Selling Second-hand Books On EBay

September 5, 2008 at 5:01 pm · Filed under make moneys

To be able to make a part time income on eBay you need a steady supply of products that are constantly in demand.

There is a serious problem with obtaining products from wholesalers or drop shippers. Basically, anyone else can also obtain the same products and undercut you pricing on eBay.

It’s very hard to regularly make a part time income on eBay with products that can be obtained by virtually anyone. You need a product that is unique to you, a product that would be difficult for anyone to copy.

But you may not have the skills or knowledge to create your own product. So what do you do?

I think that I may have the answer for you. There is a huge market on eBay for second-hand books. Over four thousand are sold each week. That’s a big market and you should be able to create a part-time income for yourself.

The great thing about second hand books is that they are readily available but not from wholesalers and drop shippers. So this eliminates the problem of people undercutting your price.

The potential profit on a book can be quite large. For example you may buy a book for $20 and resell it for $40 to $50. That is a big profit margin and I doubt if you can find many other products that match that profitability.

To be able to successfully sell second hand books you will need to get a list of which types of books are in demand. For example is a James Bond book more treasured than an Enid Blyton.book?

You will also need to learn how to identify and describe the condition of each book that you sell. This is vital for creating an advert on eBay that will attract potential buyers. You will need to be able to asses and describe the condition of the spine, hinges, cover, pages, dust jacket and many other aspects of the book.

You’ll be amazed at the sort of places where you can buy second-hand books for resell, such as junk shops, thrift shops, charity shops, garage sales, estate sales, car boot sales. You can often buy a book for a very low price at these places and resell for a huge profit.

So, you can see that there is a lot to learn about buying and selling second hand books, but the profit margin makes it all worth while.

Visit the following website if you would like a free report about how to make money from finding and reselling second hand books. http://www.books2profit.com

You can republish this article in its entirety providing that you do not change it and that you include the authors’ biography.

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Thinking Of Starting An eBay Business

August 10, 2008 at 5:16 pm · Filed under make moneys

Unless you’re a hermit tucked away in a cave somewhere and have no contact with the outside world you will know something about eBay - the world wide online auction website.

I love eBay. I can pick up great bargains as a buyer or make some money as a seller without having to get bogged down in all the techno stuff associated with having my own website based business. And as for making money on eBay well, if you get it right then it can be a real income provider. But how do you get it right?

Let’s assume you have done a bit of eBay buying and selling but now you fancy having a bigger slice of the action. You want to start making some real money and grow a profitable eBay business. First thing to ask yourself is ‘Am I capable and committed enough to devote the time and effort to setting up, maintaining and growing an eBay business?’

Too many people are drawn in to believing that you can make a fortune online doing virtually nothing - put in a couple of hours a week and watch the money roll in! Forget it! It isn’t going to happen. If you want to earn a full time income online then you need to be prepared to put in full time hours and more. Sure you can start off slow devoting what time you can to it but somewhere along the line you will need to crank up the hours.

Right your committed, you know it’s going to need a lot of work and you know you have the ability so you dive in and give it all you’ve got and as is often the case you get nowhere! So before you give up your day job or pile a lot of money into an eBay business, sit yourself down and start putting together a robust plan because without one your running on hope and you won’t know you’ve been derailed until its to late!

The first things to get sorted are - How much money do you need to make? How much money can you invest? How much time can you put aside for it? What are you going to sell? You need to be honest with yourself when you are answering these questions as these are key elements of your plan.

When it comes to what your going to sell make sure you’re not trying to be an online department store selling anything and everything - much better to be focused on a particular market.

Now that you know what it is you think you will sell it’s time to do some market research. You need to get a handle on who will be your customers? What level of interest exists for what your going to sell? What level of demand exists? Is demand constant or seasonal? What’s the typical profit margin? Your aim here is to confirm that there is a profitable sustainable business that can be built around what you plan to sell.

Profitable and Sustainable are going to be key things you will need to demonstrate if you plan to get outside investment or financial assistance for your business.

Let’s assume you have your outline plan and it holds water. Now you’re going to need to start detailing it which is all about defining how you’re going to operate. Let’s assume you’re going to be selling physical goods rather than digital ones. You need to determine where you’re going to get your stock? How much stock you need to carry? Where will your stock be stored? How will you package and ship it? What price will you charge? What are your competitors charging? What profit per sale do you need to make? How will you list your products to make what your offering more desirable than your competitors?

You need to start thinking about auction titles which are fundamental to your success - get them wrong and you don’t get sales because no one looks at your listing!

Now it’s time to step back and re-evaluate your plan. Does it work financially? Does it work from a product perspective? Be honest and if you have to rework your plan to make it work then do it. If your plan works then your set to succeed it doesn’t then kiss your eBay business goodbye!

Right we have a viable plan what next? Before you start setting up your auctions make sure you are familiar with eBay (and PayPal) policies, rules and regulations and make sure you are protecting yourself properly from fraud.

What ever it is your looking for information on take a look at what I’m putting together at http://www.need2knowabout.com

Anne Milne

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Did eBay Open the Door for Google

August 1, 2008 at 3:22 am · Filed under make moneys

We recently received an e-mail notifying us that eBay feels they need to level the playing field of their auctions vs. store listings. EBay feels that store listings are too cheap, and they need to increase the price to encourage more auctions, or core listings.

Bill Cobb, President of eBay North America claims that while 83% of the listings are store inventory listings, 91% of sales closed were of the core listings (i’m sorry, I fail to see the advantage store listings had?). He claims that the increase will mean that store listings will be paying an additional 6% on average. He also says that the current listing prices for store listings do not cover their hosting fees. Bill says that the store listing cost them 50% more than core listings.

I am surprised to see this move on the heels of Google anouncing their own Google Checkout. An answer to Pay Pal. Of course, eBay was quick to ban Google Checkout. That means Google may have to launch an auction site, so will we have a place to use Google checkout? Froogle was not exactly a raging success. Then again, no one had any reason to leave eBay. They may, now.

Let’s take a look at an eBay store. This seller sells clothing. This seller has 1,777 listings. Please keep in mind, that is listings, not items. You see eBay does not allow a seller to offer choice of color or size in a listing, so if you have an item with 3 sizes, and two colors, you have to create 6 listings to sell 1 item. This seller is selling at the basic store. That’s $15.00 per month. Each listing cost this seller (at current rate) .02 per month. That is $35.54 per month, plus the basic store price, equals $50.54 per month just to list his items. Now you can’t do without a gallery picture, that another .01cents per listing, so now we are up to $68.31 per month before we even make a sale. Ahh… the sale has a final value fee. The final value fee is based on the amount of the sale. But wait! That’s not all, we have more! Pay Pal is the payment of choice for eBayers. They get their fees too! In short, to sell $792.99 worth of merchandise he payed $157.47 to eBay, and another 30.00 for pay pal fees, and $20.00 in key words search listings means this sellers cost for selling on eBay is $207.47. This seller drop ships, that means he purchases the item after it sells. His mark up is 100% or 2 times the cost of the merchandise. This gives the merchant $396.50 minus his cost of doing business, $207.47, leaves this merchant with a profit of $189.03. Yep, eBay made more on his sales than he did.

Now, dear Bill claims that the increases to store listings will average only 6%. That’s an additional $9.45 for this seller. But, is Bill right? Lets look at the increases. This chart is straight out of Bill’s email:

These Store Inventory format insertion fees take effect Aug. 22, 2006:

Starting Price– New insertion fee– Current Fee

$0.01 — 24.99– 5

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