There are countless home-based business opportunities available, but few that offer the risk to reward ratio of online bookselling.
Getting started is not difficult, many people start with books they already have. About the only tools you need are a computer, printer, and for those that are really ambitious and want to be successful right away, a web enabled cell phone.
You can buy the books to sell from your local thrift stores, Friends of the Library bookshelves, garage sales, yard sales, church sales, estate sales, and a host of other places. The trick to being successful in online bookselling is to buy books for less than you sell them for - duh. This isn't hard to do either, you can do it with your cell phone and a friend sitting at a computer looking up the values online, or you can subscribe to a premium lookup service that operates from your cell phone for about $10 per month.
Once you have an inventory, all you have to do is set up an account with an online marketplace and list your books for sale at competitive prices. With millions of online customers buying books, the sales start coming in quickly. While Amazon.com does not disclose their book sales separate from their other marketplace sales, they did have over $62,000,000,000 in sales the second quarter of this year and books do comprise a very substantial portion of Amazon's sales. Why not take advantage of the opportunity and start your own home-based business selling books? If you learn how to do it properly the money you make will easily surpass what you might expect making in the fast food industry and there are a number of online booksellers making a very comfortable full-time income selling books online while only working part-time. I don't want to make it sound like it requires no work because it does involve time, effort, and knowing what you are doing, but if you set out with the right tools and a "can do" attitude, there is no reason to expect anything but success. I get regular emails from people that have read my book telling me about their successes, and I have not had a single person tell me they have failed using my book as their guide. Of course there are other books on this subject as well, and I would strongly encourage you to buy and read two or three of them before you set out to start your own online bookselling business.
Once you have started your home-based bookselling business, I would encourage you to join a community newsletter for the purpose of sharing ideas and keeping abreast of the marketplace changes. Consider it a "continuing education" mechanism.
In terms of income potential, it is difficult to quantify with any certainty, but a bookseller with an inventory of 3,000 books of general titles that has done his/her homework and researched the book values before purchasing them can easily expect to make $2,500 to $3,000 per month. Typically, it is relatively easy to find books for $1 to $3 that will sell online for $9 to $15, but again I want to emphasize that you need to KNOW the value of the book BEFORE buying it. It also is a good practice to understand the demand for a title before you buy it; this will give you an indication of how quickly you might expect to sell it.
Michael E. Mould is the author of "Online Bookselling: A Practical Guide with Detailed Explanations and Insightful Tips," available in both CD-ROM and paperback formats. He also publishes the "Online Bookselling Newsletter" and distributes it to his subscribers free. If you are interested in receiving the "Online Bookselling Newsletter," you can find out how at his website: http://www.online-bookselling.com You can also see a sample listing of "Some Gems" that he purchased for $21.42 and sold for $1,998.65, that is a profit of $1,977.23, or 9,231%. That is not a shabby return on a $21.42 investment and it will buy at least 1,500 more books that will make around $10 each. Michael maintains one-on-one correspondence with his customers and newsletter subscribers, if you have questions about online bookselling, send Michael an email at: |
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