I’ll be honest. I’m SUPER excited and wanted to share and possibly inspire others on what this business can really do. If you can’t tell already by my past posts I hold nothing back. I’m as completely transparent as a sparkling clean sheet of glass. I hide nothing including my financials. I do this for a few reasons but mainly because to give people real-world examples of what selling used books on the Internet can do and to prove that you can do it too.

I get countless emails from people that found this blog through Google, Youtube, Facebook or whatever other medium I have content on.  In some of these emails, I love to hear people just starting out get psyched about some of the things I talk about including how much money I make.  I do the same thing for business ideas I’m interested in as well.  People seem to think it’s awesome to hear how a regular guy, starting with no money to build the business actually made something of it.  For those people, this is my most exciting post yet!

This month I made over $11,000 just by selling books on Amazon, eBay, Half, Alibris and Abebooks.   This is my highest grossing month on record and means I’ve met a goal I’ve been shooting for for a very long time!  How did I do this?  I’m no mega seller.  Hell, I’m not even doing this full-time but what I can tell you is that I worked my ass off nearly every day outside of my full-time job to build it to this point.  I also finally was able to get some quality helpers to help me achieve this.  If you’d know me personally I don’t like to brag on my achievements but there some times when you’re so proud of what you have accomplished it’s hard not to keep it in.

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The Story

This week, I’m going to change the style up a little bit to teach an important lesson.  I’m tired of the dry how to do this, how to do that, don’t do this instructional posts on how in succeed in your online book-selling business.  Let’s immerse ourselves in the life of an ordinary American consumer for a few minutes and see how the decisions that are made in this fictious story can be a strong lesson for building a successful book-selling business or any successful business for that matter.

Meet Alice.  Alice represents your run-of-the-mill, ordinary working a 9-5 job Monday through Friday kind of girl.  She’s an administrative assistant in a successful lawyer firm, single, 28, living in a one bedroom apartment and, for the most part, is happy with her life and her dog Sparky.  She’s content with her ordinary life, but always has a nagging feeling that she wants something more, something bigger, something sustaining that will allow her to have fulfillment in life, work hard (on her own terms), take modest vacations and to build a life that will sustain her until she decides to “retire”.

On her lunch hour, she’s always dreaming up new business ideas that may allow her the freedom to work her own hours, envision new products that will help others and ultimately build a highly successful business all on her own.  Alice is an aspiring entrepreneur and dreamer and hopes one day she can get the courage to fulfill her dreams of owning her own business and running the show.

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For online booksellers, finding new inventory is the toughest part of the job – not only do you have to find books that you can sell, but you have to find them at a price that works. This can take a lot of time and effort, and the demands of churning up new stock can lead to burnout, particularly for those sellers who are new to the game.

There’s always an easier way, and for me it’s making the right connections with people who can help me turn up new inventory faster and more efficiently. All it takes is a willingness to get to know people, the ability bring a smile to someone’s face, and a soft touch, and it can save you the trouble of multiple trips, fruitless searches, and empty-handed excursions. Having a friend on the inside could be the most valuable tool in your professional arsenal.

The Secret to Making Friends

Hopefully, it’s not that big a secret to you – just be friendly! Most of the people you’ll want to interact with are used to dealing with customers as part of their job, and they get asked the same dumb questions all the time, or are confronted with unreasonable demands or outright rudeness. All you need to do is stand out by being funny, friendly, or having something interesting to say – if you can brighten up a boring day, even if it’s just for a moment, you have just provided the motivation for someone to lend you a helping hand.

Tell a joke, ask them what’s the most interesting thing they’ve seen all week, comment on the weird looking guy on the other side of the room, whatever. You just want to break the ice and let them know that you’re not here with the same tedious demands as everyone else they’re going to talk to. Once you’ve got the person on your side, that’s when you see if they have information that can help you do your job.

Thrift Stores

The kind-hearted folks that work at thrift centers each wear a lot of hats, and take turns working the register, stocking shelves, sorting donations, etc. Anyone you talk to there is sure to be able to help you get a better handle on how the store operates: turnaround time for processing donations, when they typically hit the shelves… you might even get a heads-up on when a book-laden batch is due in the store.

Friends of the Library

Getting to know your local FOL head is invaluable, as you can get an early warning on the arrival of valuable books. It can also get you to the head of the line to buy up the leftovers. Obviously, the best way in is to volunteer your time to help out, and make friends from there.

Chain Bookstores

Timing the book bin sales at places like Barnes & Noble and Borders can be difficult – often the managers are notified only at the last minute that ‘corporate’ wants them to get rid of their slowest-moving titles. But if you have an in and can ask around, you might get a heads-up on titles that are due to have their price slashed.

