So, you’ve decided you want to sell books online after all, but need to find out what price you’d have to set on each to make a profit.  So, where do you even start?  Here’s some ideas of how you could get to the numbers you need.

(The following examples are based on selling on eBay as of November 2008, with the fees in effect at that time and the given that only PayPal will be accepted from now on, and are only a guideline.  You’ll need to put in your own actual expenses to get your possible income/profit.)

To keep things easier, I’m working with multiples of 10 or 100 for easier math…  I’ve also figured out the numbers based on the following types of sales: 1 – Listed only in your Basic eBay Store 2 – Listed as an auction 3 – Listed as an auction with a Buy It Now Price also offered 4 – Listed as an auction that failed, then relisted as a store item Let’s say you’ve decided to sell your books for $6.25 with a shipping rate of $3.75 so the customer ends up paying $10.00 for each book.  Here’s what the fees and profit would look like for a single sale based on the current eBay/PayPal fee structures and assuming you could buy all your books for only $1.00 each–not impossible, but getting harder all the time–and that you would pay $2.71 to ship each (the avg postage for a book under 2lbs).

So from the example above, it looks like for every 100 books you sold, you’d make as much as $492 profit.  Wow.  Makes you want to run right and become an online bookseller, right? Unfortunately, there are other factors to consider.  For instance, for every 100 books you sell, you may actually have to list 400.  (Most people would kill for a 25% sell rate on eBay, especially in today’s economy, so I’m probably being a little over-optimistic with that number for a first-time seller with no established reputation and who may or may not be an expert in resellable book titles, but it helps keep my numbers neater.)

Another point – the above calculations don’t take into consideration the recurring monthly fees that you have to pay out of your profits and the cost of all the books that didn’t sell.  Here’s a little more realistic example of what would happen your first month if you purchased 400 books at $1.00 each to sell online:

So, in this example, instead you’ve only made $271 total profit working 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, not close to the $500 you thought you’d make, plus you owe more cash than you started with because of the 300 books you purchased, but which didn’t sell yet. Of course, you now have $300 worth of books to try to sell again next month, so you’ll only have to buy $100 worth the next month to reach your 400 listed/month.  That means you may have some cash left at the end of Month 2 not having to put out as much as before, but you still won’t be making more than pocket change at this rate, especially if you figure out how many hours it takes you to accomplish all that.  (It does get better, however, once you have a system and reputation in place – it’s getting them together that can make or break you – working at Taco Bell would probably be more profitable otherwise.)

These examples can be used for other items you want to sell on eBay or anywhere else, too.  You just have to plug in the appropriate fees depending on the items you’re planning to sell to estimate what’s possible, profitwise, and what it will take you to earn it.

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