A Used Bookstore

One of the good things about opening a used bookstore with amazon.com is that you also get a storefront in the amazon marketplace.

We recently opened our used bookstore with amazon and use the fulfillment by amazon service.

This means that most of the books shown in our marketplace store are ready and waiting to be shipped directly from an amazon.com fulfillment center.

We also choose to ship some lower value items directly from our stock.

We have a policy of shipping new items to amazon.com for fulfillment several times per month and so stock at our fulfillment center is constantly varying as new stock arrives and older stock is sold.

At present we stock a range of fiction, some children's titles and also a range of non fiction and college level textbooks. For our latest selection see our storefront.

If you are a member of Amazon Prime, your books can be shipped from the fulfillment center using Free two day shipping.

If you are not a member of Amazon Prime, you can use the Amazon Supersaver shipping  service any item shipped from amazon from our store counts towards the $25 purchase level . You do not have to spend all $25 in our marketplace store, you may buy from anywhere on the amazon.com website and your purchase from us will be considered part of the eligible total.

From mid September 2013 books ordered through our amazon.com marketplace storefront will be available for shipping Internationally.

Take a look at our storefront.

Fulfilmment by Amazon As a Cash Stream

At the beginning of 2013 I signed with Amazon.com as a seller and opted to go with the Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) option.

What is FBA? Basically FBA allows you to send a shipment of stock to an Amazon storage facility where it is held for sale along with other products sold by Amazon.

The easiest items to begin selling are books and DVD's. You can start clearing your book shelves and maybe sell books from thrift stores or library book sales. When buying in books look for books in the best possible condition, marks, highlighting and tears mar the condition and hence the price of the book.

Popular novels are also of low value to you, customers can get those for little more than you may pay and with some of the costs you may only make a dollar or two on them.

There are some costs to set up the account, you may choose to sell less than 40 items per month where Amazon.com charge you a 99 cent fee on top of charges which you must take into account in pricing, this along with 15% selling fee upon the sale and a small storage charge which adds up to pennies per month.

The second service, a professional service gives you more options but costs you just under $40.00 per month, plus some other selling fees at a lower rate than with the individual seller plan above.

You send your stock to an Amazon.com fulfillment center in boxes. I opt to use the UPS shipment service provided by Amazon. Recently a box weighing thirty pounds was shipped across country for just $14. I just passed it on to a UPS collection center in town and the package was delivered in six days.

Once the parcel is received by Amazon, it takes between twenty-four and forty-eight hours for the items to list on the Amazon.com website.

Within minutes of an item appearing it can be sold and being prepared for shipment to the Amazon customer.

I sell several items per week, at the moment my best sellers have been college textbooks. Some purchased for as little as $1.00 have sold for over $30.00. Bear in mind Amazon charges take about $7.00 on average for those high seling price items. You can see a good profit.

Payment is passed to your bank account about fourteen days after the sale is complete for individual sellers and ten days for professional sellers accounts.

Why use FBA? I had some books offered as sale by merchant for several months on the Amazon.com website, they did not sell so as I knew I would be away from home for several weeks I moved them to an FBA shipment. I sold several of the very same books within one week by allowing Amazon to ship them.

FBA products are eligible for Amazon prime and supersaver shipping, this means that customers have less concern about when they will receive their items and are more willing to buy from an FBA seller than a fulfilled by merchant seller.

How do you compete with the 1 cent book seller? You don't  the book I sold for over $30, mentioned earlier was a prime example there were several copies of the very same book for sale at 1 cent. The customer still paid the money to me because all the 1 cent sellers were fulfilled by merchant and mine was the only copy available with free two day shipping and even eligible for supersaver shipping if the customer was not an Amazon Prime member.

So maybe this program is  worth considering if you are looking to cash in a side income or paying hobby.