee. Which means, when you want to have a listing of any book you don’t get charged. The only time you get charged is when the book sells.
Here’s how it works. You list your item then a buyer pays for it, you then ship the item when Amazon notifies you and then you get paid by Amazon who acts as a middleman for you and the buyer. That’s why they take a commission fee for every sale.
Commission Fees
Amazon charges a per-item transaction fee, a percentage fee, and a closing fee. Yes it does seem like a lot but if you do your math properly it isn’t too bad actually. Just make sure that if you are going to be a reseller of books, you keep in mind these fees so that you won’t be losing money on your books.
Pro Merchant Subscriber
If you plan on selling many books then it makes sense to become a pro merchant subscriber. With this program, you pay a monthly fee around $40 and it waves the $0.99 per-item fee. Which means you should at least be selling 41 items or more to have this make sense. However, there are many merchants that have libraries of books and this does make sense to them. You could be one of them!
Ways of Making Money
Clean Out Your Closet
That’s right, I’m sure you have at least a few books lying around that you’ve never read and wouldn’t mind getting rid of. Not everything sells, so that’s why you need to go to Amazon.com and search the book. Use the IBSN number to get the exact book comparison and you’ll know if the book sells.
Craig’s List and Local Newspapers
There are many people that don’t want to bother selling their books. And even throwing a bunch of books out is a lot of work. And what some of these generous people do is give them away for free or sell a bulk number of books for a really low price just to get rid of them. One man’s trash is another’s treasure! Of course, you don’t know what books you’re getting because most likely these people don’t want to bother spending the time telling you what you’re going to get, unless they’re really nice. But that’s a risk you need to take.
Ask Your Family and Neighbors
Just like how you don’t want those books anymore I bet family members will have books they don’t want either. You can ask your family members and even tell them about this program, but many of them won’t want to bother spending time on selling books, so you can take advantage.
Garage Sales
Here’s another place where you can get cheap books. Just like how you can go looking for auction site goods, this is also a good place to look for books. It really is amazing how many books there are on this planet and even though there’s no way we could read that much (except for a special few, I mean this in a good way), we all have a lot of books.
Having a Niche
There are literally billions of books out there and to know everything is a daunting task, if not impossible. If you want you could have a niche of say Business books and try and look on Amazon and memorize what sells and what doesn’t. This way when you go looking for books you can find the treasures and trash before you buy the book.
Conclusion
Book selling takes a lot of work but it is rewarding because books are always in demand. Despite how the Internet age has come upon us, books are still very popular and will continue to be. By understanding what books sell, you can make a pretty penny on Amazon. To end this article I give you the link to the basics on Amazon’s site. http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=1161234