Archive for the ‘Making Money’ Category

There will be some pictures

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

The beach has been dreary…yes, we are still in Daytona Beach, Florida. The storms this year have caused piles of sea weed to come onto the beach. The ocean is rougher than we are used to here and the beach is much narrower than in past visits. There are no cars on the beach this month.

I have found a new site in prelaunch to promote. Sqip is a social networking and entertainment portal that promises to be potentially very lucrative to those joining it at the Associate level. I will be watching this one closely in coming days and will update this as things evolve. Click the banner if you want to see more at the Sqipcom site.

Finally they arrived

Monday, August 18th, 2008

The books I ordered from the Crafter’s Choice have finally all come. First the single book I ordered to finish the membership requirement came and I already listed that one at $3.69. It was lowest price, but someone must be using a bot to keep their price at the bottom because I note there is one book selling now for $3.68. This game is really cutthroat!

Okay… so the rest of the books are here and Cozy Quilted Christmas is now listed at lowest price 24.77. This leaves three other books to list. I am fighting some cold disappointment on one of these. When I checked the prices on the Giftboxes books, it looked like they would sell for $10 each. Now when I have the actual ISBN numbers to look up, I find out that this ISBN number is restricted only to “approved” sellers. Now what the heck does this mean? I am not allowed to list this set of books?

Well, I can always “list” them on USFreeAds or eBay. If I want to sell them, no one can stop me!

Two of my books, a knitting book(low price $19.75) and a quilting book (low price $15.54) I want to look at before I list; so will put them up later.

I’m traveling to North Carolina Thursday for a week and will have to put my books sales “on vacation” till I get back. I would take it all with me as it’s still small enough, but just don’t want to think about it while I am away.

bought some books

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

I ordered 4 books for $1 each plus shipping….

1. NICKY EPSTEIN’S SIGNATURE SCARVES
2. GIFT BOX STUDIO LIFE AND GIFT BOX STUDIO LOLLI – 2-VOLUME SET
3. ROLLING ALONG: EASY QUILTS FROM 2 1/2 STRIPS
4. A COZY QUILTED CHRISTMAS
Product Total: $4.00
S&H: $11.71
Estimated Sales Tax: $0.00
ORDER TOTAL: $15.71

On the catalog, it says I should have been able to order an additional book for 50% off, but I don’t see this same offer when ordering online. My choices for books were based on competition on Amazon, Amazon.com Sales Rank, and sales price for used books. Hopefully, when these come, I will list them and quickly recoup the money spent, plus some profit. Gift box studio might have been a mistake as it’s two items to be sold separately on Amazon for $10 each. The craft club sold them as one item for $1. Amazon sales rank is very high for that item. Will have to see how it works out.

There was another book I wanted to get: “Knit Tricks”; so I took advantage of their sale:

Special Edition $10.99
Subtotal $10.99
Gift Wrap:
Shipping & Handling $3.99
Sales Tax $0.00
Order Total $14.98

This book sells on Amazon for low price of $14.94 with a sales rank of 37,408 (which is relatively low). I want the patterns in the book and then will list it for sale as used.

I think this purchase satisfies my membership requirement; so will not worry further about more purchases, but will look for bargains along the way.

The Craft Club disappointed me by not having two high value Martha Stewart books in stock.  Those had very good sales rank and would have fetched a nice profit on resale.  Maybe someone else is running this same money making plan and I needed to take action sooner, rather than leave this catalog collecting dust in my junk pile for months.

3 more books sold last week

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

Hurrah!

Here’s a new angle I found. There’s been an invite sitting in my junk pile to “come back” to Crafter’s Guild. That’s a book club for interesting craft books on things like knitting, sewing, crochet, scrapbooking, jewelry making, backyard projects, stained glass… the list goes on forever it seems.

Okay, they want me to buy 4 books for $1+shipping; then one book at club retail plus shipping (BUT, I can get the one at retail for 50% off if I order it with the $1 books!). Shipping is expensive from these clubs.

I took their little catalog and went searching on Amazon to see what the used prices are for their titles and how much competition there is. Doing this study has also helped me see what craft keywords might be hotter than others. Quilting looks pretty good right now.

For example, in their catalog there’s “201 Crochet motifs, blocks, projects and ideas”. I can get it for $1 plus shipping and on Amazon there are only 11 books selling used for lowest price $20.41. Another “A Cozy Quilted Christmas” is selling on Amazon in hardcover with 6 for $24.77 and paperback with 7 for $27.06.

I think that these prices will cover the shipping and handling fees; so I’m going to take this deal and I’ll let you know how it works out.

A lesson I’ve learned is that I can’t look at a book and know if it’s valuable for resale yet; without looking it up on Amazon. Invariably the ones I thought would be valuable were the ones with 59 selling for $1.51 ;-)

Hard to comprehend

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

Last night I listed a book on Amazon and like it was following a script, I sold another book I had listed there.  It just seems as if, I have to list a book in order to sell any books.  It’s illogical, but seems true.  Time to start going through more books here in the house to see what is listable.

I need to watch what I list now closely.  Net profit on the transaction for the book I sold last night was only $.24 and that means I took a loss on that book.  It cost me $1 from the Library sale cart.  I can’t pay $1 and list for $1.99 without having a losing transaction.  This tells me I must list my $1 books for $4.99 or more.  It limits further my selections for stocking my Amazon store.

Those people selling penny books on Amazon are looking more and more nuts to me.  What are they doing?