This lesson is about getting to know the basics behind online bookselling. What is required to start an online bookselling business? What will you be doing every day, and where do these books come from? Before we get into all of that, we should talk about why you will make money online selling books.

At every thrift store and garage sale, there is typically a section of books that look rather lonely. Usually they are being sold for a dollar or two per title, and even less at garage sales. What most people don’t realize is that, in the online marketplace, some of these sell for tens–and sometimes, even hundreds–of dollars. This is were you will come in. By learning the skills of a bookseller and having the right tools at your disposal, you will be able to sift through these titles to locate and purchase the ones that will make you money online. You will understand the principles of selling online and will be able to recover the profit from your purchases. In essence, you will own a bookstore, just like the brick-and-mortar bookstore down the block. The difference is that your store will be open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, all year round, and you will need to work on it less then two hours a day. This is the beauty of making money online.

Let’s look at what it takes to start an online business. You will need to have daily use of a computer with internet access. When we started out, we used a dial up network and got by just fine. That said, having high-speed internet will make a huge difference in the speed of your research, and we highly recommend it. Efficiency will play a major role in your ability to make money online with your business.

You will want to have a place to store your stock. If you have bookshelves that would be best, but there are many booksellers that we know who use file boxes stacked and labeled. Remember that it is very important to keep your stock dry and away from pets or young children. Once you list a title, you are making a guarantee of its condition. You want it to arrive in the condition that you advertise.

You will need an online postal service. We have an entire lesson about Printing postage online. Using the post office may seem like a good idea at first, but you will quickly find that it is not an efficient way to regularly ship your stock. The monthly cost of an online postal provider is next to nothing and it will pay for itself immediately by creating more time for you to find stock. These services are one of the tickets to your making money online with your new online business.

You will need a book-scouting tool. What we mean by this is that you will want to get a tool which will allow you to look up the values of books while you are in a bookstore, garage sale, or library sale. There are several options for book-scouting tools and we cover them completely in our lesson, Buying books, tools and service.

Finally, you will need some basic shipping supplies that can be purchased at your local office supply store or through Amazon. We cover the basics of your shipping needs in the lesson Packaging material. You may also want to order a few reference titles on identifying first editions and other niche topics. We cover reference books in Starting a research library.

As for the day-to-day work, this going to be the fun part. You will begin by searching for stock. In the book selling world, this is called scouting. In our section, Buying books, where?, you will learn where to look for books that have value. Every day that you scout, you will find some. On a good day you will find hundreds of titles with thousands of dollars in value. The goal will be to always be adding books to your stock. Maintaining a steady supply of quality stock will be the key to your making money online.

Once you have purchased your books, you will list them in an online marketplace. In this tutorial, we concentrate on using Amazon.com because we believe it is the most user-friendly for the beginning bookseller. We will teach you the fundamentals of listing in our lesson, Listing books, step by step.

In addition, we will teach you the basics behind packaging and shipping your orders. Check out our lesson, Shipping books.

When you have completed our tutorial, you will own a fully functioning bookstore that will allow you to make money online while working from your home. You will never regret the time and effort you spend to get started. You will know the joy that comes from being in control of your financial life.

Happy hunting!

Next lesson, Online business, Amazon.com account set up.