For real-world bookstore owners, customers are your most important relationship, but for online booksellers staying close to the people who can get you new inventory is just as important a relationship, if not more. Forgetting the human dimension of our job is easy when we spend a lot of time waist-deep in books, on the computer tracking them, etc… but always try to keep the human element in mind. Treat people to a laugh or a smile, and they’ll treat you right in return!

My book selling business has been, for almost 2 years now, a one man show.  Sure, there are those times where I would pay a friend or extended family member a few bucks here and there to help me out when I was in a bind but for the most part it’s all been me.  I’m pretty proud of that but at the same time it’s been a little lonely.  Who is the one renting the truck to drive 3 hours to pick up a lot of books?  Me.  Who is the one processing orders every day?  Me.  Who is the one spending nearly 30 hours/week outside of a 40 hour/week job adjusting prices, tweaking listing rules and being the visionary for things to come?  Me.

Having a family and being in all this me time sometimes can get to a guy.  Why can’t it be we time with my wife and I?  Being in my early thirties now, I have a 16 month old daughter named Ella and a beautiful wife, Miranda.  Luckily, thanks to my book selling business, Miranda is able to stay home with Ella but with being a full time mom comes lots of meal times, bath times, and just being able to keep up with Ella so her time is short.  However, with the perk of Miranda being able to stay at home comes the toll that working two jobs has on my time and general psyche.  Sounds like catch 22, doesn’t it?  Well, if we can’t spend much quality time together then why not try to work together on this business and make it a family business but what could I do to make my wife help me when she’s already tired and busy?  Of course!  Pay her!

As with many families, we have our fair share of arguments including scuffles about money.  I’m constantly questioning her on her purses, shoes and the 27,564th toy she bought Ella and she’s always complaining that she needs some spending money that I don’t question her purchases.  Ding!  The lightbulb comes on!  Why not “hire” her as an employee and do the things that I’m not able to do during the day such as make calls, scan in some books or any other misc task that would help out the business?  Genius!  Not only do I get help, we get to spend some time together because it’s a “we” instead of  a “me” processing books now plus she gets cash to do whatever she wants to with.  Why didn’t I think of this sooner?

Miranda hard at work

Are you running solo with your book business but have a family that needs you to be around?  Why not combine the two and give your spouse a little cash from the profits for helping?  It sure has made a huge difference in our relationship, increased the business profits and has eased the stress a little when it comes to money.  It’s a win-win situation!

I want to hear your story.  Are you the solopreneur that is taking this book-selling thing by the horns with no help?  Are you selling books as a family or possibly have a friend or relative helping out?  How about using cleaning books as your kid’s allowance chores?  I want to hear about it!  Make a comment below with your story about how your human resource department looks like.  By this time next week, I’ll read all of the comments and choose the one I most enjoy and will reward the winner with a copy of my information-packed eBook Used Books: Big Business – The Secrets to Selling Books Online for FREE!  Just by telling me and my readers your story you could get my $27 eBook absolutely FREE!

When I first started selling books on the Internet I had no idea where it would go.  I sold a few here and there from my shelf at home and that first big group of  books that I bought from a local FOL sale was kind of like a shot in the dark.  My wife nearly killed me because, at the time, I had no idea where I was going to even put them all let alone know how to sell all of them.  This is how I’ve been and always will be.  I guess it’s just a personality trait of mine.  I don’t typically plan a whole lot.  If I want to try something new I’ll jump and then ask questions later even if it means throwing some cash at it.

This is what I’ve done with Monsoon.  If you’re new to this blog you can find my first post on this huge change in business that I’ve done at the post Making the Leap into the Unknown.  To summarize that post if you’re too lazy to go look at it I basically explain that sometimes you just have to take the leap and do it.  No amount of planning in the world is going to be enough and eventually you’ll just have to just do it.  This can be applied to the situation I’m in now or even if you’re never sold a book in your life!  Doing days upon days of research and more research, deciding on exactly what type of book scouting setup you need, knowing exactly which books to buy before you even start is ridiculous.  This might work if you’re going to invest in a franchise that would cost you $50K to get started but it’s used books!  Used books are a dime a dozen and if they’re not that cheap the most you’d be out for a few dozen books to try out is $20 or less.  There is no excuse for not trying because if you don’t try you’ll never succeed.  Want to know a good starting point?  My eBook!

I’m interrupting my regularly scheduled book scouting series post this week.  I wanted to take this time to update everyone on why I haven’t been too active posting as well as not living up to my promise of getting the Amazon Sales Spreadsheet out much, much sooner.  Sometimes, it’s very hard to balance a full-time traditional 9-5 job, successful online bookselling business as well as writing about it but I’m doing my best!

OK, that’s about enough of my pity party.  This post is all about my experience getting started with Monsoon.  This post will most likely not apply to new sellers as Monsoon can be very pricey and is geared towards sellers in the likes of Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc.  I don’t pretend to even be close to their sales volume but this is the first step of achieving that goal!

Here is how things have been going for me for the past few weeks.

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