Ebay Book Vendors: How Do They Do It ?

[beacon1040]

They are selling books for $3 or $4, free shipping.

Minimum ship for me, media mail, is $2.75. Average $3-$4.

Minus PP & EB fees.

So, how do these sellers do it, for such a low price and make money ?

[galfamtwo]

I can go to auctions and buy boxes of books for 1.00 - and some are pretty nice - Last year I got a truck load free (except for my 50.00 in gas) and there were 10 lg boxes of really nice book s. Last I counted I had made somewhere around 500.00 in profit after rent and % .  

[luxe_beauty_4_less]

I met some very large book sellers at eBay open.  They do it with sheer volume.  These guys make between .25 and .75 cents per book sold.  But, they sell thousands, in some cases hundreds of thousands.  They have large warehouses and very efficient methods.  I'm with you though...it is amazing.  I'm sure there are books (especially textbooks) where there is huge profit margin.  But, those cheapo books you're seeing are strictly very low margin, very high numbers of sales to make a profit. 

[uncseniorsportsfan]

Simple - they are selling mostly donations so they have next to no inventory costs.   They don't make anything on a single book sale - their money comes from selling  multple items in a single transaction where the additional shipping cost is about 52 cents per pound.   And a lot of them also offer buy 4, get one free to encourage the multiple purchases.  

Simple example - Sell one book weighing less than a pound at $3.59 - shipping 2.75 FVF .43 PP .36 - Profit .05.

                              Two books = $7.18   - shipping 3.27  FVF .87  PP .46 - Profit    $2.58

                              Three books = $10.77  - shipping $3.79  FVF $1.30  PP  ,57 - Profit   $5.11  

       And that is assuming they get no shipping or fee discounts and includes no overhead.    Large enough volume and there is money to be made. 

[scottish_kat]

I wondered this myself the other day. Picked up a book, looked on ebay to see if it was worth listing. $3.50, free shipping.

3.50

-2.75 media mail

- 0.35 final value fee

-0.40 paypal charge

It comes to nothing. Exactly nothing. With the cost of materials for postage, less than nothing. My only guess is that they are loss leaders, or the seller I looked at was bad at math.

[monster-deals]

Many don't.

Some are buying feedback, some don't know what they are doing & some make it up in volume.

..."books" are dead. Specific books you can make a killing on.

[beacon1040]

Things have changed when I sold books 15yrs ago or so. Alot easier.

Shipping was lower, so were fees.

Now most go to flea markets or yard sale for a dollar or two.

Or donate.

[southern*sweet*tea]

If you're talking about the mega booksellers like Thriftbooks, they buy books pennies on the dollar, and they buy them by the tractor trailer or train car load. They also get super steep shipping discounts because they ship thousands of items per day and do their own presorting. They probably pay less than $1 per book to ship (but I really have no idea, just guessing - it may be less).  They make their money through sheer volume.

[ittybitnot]

They don't make anything on a single book sale - their money comes from selling  multple items in a single transaction......

Won't that be special when they are in "managed payments" and get charged an extra 25 cents for each book, just to accept payment?    Likely won't happen to "them". 

Basically, if you are talking about the mega sellers such as the one who dumped a few million books in the "cookbooks" category (even though they were not cookbooks) a year or so ago....they have "special" terms with ebay.  They have likely negotiated "special " deals with the payment processor and shipper as well. 

eBay allowed  it, it is what ebay wanted.  eBay did the same thing with the t-shirt category and many others.  Best case example....sellers from China with cheap junk that flood the marketplace and retain high visibility simply because people 'BUY' thinking that they will get a 14K gold diamond ring for $3.99 and free shipping since eBay would never allow a phony listing on their site......

[deech21]

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@scottish_kat wrote:

I wondered this myself the other day. Picked up a book, looked on ebay to see if it was worth listing. $3.50, free shipping.

3.50

-2.75 media mail

- 0.35 final value fee

-0.40 paypal charge

It comes to nothing. Exactly nothing. With the cost of materials for postage, less than nothing. My only guess is that they are loss leaders, or the seller I looked at was bad at math.

---

sometimes it is cheaper to ship USPS first class than media mail,if the book is light ,eg paperback.

Long ago River sellers were selling brand new paperback books for a penny and make money on shipping of $3.xx,until AMZN banned such sale.

THEY PICKED up these paperback books from the print shops,these are flawed copies and would have been trashed.

so they ship in just an envelope ,make money on shipping.

[luckythewinner]

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@scottish_kat wrote:

I wondered this myself the other day. Picked up a book, looked on ebay to see if it was worth listing. $3.50, free shipping.

3.50

-2.75 media mail

- 0.35 final value fee

-0.40 paypal charge

It comes to nothing. Exactly nothing. With the cost of materials for postage, less than nothing. My only guess is that they are loss leaders, or the seller I looked at was bad at math.

---

I looked up a random book  that cost $3.79. The seller has 120,000 transactions this year. Combine that price and that volume with a PayPal micropayments account, and the math looks like this: 

$3.79

- 2.75 medial mail

- 0.45 ebay fees

- 0.24 paypal fees

------

+0.35 profit

x 120,000 

------

$42,000 per year

Now, let's assume of those 120,000 sales, 10% of them sold for $7.50 instead of $3.79.

In those cases the profit is almost $3.50 per book, which comes out to about $78,000 per year. 

The seller I was look at had 2,000 sales over $12, 1000 sales over $16, and 300 sales over $30.  

[myjunqueyourtreasure]

It always amazes me that every time I search for a book -I- want, there's nothing under $10. Same goes for DVDs, even though there's 1,000s listed (and presumably not selling) for .99 and FS.

[membersinceaug2001]

Yea and delivery via these cheap methods takes forever!

[clu3]

Those are typically the books that "may" have underlining, writing, etc.   It's a **bleep** shoot buying those.  I learned my lesson, when I see "may have", I keep looking.  I'd rather spend $2 to $3 more and get a book I don't have to throw in the garbage or spend the time working on a return/refund.

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@beacon1040 wrote:

They are selling books for $3 or $4, free shipping.

Minimum ship for me, media mail, is $2.75. Average $3-$4.

Minus PP & EB fees.

So, how do these sellers do it, for such a low price and make money ?

---

[ypdc_dennis]

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@deech21 wrote:
...Long ago River sellers were selling brand new paperback books for a penny and make money on shipping of $3.xx,until AMZN banned such sale.

---

No, not banned.

A-river just made a changes to their fee structure to make one penny books unprofitable (added a fee of $1.80 per book sold on the .com site plus applied the 15% fee to the shipping charge).

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