The author started his home-based bookstore as a hobby and two months
later quit his day job to sell books online full-time. He has since
sold more than $1 million of used books this way.Here is a brief overview of five ways to make money selling books online. There may be others, but these are the ones I have some personal success with.
This is an introduction. If you intend to put any of these methods into practice, you will need additional information to get started. For this reason I have listed resources that can provide that information.
Selling books online is fun, and many people earn a living doing it.
Good luck!
Do you have a web site? Did you know you can make money by adding specially coded links to books and other items on Amazon?
You make money whenever someone clicks through to Amazon from your link and makes a purchase. Amazon will pay you commissions on these purchases.
With this idea, you're not having to actually handle any books. You're just sending people over to Amazon and collecting a reward in the form of a small commission when they buy.
You can link to almost any book or other item on Amazon, but you will do best by linking to books that relate your web site's theme. You could even create your own online bookstore and spotlight hundreds of books in a particular category. Amazon now has a tool that will generate whole bookstore-type pages that you can plug in to your site as easily as copying and pasting a few lines of code.
To get started with this, you should first go to the Amazon Associates Program and sign up for free. In addition to providing you with a unique code number to use in your links (for tracking clicks and purchases), Amazon offers a wealth of information to its Associates on how to use the program to boost their income.
Quite a few people make a full-time living with this idea.
First, you have to find sources of used books that you can buy cheap. The best places to try are thrift stores, yard sales, and the big book sales that most libraries (or "friends of the library" groups) hold at least once a year.
You then list your book finds on Amazon, reselling them for dollars on the dime. Typically, you should be able to pick up many books for 50 cents or a buck, and turn around and sell them for $5 or $10 or even more.
You can also sell your used books on eBay. However, based on my experience, it is better to use eBay only for books that fall in the collectible category. This will increase the likelihood of people starting a bidding frenzy over your books (and that's a good thing!).
Whether you use Amazon or eBay or some other book-listing service, you will be responsible for packing and shipping the books you sell. This can be a lot of work. But you can make it much easier by reading up on how other established online booksellers handle it. Try to duplicate their systems for streamlining the process of packing books, weighing the packages, applying labels and postage, and scheduling trips to the post office.
You will also need to learn how to grade the conditions of your books so you can describe them accurately to potential purchasers. There are books available that will guide you in this, but you will develop a feel for it as you go along.
Amazon has a quick-start guide to selling books and other used items on their site. Be sure and read it all. It will also tell you what you must do to sign up and begin selling.
A must-read for getting off on the right foot isThe Home-Based Bookstore: Start Your Own Business Selling Used Books on Amazon, eBay or Your Own Web Site
The author started his home-based bookstore as a hobby and two months
later quit his day job to sell books online full-time. He has since
sold more than $1 million of used books this way.
Similar to the above, but with lots of additional practical advice, is Online Bookselling: A Practical Guide with Detailed Explanations and Insightful Tips. If you can afford to, get both.
How One Woman Made $11,212 A Month On Ebay--And How You Can Too! is not just about selling books--it's probably the best overall guide to making money on eBay. It's not only comprehensive, it sets out a step-by-step plan for anyone wanting to duplicate the author's success.
Probably more people have made significant money with this idea than with any of the others described here.
You start by writing a book on a popular topic, turning it into a PDF file and offering it for sale and download over the web. "How-to" (make money, attract a mate, travel cheaply, lose weight, manifest one's deepest desires, etc.) is by far the most in-demand category for ebooks.
Because your buyers will be downloading your ebook directly to their computers, you will avoid most of the expenses associated with traditional book publishing. Ebooks command relatively high prices--and most of it is pure profit to for the author/publisher (which would be you!).
Of course, you must first write the book (also referred to as "information product"). There are a number of excellent guides available that show how to come up with an idea, research it, and then get your book down on paper--or "on screen" in this case.
Much of the information you will need for your ebook can be gleaned from the web. Your main job will be to package the information and maybe give it a new twist or an original slant so that it stands out as unique.
Once you've created your ebook, you must prospective buyers' attention and persuade them to purchase. To do this, you must be able to craft a good sales letter that will make people eager to whip out their credit card.
There are experts you can hire to write your letter, for a fee, but it's much better--and not that hard--to learn to do it yourself.
Writing and selling your ebooks offers one of the best opportunities for making money online. And, it will do so for many years to come, in my opinion.
