Building a small business that you can run from your home office or garage is now much easier than it ever was before. While you still have to obtain the proper permits to operate out of your home, you can now sell products on sites such as Amazon or Ebay, or even start up your own website. Using these marketplaces, you can sell or buy used books on and have your product appear under search results when a customer searches for the specific book or item that you are offering. Your products will also show up on Google searches if someone searches for the specific title you are offering.
You may have noticed that there are a good number of books, particularly on the Amazon marketplace that seem to have extremely high price tags. Vendors do this on limited-quantity books or books that are out of print, but you seldom will see these vendors selling these books unless they are extremely desirable to a specific customer. Much more often will you see books marked for relatively low prices and a small shipping and handling fee. If you intend to get a foothold as an online seller, this is an ideal place to start. By offering a selection of inexpensively priced, popular titles, you can build your home-based small business from the ground up, one title at a time.
Stocking your shelves
The best way to stock up for your Amazon marketplace business is to visit your local Goodwill store or thrift shop. There, you will often find a large selection of relatively new books in good condition for a good price. When you're starting out, you'll want to go with good to new condition books that have their original dust cover, and look as though they have been read only once or twice by someone with plenty of respect for the title. Mishandled or damaged books will not sell well. In addition, select books that are relatively recent publications, such as in the last four to five years, and that received some honors such as any of a variety of book awards or that spent time on the New York Times' bestseller list. People are much more likely to know the names of these titles and will pay well for them. At most of these stores, you will pay between .25 and .50 cents for paperbacks, and then between $1 and $2 for hardcovers.
Open The account you will need in order to sell online. While Ebay is free, with the Amazon Marketplace, you have two options for how to proceed. The first option is to select to sell fewer than 40 items per month. In this case, you will have to pay .99 cents for every item that you sell, so you'll have to figure that into your expenses. The second option is to opt to sell more than 40 items per month. This costs $40 per month in addition to referral fees, so it's a good deal if you plan to sell more than forty books over the course of a month. When you're just starting out, however, you'll probably want to just stick with the per-transaction fee so that you can get your feet wet before you dive right in and potentially find out that you got in over your head. If you choose to open up your own website, it is best to have a professional web designer help you so that your site will be searchable on the internet and be fully functional.
List the books you intend to sell, and then wait for your orders to begin processing. It may take a few weeks, particularly since you're getting started, but eventually you will be able to make a sale. Once you've gotten started, you might find yourself having a hard time stopping. Pay particular attention to the authors and titles that sell best, and try to keep stock of these as much as possible. Over time, an opportunity such as this, well managed, can grow to replace the income you earn at your primary job!
