Selling books on Half.com

One of the business ideas Amy and I are working with is selling books on Half.com. We've listed over 125 books so far, and we've actually sold four of them. Using the Half.com multiple item listing data entry page, Amy and I were able to add about 70 books to our store on Friday. Based on that number, I did some pro-forma projections based on selling 50 books per day, five days per week.

These projections are based on some critical assumptions, the foremost of which is that we can actually sell 50 books per day. It also assumes that we can purchase our inventory for less than $1/each, sell them for $4/each and count on the half.com shipping allowance, which is about $3/each, to cover the shipping expense. Third, it assumes that we can find shipping supplies that will allow us to ship for less than $0.80/ea.

But with these numbers, we can clear about $17,000 per year. Acceptable, but not gonna make us rich. So I set out to refine the plan. The first thing I looke at is the shipping materials cost. Rule number one: Never purchase shipping supplies from Office Depot! By choosing other vendors and purchasing in bulk, the shipping costs went down to $0.40/shipment. That's much better! I think we can make some money here...

Now, the next trick is to build sales to 50 units per day. Then we'll need to find a way to break the 50/day limit and find someplace to put the inventory.