There must be thousands of books and ebooks on making money on the web. Honest Riches, by a young single mom who created an online income for herself of more than $100,000 a year, remains one of the best--and it has just been updated. It includes a full chapter on ebooks: getting the idea, researching, writing, publicizing, selling - nothing is left out.
Also recommended: Ebook Marketing 4 Newbies - How to Write, Publish, and Promote your Own Profitable eBook. The author lays out a system for creating and selling ebooks, which the author calls "little money machines that pump out cash, even when you don't lift a finger."
Somewhat different than the above, but also recommended, is Sell Books And Videos On eBay. The author tells how he makes a fortune selling ebooks and other info products on eBay.
Instant Book Writing Kit - How to Write, Publish and Market Your Own Money-Making Book (or Ebook) Online
This is a step-by-step book-writing manual that shows how to crank out
one profitable ebook after another using the little-known "Online
Publishing Model."
Worried that it will take you too long to write an ebook? Write Your Ebook or Other Short Book - Fast! teaches a method to blast through writer's block or any other obstacle and produce saleable ebooks at will.
Did you know that there are thousands and thousands of books and other printed works that are in the public domain? This means that anyone is free to republish them, in any form.
In the United States, most books published prior to1923 are considered to be in the public domain ("PD").
If you find a public domain book that you think would sell well if it were republished, you could reprint it as a physical book and sell copies via Amazon, eBay, or your own web page.
Or, you could publish it as an ebook and make it available for download, for a price.
Yet another method of "repurposing" PD books is to make them freely available on a web site, and then put advertising on their pages. In other words, you are not so much selling the books as the ad space around them. This also solves one of the biggest problems facing webmasters--finding content that will attract visitors to their site.
A few years ago, Stephen Smith heard about an odd little book called Golf In the Year 2000. Originally published in 1892, it combined a Rip Van Winkle-type tale with a novel about golf.
Steve found a facsimile edition of the book that he could buy for $10. He scanned the pages, converted them with OCR software, and posted the entire book on his web site. Then he surrounded the book's text with Google AdSense and affiliate merchant ads. Now he makes a steady stream of income from visitors who click the AdSense or buy things through the affiliate links.
If you're interested, you can view his site here: www.golf-in-the-year-2000.com or see one of his book pages, with ads, here. This should make it clear what the concept is we're talking about.
This is an idea that many other web masters could copy. Perhaps you?
To make good use of this idea, you must first find some PD works that you can republish and make money from. Public Domain Secrets Exposed! (The Public Domain Report) is a great guide to finding such works for profit. In addition, it gives several blueprints for success as a publisher of PD books, images, sound files and even movies.
Public Domain Sources Directory reveals 101 little-known sources you can use to create, copy, rewrite and transform public domain information into your own best-selling info products without writing a single word.
The Public Domain Expert Toolbar is clever search tool that works right from your browser to find profitable PD works. Works lightning fast and uncovers sources most people never dreamed existed.
AdSense Decoded is a video course in advanced AdSense techniques. Not cheap, but well worth the investment if you seriously want to make money by the method of showing AdSense in your public domain books. Shows how to go from $2 or $3 per day in AdSense revenue to as much as $500 -- virtually overnight.
This is an astounding way to sell books online, and the one I am most excited about.
Hard to believe, but you can often make more money by tearing a book apart and selling the pages one at a time, than by selling the book itself!
The basic idea is this: You look through old books and magazines for pictures or advertisements that you can remove and offer for sale on eBay.
To succeed with this idea, the most important thing you must learn is which subjects make the best sellers. Otherwise you can waste a lot of time (and money, in eBay listing fees) trying to sell pages that no one wants.
With the right subject, though, people will go nuts bidding for a single page from some old book that you might have paid a couple of bucks for. Imagine your profits if that book has 10, 20 or 30 such pages in it!
I know this sounds like an odd way to make money, but it works. And, only a few people seem to be doing it so far, so it's a wide-open highway to big online profits for those who get in now.
Make Money Tearing Up Old Books and Magazines and Selling them on eBay is the bible for this kind of business. It reveals exactly which subjects sell, where to find books to "tear up," how to list your pages on eBay, how to package and ship them, and more. An essential resource. (Here's a longer review.)
– H. Tim Sevets, Books Editor,
Solid Gold Info Writers Consortium,
with guest writer Stephen Smith
Also see "How to Make A Living Selling Books Online" by Stephen Smith: www.squidoo.com/sellbooks