We are heading towards summer. While this should be one of the best times for my book selling business – with library sales, yard sales, and nice weather to shop for books- this is usually when my mind starts to wander. Should I go look for books today or go to the beach? Soon I will have friends and family staying at my house and will be even more distracted from buying books.
If you are like me and have trouble focusing on your business at times, is there anything you can do about it? I’ve put together a few ideas or “slump busters” as I call them. Try out a couple and see if they help – also let me know if you have any of your own slump busters!
Have a written schedule: This works in all forms for me. I’ve written it in a day-timer, entered it in my cell phone calender, and even just scribbled something on a scrap sheet of paper. If I have a written schedule or to-do list, it’s a great feeling when I can check off items and actually accomplish something!
Travel: Sometimes I will look for some thrift shops or a library sale in an area an hour or two away. This way I get to look at fresh scenery. Plus, if I am away from home I know I HAVE to look for books.
Read Motivating Blogs:
SellYourBooksOnline.com – Adam Bertram is a seasoned book seller. He sells on various platforms and gives unbiased reviews of them. Adam is also the master of the analytics of book selling and has the Excel spreadsheets to prove it!
WeberBooks.com/selling – Steve Weber is a big-time online book seller and author. His blog contains the latest news in the book selling world and entertaining posts as well. Steve posts like a mad man so there is always fresh content.
SmartPassiveIncome.com – While not a book selling blog, it is a very motivating home business blog. Pat Flynn makes a living with passive income and has great content, tools, and even podcasts!
Read my FREE report “Where to Find CHEAP Books for Resale”. Shameless plug but it may help!
I have been trying to branch into selling more media items (non-books) lately. One of my reader’s Scott has just been selling on FBA for a few months but already has had some success with media items. He let me pick his brain & post our conversation (the italics text is me):
1) What media items sell best for you?
So far, besides books, I sell DVD’s, CD’s, VHS and a few games. I guess what sells best might be dependent on the titles, but I’d have to say that generally DVD’s sell best. But do not ignore VHS. People still buy these and you can get them very cheap. Try to stick to new/sealed copies. Also, in your description, type VHS at the beginning just to make sure people see it. I’ve had a few refunds by people who did not realize they were buying a VHS.
That’s interesting, I see VHS everwhere and totally ignore it, I used to sell some on eBay – I will have to start looking into VHS again.
2) Do you find less competition with media items compared to books?
Yes. I recently went to a library sale that was held in a relatively small sorting room and there was at least four other sellers there, so it was hard to get a spot to scan books. After a few minutes of being a bit frustrated, I noticed a couple boxes of CD’s (50 cents each) right in the middle of the room and nobody was looking through them, so I went and did so. This prompted one of the other sellers to come over and start looking through the other end (which I’d already scanned). I got at least eight items worth sending to FBA, one of which sold for over $27.00.
So, now I always go straight for the DVD’s, CD’s etc. At another recent sale, I didn’t see any CD’s or DVD’s at first. Then I found them after about an hour (and most sellers gone). Sure enough, I got some great stuff including some CD audio books, one of which is now on its way to Amazon, where it’s selling by others for $59.00.
3) What sales rankings do you look for with media items?
I’m still experimenting with this, but at the moment my general rule when out scouting is that I buy only items ranked under 90,000. For VHS, and PC games, I stay under 30,000. This is just a guide. I’ll buy higher ranking items if they are worth a lot, but I might hold them and self fulfill. I sold a rap CD from the 80’s that was ranked over 225K for $69.00.
5) Where do you find your items?
Well, this is my current main problem. Like everybody else, I go to thrift stores, used book/music stores and library sales. But you can only get so much from those places on a continuing basis. I’m now looking into buying from closeout and wholesale companies. So far I have not found much in those areas.
That seems to be the biggest issue among booksellers – where to find inventory. I am actually working on a report about where I find good CHEAP inventory and I will make that available to my readers in a few weeks.
I have been trying to expand my Amazon FBA inventory into other product areas besides books. One of the free apps I have been using with my Android phone is called “Pic2Shop”. It’s marketed as a Comparison Shopping app but it can be used nicely to help with your FBA business. There would be 4 main reasons to use the app:
If you don’t have a book scanner or already subscribe to a scanning service.
If your current subscription service doesn’t cover some types of merchandise (as is the case with my subscription to Scoutpal)
If you don’t have your scanner with you but do have your smart phone.
