I have been selling books online for a few years now and over the course of that time have done a lot of research on other ways of making money online without giving up  too much time.  I consider my book business successful in terms of the goals I have set and space for inventory keeps my business at a certain level.  I love it and it is my primary business focus but there are other opportunities.

So I have branched out a little to find ways to make more revenue while still working from home.  I have sold  items like game consoles, GPS systems and other small electronics and, though profitable, they were time consuming and I did not really enjoy the process. Plus these tied up cash that I wanted for book inventory.

I wanted something that would:

  • Not require inventory,
  • Had very little start up costs,
  • Not technically complex,
  • Somewhat related to my book-selling
  • Did not need a lot of tending to and
  • I could reasonably expect to make some money

The product I found that matched the above criteria is Build A Niche Store (or BANS) so I went ahead and bought it.  Build A Niche Store is a program that lets you easily build a website around products for sale on eBay.  How it works is if someone goes to your Build A Niche Store website and click on an item they will be sent to eBay to bid on that item.  Now if they are the winning bidder on any item then you get a commission.  You also get a commission if they are new to eBay and register.

I actually use Build A Niche Store – here is a link to one of my stores (I have four) – www.EastonSigned.com.  I consistently make an extra $50 to $100 a month from these stores and I do nothing on them.  I researched the products I wanted to promote and set up the store around the.  I do no work promoting them or anything else – though if you did you could make more money.

Setting up a store is pretty easy and the tutorial, forums and BANS site are all incredibly useful.

So I strayed from online book-selling but I wanted those of you who may have the extra time or are already established at book-selling to learn about some other tangential opportunities.  If you are still starting out in online Book-selling I would recommend keeping your focus on that for now and not put too much on your plate.

Textbook Season Ending & Return Season Starting
There is almost never a case when I do not accept returns - most markets require you to accept them (see Amazon's A-Z policy). I keep my return policy simple. The only time I have not accepted a return is when a significant amount of time has passed between the purchase date and the return date or if the books condition is materially different from when I sold it (such as full of highlighting). Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the customer experience when I run a business from home and do not interact with the customers. Continue reading
Amazon Charge When Shipped (Amazon CWS)
What does CWS mean for us booksellers? Not much. You will not have your account credited until you ship a book. If you use The Art of Books or a similar inventory management system Amazon should be automatically updated when the book is shipped. There are a couple of downsides to Amazon's Charge When Shipped - you do not get to send your own confirmation email to the buyer and the buyer can still leave feedback on a canceled order. Continue reading
Is the Amazon Kindle bad for Online Booksellers
Sales of the Kindle are one thing but it remains to be seen if people are actually going to adapt to using it as their primary way to read - as we have seen with Amazon recenlty deleting Orwell titles there are several issues with the Kindle that will effect its popularity. Continue reading
Tags:alternatives to selling books online,bans,Bans review,Build a Niche store,ebay affiliate program,ebay partner network,make money online,review of build a niche store

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