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Buy, Carry, List, Pack, Mail
By Jay | April 27, 2008
That’s been my life this weekend. My book supply has been running low so I decided to really make an effort to increase my inventory. And I sure picked the right weekend. Saturday morning I went for a bike ride and hit all the stoop sales in my neighborhood. And there were dozens of them. I brought back about 6 full loads of books, all worth over $10. Then in the afternoon I hit the thrift shops and Salvation Armys. I have a couple where I usually do well, and this weekend was no exception. Today I did the same thing.
I’d say I bought about 200 books, spending maybe $500. I listed them for well over $4,000. They started selling quickly, and I’ve already made my $500 back, so the rest will be profit.
I spent some time teaching M. how to list books, and it turns out that he’s got a knack for it. He’s attentive, and enjoys the pricing part of it. He listed over 100 of the books today, and I paid him $1 each. Tomorrow he can finish up the rest.
Next weekend I’ll teach him how to pack the books. Maybe then I’ll finally have time to blog consistently again ;-)
One reason I’m pushing hard on the books again is that I have a credit card with $10,000 on it, and a zero percent interest rate. In June it goes up to 19.9%. I could transfer the balance to one of my other low interest cards, but then I’d have to pay a 3% fee, or $300. The credit card companies seem to have gotten wise to the habits of people like me who shift balances around to take advantage of low interest rates.
Anyway, I have about $5000 in savings, and will have another $1000 by June, plus my $600 refund from the IRS. That means I’ll need another $4,500 to pay off the full balance. It would be nice to make $4500 from my books in the next couple months. It’s a challenging goal, but I think I can come close if I really push. Especially if M. lists and packs — then I’ll have a lot of time to go out looking for more inventory.
So this will be my goal over the next couple months…..
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Stumble it!
April 30th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Sounds quite reasonable assuming you don’t pick all of your sources clean out of books. Hopefully your supply can hold up.