For the last couple of years, my wife had been running a business on Amazon. This was a very simple business concept, anyone can do, and just takes a little bit of time (depending on how much money you want to make). The process is very simple, and goes like this:

  1. Shop garage sales, estate sales, bulk listings on eBay, or start relationships with book stores and libraries to buy their old books when they are ready to get rid of them.
    If you are shopping the sales, make sure you are the first, or almost the first one to get to the sale. The old saying “the early bird gets the worm” applies here. Always buy in bulk. Buying individual books just won’t work as a long term strategy, unless you know how to find antique books that have great value and then negotiate for a substantial discount. By our calculations, as long as your average price per book is around 10 cents, you should be able to make some good money.
  2. Sign up with a free account with Amazon.
    In order to list your books, use the “Sell Your Stuff” link. They will ask for bank account / credit card information, but you will not be charge anything to list the books. They just need the information in order to know how to send you your money, and for refund purposes.
  3. List your books for sale.
    The quickest and easiest method to do so is to enter the ISBN and look up the book. If there is no ISBN, you will have to search by title or author. Now, make sure that the book you list is the book you have; this may sound simple, but we have run into problems where we thought we had the right book, but later found out it was wrong and took the hit on the refund.
  4. Wait for the “Sold, ship now…” emails to come in.
    That’s really all there is to it.

Now above I mentioned that it does not cost anything to list with Amazon. This is true, however they do make money. They get a commission on every sale, but the nice thing is, they only charge you a commission if you sell something. So the listing is free, and you only pay them out of your profits. Pretty good deal, don’t you think? Feel free to leave any comments or questions you have at the bottom of the page, and I will answer them as best I can.


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