Dec
8
Sell Books on Half.com
Filed Under How-To's, Sellers' Insights
Selling is Easy on Half.com
One of the most dynamic markets on the internet today is for books and music. I’ve found an easy and profitable way to capitalize on this market through Half.com. This article covers getting started selling on this web site.
Recently eBay, the owners of Half.com, reversed their plans to close the popular website. This was good news for book buyers and sellers alike. As a frequent seller on Half.com, I find several advantages of this venue over traditional auction sites such as eBay or Yahoo! auctions. Some the things I like about Half.com include: easy listing, easy payments, and no re-listing hassles.
Listing is fast and easy on Half.com. There’s no worrying about templates, ad text, scanning or hosting/posting images. After registering, simply select the book’s ISBN, indicate the condition, and choose a price and you’re selling.
Half.com makes payments easy as well. When the buyer purchases the book, they pay via Half.com’s credit card system. Half.com calculates and includes the shipping charges, and pays the seller via direct deposit twice a month.
Another benefit to selling on Half.com is that there are no re-listing hassles or expenses. Books remain listed until sold. The site charges a simple 15% final value fee for most books.
Inventory Sources
You can get started selling used books on Half.com with books around the house. Over the years you probably have accumulated several in-demand titles that you don’t really want to keep around any more. Once your Half.com business takes-off, yard sales and thrift shops are excellent and inexpensive sources of used books for your listings. Here the intrepid Half.com seller can often pick up a number of books for pennies a copy.
Inventory Systems and Storage
If you decide to continue selling books on Half.com after you’ve shipped off the volumes you have had sitting around the house, you will need to develop a strategy for storing and organizing your inventory. Gary Hendrickson, author of “How to Sell Common Everyday Books on Half.com like Crazy”, recommends banana boxes recycled from your local grocery store. They stack nicely and can be clearly numbered with a marker. With this storage system in place, Gary uses a simple database set up to record the title of the book, its condition, date listed, and the number of the box in which it is stored.
If you’re willing to devote a few hours a week to your
Half.com business and take your business seriously, you can easily make several hundred dollars a month with minimal effort. Even more is quite possible. It all depends on the time and effort you are willing to put into it.
For more information on selling on Half.com, I highly recommend Gary Hendrickson’s book, “How to Sell Common Everyday Books on Half.com like Crazy”.
Besides the basics of selling Half.com (some covered above), I especially valued some of the advanced topics that Gary included in his book including:
- How and where to buy books cheaply for maximum profit
- What you should pay
- What books you should buy
- More importantly - what books you should never buy
- Listing secrets that will maximize your sales
- How to determine the best asking price
Click here for more information
how do I load my books onto half.com and what do you charge? Do not want a middle man.
Hello I have never sold anything on eBay. I have bought a few things in the past year. From my vantage point it is very confusing with different parts of eBay and alternative sites like Auctiva offering such different things and not one of them having clear cut directions. I have spent hours on Turbolister 2 trying to list books. I could not figure out how to list selling in the US and in Canada. The live eBay help disconnected five times. I asked on one of the eBay question areas how to get it to show the US when it was only showing Canada and the method of shipment for there and not the US on preview. I was told it was a default that it would be sold in the country of origin as well. Then I went to auctiva and wanted to list there but they don’t have the stock photos of the books. I have over 100 books to list and don’t want to have to photograph each of them. I went to half.com to list the books after your recommendation and found that there is no stock photo there. In other words eBay provides some services in some parts of their auctions but not in others. What in the world is going on. I am so confused I don’t know what to do. I am ready to give up my efforts to sell on eBay. I was trying the books first since they were relatively easy to list. Also Half.com doesn’t have descriptions like Turbolister. Can you use Turbolister for half.com? Just wondering? Will sales be better on eBay or on Half.com? I only wish I could buy the books that are suggested but cannot do that until I make a few dollars. I am simply overwhelmed. Maureen
Maureen,
My response to your comment can be found here.
Good Luck,
Doug
Hello, I have been a great seller on Half.com for two years with a 99.7% positive feedback and 2915(+) feedback rating. I know there are tools that manage Ebay activity, are there tools or services that can keep an eye on price changes towards my Half.com account? If someone lowers a price or raises a price compared to my listing, is there a service that will inform me of the changes so I can readdress my listed price? Hayes