If you need more in-depth info on a product that your scanning service doesn’t provide – such as product description or FBA listings.
If you have an Android or Iphone you can download “Pic2Shop” for free. Some nice features include comparisons of prices of many shopping sites (not just Amazon). Another nice feature is that the cell phone barcode scanner works surprisingly well and fast (and I don’t even have auto focus or a flash on my cam).
The way I have been using it is to scan products that my Scoutpal subscription doesn’t list (products aside from books, media, toys, and tools). I can then see the lowest prices on Amazon, click on the listings to check for FBA competitors and then decide if the product will be a good resale item for me.
I have posted a Youtube video demonstrating the app below. Special thanks to Steve Weber and his great new book “Barcode Booty: How I found and sold $2 million worth of junk on eBay & Amazon, and you can too, using your Phone”. I highly recommend reading the book if you are interested in selling products besides books on Amazon.
I read Tim Ferriss’ “The 4-Hour Workweek” a few years back and periodically read his blog. If you are not familiar with “The 4-Hour Workweek”, it’s basically about setting up highly profitable, hands-free businesses so that you can spend most of your time doing what you want to do, i.e. traveling, and not working on your business or job full-time. I take this info with a grain of salt but it is interesting reading. The funny thing about these businesses or “muses” as he calls them, is that he just glosses over this subject in the book when in reality setting up such a “muse” is the most important and by far the hardest step in attaining the 4-Hour Workweek. The blog shows some examples of readers who have supposedly set up these “muses” but most of these businesses seem like they would be full-time jobs to run at the least and probably take a staff of people to maintain. Many are products that people invent and sell themselves on their websites – not really something that takes no time to run. Maybe I am wrong (I hope I am), and all these people have created highly profitable “muses” and are out enjoying their lives with all of their extra free time.
In the meantime though, I read books and blogs (anything I can find) about passive income and ways to make my life and businesses easier and less time consuming to run. How does this all tie in to online bookselling? In two ways:
I originally started selling books online a few years back because I didn’t need much investment to get started (I think I started with less than $20). Also, the profit margins seemed to be great – my average cost per book is 50cents and my average profit per book is $3.24 – 600%+ isn’t bad when multiplied many times over. I already had some experience selling on eBay, so I read a couple books about online book selling and I was on my way. I made some decent money pretty quickly selling on eBay and Amazon and never had a problem finding cheap inventory. I had a full-time job at the time so my free time was becoming less and less with my successful new side business. There was a mailman who would stop by my job and I would often have to run out to my car and grab 5 or 10 books in bubble envolopes for him to take.
So I had a fairly successful small business rolling, but I could see the future of the business and it was not what I wanted: a building rental, employees, long work days, and fighting with 100s of other book sellers at library book sales for rare and valuable books.
I knew I needed to change something so I started looking for another less hands-on business I could start. I decided to pursue affiliate marketing – it would give me the freedom from a location that I wanted and also more flexible hours. I messed around with it for several months (and still do) but made NO money. I was still selling books online but not with the same passion and vigor that I had once had.
Then one day I read Selling on Amazon’s FBA Program and the light bulb went off! (If you are new to FBA I encourage you to click on the link and read the ebook (it’s free), it will give you a good understanding of how FBA works and the advantages to selling with it). Of the many advantages to selling with FBA, the most important to me was NO INVENTORY! This was an incredible revelation, I could buy books and not have to worry about storing them long term or even shipping them to customers! Yes, the fees are higher than selling books yourself, but the fees are much lower than hiring employees and renting storage space.
The huge advantage I could see with FBA was freedom of location – it is possible to travel and make money from wherever you are. You can ship books to FBA from wherever you are and Amazon will store them and ship them to customers for you, in addition to handling customer service emails. My mind was racing with possibilities.
Although I do not yet have the total freedom that is described in the 4-hour Workweek – I do have more freedom. I live in a little beach town where good jobs are hard to come by and I have taken some “work” vacations – visited family in other states and made money with FBA while there to cover my expenses. If you want, you can ramp up your FBA efforts before and after your vacations and not need to work while you are away – somewhat “passive” income – you send books in and they are selling while you are doing other things. While it’s not a 4-hour week “muse” that will support a lavish work-free lifestyle – it can give you some freedom if you work hard on it.
