As a Stay at Home Mom, I enjoy looking for ways to make an extra side income to help us out. I've done many things, and selling books on Amazon is one that is easy to do and just requires some knowledge to get started.
Watch my video to get a more in depth look at my points.
1. Create an Amazon Seller Account
You need to have a seller account on Amazon before you can sell on the platform. You will be given two options; an Individual Account or a Pro Account.
The individual account; you pay an additional fee of $1 for every item you sell. That quickly adds up!
The professional account; you pay $39.99 monthly, but then that $1 fee will be waved. If you are selling more than 40 items a month, it makes sense to sign up for the Pro account.
2. Download the Amazon Seller App to your phone
You will then want to download the free Amazon Seller App. This will allow you to look at your selling history, inventory and so on. Also, you can scan items to see what they are selling for and to get an idea what fees will cost you with that item.
This is a good way to start with Amazon, however, scanning books with the free app is almost impossible to do when you are serious about book selling. It's much slower to scan and it takes awhile to dig through the app to find all the information you need to know.
3. Try out Scout IQ
This leads me to the next point, which is to download Scout IQ and try it free for 14 days. This is a book scanning app that speeds up the process incredibly much! I wouldn't do books without its help!
Scout IQ has all the information you need about a book on one page. You simply need to scan the books and check the info.
After your 14 day trial you have two options;
Live Mode subscription is $14 per month and is run with an internet connection which can be somewhat slow depending on your reception. A few seconds with each scan can really eat up time.
Data Base subscription is $44 a month which is worth it if you do high volume. This allows you do download a database with all the information from Amazon to your phone. Now you no longer need internet, and the scanning goes ever so much faster! This not only allows you to scan where there is little to no service, but it also speeds up your workflow.
4. Buy a Blue Tooth Scanner
You will want a simple little scanner to link to your phone. This is what you will be scanning books with to speed up the process. I bought this inexpensive one from Amazon and it has done well for me.
5. Understand which books to buy
I go into detail in my video, but you need to understand a few different things before buying.
Sales Rank
eRank
Profit Margins
Shipping Costs
The sales rank of a book is always fluctuating, but it gives you a good idea of how quickly your book will sell. Here is my general rule of thumb.
50,000 and under is a great buy and will sell quickly
100,000 and below will also sell well
100,000-500,000 is a range I'm not afraid of, but I want a book with more profit than simply a few dollars, because it will be taking longer to sell.
500,000-1,000,000 is a range I'm more cautious in, but it's still likely to sell within a year. It also helps to look at its sales history.
1,000,000 and above is getting into the danger zone. You can sell books in this range, but it's good to only get high profiting books because they will be sitting in the warehouse for awhile before they sell.
Erank tells you how many days in the past 180 days that book sold. This gives you a good idea if you should buy it or not.
You need to know your Profit Margins. Scout IQ will give you the profit after Amazon Fees, but you still need to take in account the price you are paying for the book and the cost of shipping it to Amazon.
I have found, that sending large quantities of books to Amazon comes to an average of $.40 a book. Amazon has a great shipping program and they give you incredible prices.
6. List Books on Amazon
Once you have your profitable books bought and back home, then you will need to list them onto your seller account. I simply scan them in with my free Amazon Seller App. Also, don't forget to take any pricing stickers off your books before you send them. This scotty peeler comes in handy and a little goo gone goes a long way!
7. Send Books to Amazon
I highly recommend sending your books to Amazon FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon) rather than selling them from your home. It's so much less hassle, and definitely worth the extra fees! People want their products to come with Prime Shipping, and so having your books in an Amazon warehouse will help them sell much quicker!
Also, you are no longer bothered with the books once they have been sold. You can sit back and relax or go buy more books! (:
There are videos on youtube that will show you the step by step process of navigating your seller's account and sending in your inventory.
Amazon gives you the choice to print out your own labels (so they know it's your book) or they will do it for a fee.
It's extremely easy to print out sheets of labels and stick them onto books. This is what I advise and here are the labels I use for my inkjet printer. You will also need a shipping scale to weigh your boxes.
8. Drop off at UPS location
Now you take your boxes into a local UPS location (or have them picked up), and then you can sit back and let Amazon do the rest for you!
9. Use RepriceIt
Your books need to be priced competitively so they will sell. Prices are always fluctuating by a few cents (sometimes dollars) and when you have a lot of inventory, it's impossible to do it manually yourself.
That is where RepriceIt comes in. Its a software that links with your account, and automatically reprices your books for you. You can control the setting on this program so it won't price books too low and so on, but it's a tool you almost can't do without.
I hope this was beneficial and I wish you success with selling books on Amazon! It is a fun side hustle, and can give nice profits depending on how often your source your books.
I also advise you to dig into each topic I mentioned, a little further on youtube. There is a lot of good information that digs much deeper than I have in this blog.
