Welcome to my blog! My name is Mike Gibson and I live in Wilmington, North Carolina. I have been selling online for over 6 years and selling books online for about 3 years. I am an Amazon Pro Merchant and an eBay Powerseller.
I’ve learned a lot the last few years about building a profitable online book selling business. I started with about $20 and a bookshelf in a spare bedroom – now I maintain thousands of books in my inventory and the same 1 bookshelf! (Along with some temporary storage in my garage.) How do I do this? Check out my blog and find out… whether you are looking to start a full-time business or just make some extra cash – you’ll find something to help you.
Please leave comments and ask questions and I will do my best to answer them. There is a lot of money to be made with an online book business – don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to your right!!
Hi Mike,
I read with interest your blog. Overall, nice tips and tricks of the trade.
Being that I come from an accountants background I have a penchant to view a business in terms of an income statement.
One thing I noticed that your blog does not mention whether it is in reference to books or non book products is the issue of how inventory is cycled.
If one is usign the FBA model to reduce hard costs of overhead, it stands to reason that cycle time has a greater effect on multiplying gross profit margins as opposed to resale values which come in at a close second due to the fact one can quickly compound the growth rate with items whose very nature is such that they can be sold quicker than other products categories on Amazon.
I would much rather move products at 110% of cost of good bought four time a month as opposed to products that sell for a 125% premium but only sell once a month or quarter.
What is your opinion on this theory?
Hi Darshan, Thanks for the comment. I didn’t follow everything you said but I will do my best to answer. First, pretty much everything so far in my blog is books – I am just getting into selling other products on FBA and will blog about that as well, I will also be sure to specify when I am writing about products – so by default everything else will be books. As far as moving products, I agree with you that moving products quickly at lower margins can be advantageous. If you already have an established business and are moving products into FBA, then the #s you used as an example are fine. If you are starting from scratch (like I did), I would advise to have much higher cost of goods sold than 110% AND fast selling products. When I write about sales rankings, this is what I am referencing – trying to find products that will sell fast. As a rule of thumb I try to find products that will sell for 3x what I am paying for them (and sell fast) – this way I am covered with fees & price decreases.
This blog is wonderful! I really hope you keep up the information. I’m a full time college student with autoimmune conditions that really limit my ability to work enough to support myself. Full time school and full time work? Not for me. I’ve been searching for ways to make a little extra income on the side from home or as stress free as possible. I love books and I have lots of free time to sift through them, which would be fun anyway! I just set up my account tonight and now I’m just trying to figure out how to price items appropriately. I’m going to stay away from the books that are flooded by $1. sales and maybe try and focus on finding unique books. One question I do have, sorry, but.. there is the amazon price and then the other prices. Are the amazon products new? Or used? I’m curious because, if I have a used copy of “X” in hardback form, do I try and compete with the used book price or the amazon.com price. I have a Harry Potter book that is listed for about .33 used, but amazon sells a copy for $17? I’m a little confused on this part.
Hi Mike,
What I was saying is that this FBA program Amazon has is a powrful tool for people wishing to use phone apps to scout price differentials in retail markets for resale on Amazon … for a fee Amazon will do everything list and create a webpage online, store and ship … it basically eliminated a lot of overhead typically encumbered by a retail reseller and it reduces man hours needed to store and ship products.
I find it amazing that books can sell at such margins and you have proved that with your real life examples in your posts.
I was just saying that due to the power of compounding [Einstein called it the 8th wonder of the world] and combined with FBA severly lowering the costs to resale discounted items you can make more money selling a batch of books bought for $20 on Amazon for $40 every two weeks and cycling the profits back into buying more books [I am excluding your gas and oppurtunity costs to make it simple] then price the same batch of books that cost me $20 at $80 and see that on average each book will take 60 days to move … I think for a novice looking to grow their seed capital for inventory and also grow ratings the former approach is suggestive and the later is good for the mega resellers who have tons of inventory and ratings and can afford to wait longer for a sale.
I think your post basically agrees with what I wrote.
Thanks! and happy book hunting!
PS: What do you think of the book
Barcode Booty by Setve Webber … he started selling books on Amazon too and wrote a book on the scout apps that allowed him to branch out into other product genres?
HI mike,
You state you want to only buy products that sell fast. Since you mostly deal in books this is the above 100,000 rank you use in your posts correct?
Hi Darshan, I totally agree.. If you are a small business (or 1 person business like me), I am much better off spending my time finding inventory and paying a little higher fees letting Amazon ship & do customer service for me than handling everything myself – and that is not even mentioning the competitive advantage that FBA gives me. I love “Barcode Booty” by Steve Weber, I have been reading his blog & books for a few years – he really knows his stuff. I am starting to get into other retail products – another great book is Retail Arbitrage by Chris Green (the ebook is $97 but I think it is worth the investment). If you decide to buy it please purchase through my link and I will get a commission.
Hi Darshan, yes my goal is to buy fast selling products. So far in my blog all of the sales rankings are for books, I am not experienced enough with other products sales rankings yet to offer advice on those.
Hi mike,
I noticed that your blog advertises two ebooks for sale … “Retail Arbitrage” and “Selling on Amazon’s FBA program” … do I get that by signing up for your email list or do I buy that separately?
Also are not you worried that if you sell/share this information you will increase competition … may be someone reading these books will see you at the next book sale and vulturize the picking process … ever though of that?
Hi Mike,
On average do you keep track how long it takes to sell on book? Obviously there are a lot of factors involved but I am curious at how long it takes you.
Hi – the “Retail Arbitrage” ebook is a book that you must purchase, I have the book and HIGHLY recommend it…. it is expensive but it has enough info in it about selling products on FBA to more than pay for itself many times over. “Selling on Amazon’s FBA Program” is free (it used to be a book for purchase as well). It is a great guide to getting started & understanding the process of selling on Amazon FBA – not to mention motivation!
Mike,
As a person that is new to bookselling, do you have any recommendation on what types of books I should focus on when I am searching through a library or thrift store? i.e. How to books like xxx For Dummies, or cooking books, or fiction …
When searching, how many books do you typically scan & reject for every one that you think you can make money on & buy ?
Finally, without a smart phone to price search books as you scan them (I currently don’t have a smart phone), how would you pick through which books to buy? (I am currently making a list of some of them & coming back later, or bringing my laptop & tying into wi-fi where available)
Thanks a lot!
Hi Scott, Great questions! I think the easiest way to learn what books to buy at first is to learn what books to avoid – mass market fiction, dummies books, romance novels, most biographies, readers digest, etc… you will probably want to start with non fiction. I would highly recommend reading Steve Weber’s “The Home-Based Bookstore” – available on Amazon.
I would say I reject 10 books for every 1 that I buy – when you are starting that number is going to be a lot higher though – maybe 50??
I started selling books without a scanner or smart phone as well and learned a lot during this time – I think it has helped me tremendously as I can make good guesses on books before I even scan them and don’t have to scan through every single book at a booksale like my competition does.
Thanks for reading my blog!