How to Use eBay for Amazon Inventory

Here is a cool trick for using eBay to obtain inventory to sell on Amazon, especially books. If you are looking to get into the book business selling used or new books on Amazon, you can do this at home, at your convenience, without a special book scanner.

If you aren't selling books already, you will need to poke around on Amazon and look for books that are selling for $20-$30. (Click here for the types of books and categories to look in.)

If you are already selling books on Amazon, pay attention to your sales reports. When you sell a book for a high price on Amazon, go look for it on eBay and see if you can buy it at a low enough price to resell it on Amazon for a decent profit. For example, I recently sold the book, "Disney's Aladdin - The Making of an Animated Film." Here is a screen shot of the Amazon sale:



My profit on this item was $23.44 after my cost and Amazon fees. I consider that a high profit book sale. Next, I checked on eBay for this book, and found the following listing:



This book on eBay would cost me a total of $6.34. So, I can buy this book on eBay, receive it in the mail, and list it on Amazon for $32.97 (the same as my other sale). When it sells, I will make a profit of $20.34:

Cost to buy on eBay = $6.34
Amazon fees after sale = $6.29
Total investment = $12.63

Amazon sale price = $32.97 - $12.63 = $20.34

The moral of this story: Pay attention to your sales and scope out eBay for the product. Many sellers don't know how to price books and don't know their value. You can snag some high profit books very easily and resell them without ever leaving your house!