Should I Only Sell Books Online Over $10?

It’s amazing the number of books you can pick up on half.com and amazon.com where the shipping costs more than the book!

Here, one marketer asks book selling guru Steve Weber whether he should join the folks who sell books that cost less than $10 a piece?

I think you should experiment with making your cutoff $6 or $7 instead of $10.

Here’s the way I look at it: Say I’m at a library sale, and I spend 30 minutes there. I find five books worth an average of $20 apiece. All of the books are priced at around $1 or $2, so of course I snap up those gems in a heartbeat. Assuming I sell them all for about $20 apiece, I’ve earned a profit of about $100. Not bad.

And, let’s say, at the same sale I come across another 10 books worth an average of $6 apiece. Let’s say I’m buying those for $1 apiece, so assuming I sell them all, my profit margin (before listing fees or commissions) is $5 apiece. So, I’ve picked up an additional $50 worth of stock. I’m going to end up with 50 percent more profit without much more time or expense — my time spent traveling to the sale and the transportation costs were spent already.

So I’m willing to snag those “commodity” books when that’s the best option I see. And this gets to the real weakness of selling used books online as a business: The supply is finite — there’s only a certain amount of opportunity. Online bookselling is not something to get rich at, but the other side of the coin is, it’s extremely low-risk and easy to start on a dime.