Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Make Money From Home



As many of you know I am a stay at home mom, but I am also a work at home mom which I haven't talked about too much on my blog. As a work at home mom I am always looking for new ways to make money from home... that actually work, that is! The most important thing I've learned as a work at home mom is that you need several streams of consistant income to reach success. At this point I am still learning and still creating those streams for myself.

I wanted to take the time to share one of my recent money making experiments with you. For years I have been selling on eBay and recently branched out to a few other sites. I have become quit successful on eBay and have learned a great deal over the past 19 months since my daughter was born. A few weeks ago another online seller that I have been following and studying for a while e-mailed me with information on a new work at home project. She had put it to the test and it worked well for her so she started spreading the word. Since I have learned so much from her and believe strongly in what she promotes I decided to try this out and see how it worked for me. So here it is:

                                    Selling Used Books on Amazon.Com

Now you might be thinking, how in the world can I make money selling used books on Amazon? Well I'm here to tell you. It's very possible and very profitable and does not require a lot of work. In the beginning you will have to put in some time and possibly do some research, but it has not been overwhelming or too difficult and when I started I knew nothing about Amazon. I shopped there a few times, that was it. eBay was always my strong suit. Based on this business plan you should have no problem making $400-$700/per week based on 45 minutes of work or less per day. The best part is you can work as much or as little as you want and you can do it WHEN you want to! This is a great home based business idea because it can be adjusted to fit any schedule and anyone's needs. You don't have to be a stay at home mom to do this. Anyone can do it! If you don't need $400+ per week or you need more than that you can adjust your time to produce the income that best fits your needs. So, where do you start? Well, first you need books. I'm not saying to grab every book off your book shelf and list it on Amazon, that would more than likely be a complete waste of time. Here are the key places to look for used books:

  • Thrift stores
  • Garage Sale and yard sales
  • Library book sales
  • Flea markets
  • Freecyle and Craigslist
Now, how do you know if a book is valuable or worth your time to buy and sell on Amazon? If you have a cell phone with web access you can figure this out quickly and on the spot before you even buy the book. There is a great site called ScoutPal that works with any cell phone with web access. You punch in the books ISBN number and it brings up the books ranking and what it sells for new and used (lowest price first). So say you have a book and you punch in the ISBN and ScoutPal says this books sells on Amazon used for $12.99 and ranks 429 that would be a pretty good find. If you pick up the next book and it sells used on Amazon for $0.01 and ranks 1,347,290 then put it right back where it was! From what I've learned you want a lower rank and a higher price to go hand in hand.

The idea is that if you can find a gently used book that is selling on Amazon for $12.99 and you are paying (on average) $1 for it at the thrift store then you can make a nice little profit from just that one book. Now say you can find 8-10 books like that in just one trip to the thrift store, that's $80-$100 profit (before fees of course) in just one day of work (on average about a half an hour using ScoutPal or something similar). I personally do not use ScoutPal because I have a smart phone that has a built in scanning system called ShopSavvy that is completely free for me to use. I just scan the bar code on the back of a book and it brings up all the information on the screen and then saves it in the program so I can go back later and look at it if I need to. Not only can my phone scan books, but I can scan anything with a UPC or ISBN number and find the selling price online. I love it! But if I did not have this phone I would definitely use ScoutPal. There is a monthly fee with ScoutPal, but it is low, about $10/month and you can use it as much as you want. If you don't want to pay for ScoutPal you could go directly to Amazon's website from your web browser on your phone and type in the items ISBN or title and look the price up that way, but it would take a bit longer.

Here are my stats for the past week. Please keep in mind that I have not been at this very long and have not been putting in much effort because I have been focusing on other areas of my home business, but I definitely see great potential and plan on working on this a lot more in the near future!

Units Sold- 8
My Price Paid- $6-$8
Total Sale Price for these 8 units- $205

Not bad! One of these sales was actually a used VHS tape without the slip cover that I paid $.50 and sold for $75!! Yes, $75!!! I have discovered that some old, collectible VHS tapes do extremely well on Amazon and have been doing more research in that area, but haven't been out to look for any lately. I can't wait to get back out there though and have more weeks like this one! This is so exciting for me to share with others because it is a realistic way to make extra money from home that actually works! Just imagine if you sold 10 units per day at a profit rate of $10 per unit. That's $700 per week of real, obtainable income. You don't have to take my word for it. Go out and try it and see what happens. You just might be amazed at what you can make! If I can get enough people interested and excited about this I would love to go into more details in later posts and even share success stories and post YOUR success stories on my blog! So, please, share with your friends, leave comments and questions and keep coming back for more!! I'm here to help you and motivate you!

Please feel free to leave questions or comments below or use the contact me page on the left side. Happy sales! =)

1 comment:

PureSafeandBeneficial said...

What phone do you have that scans? I would love to try this but I would want to make it as easy as possible for me! I already sell on Half.com and make good money there... I would love to switch to amazon and branch out more!