BUCKET LIST UPDATE – No. 558: Sell something on the Internet

I scratched another item off my bucket list late last Thursday night when I finally sold something on the Internet. I know this isn’t one of those “Climb Mount Everest” type of bucket list items, but it’s always something I’ve wanted to do.

Three people inspired me to try this. First, my wife has always encouraged me to find a way to reduce the number of old books that I have at home. I literally have a lifetime’s worth of books in my little room of a man cave, and I figured that selling some of them might be a good way to make some extra money and please my wife.

Second, several years ago, my cousin Shelly Peacock of College Station, Texas told me about how she actually paid some of her bills by going to yard sales on the weekend. She’d look for items that she thought other people would be interested in buying and then put them on eBay. From the way she talked, she made a decent amount of money this way, and I was intrigued.

Third, back in August, a coworker told me about how she’d bought and sold used textbooks online a number of times. The way she talked, setting up a seller account on Amazon was easy. Turns out, she was right.

It took me about an hour or so to get my Amazon “storefront” up and running. They even let me give it a cool name, Peacock’s Books. Over the past several weeks, I listed books that I’ve already read and have readily available here at home. I assigned them prices and waited for the orders to roll in. To me, the whole thing reminded me a lot of fishing. You put the bait on the hook and wait for someone out there in the world to bite.

It took almost three weeks, but I landed my first customer last Thursday night after I’d gone to bed. When I woke up Friday morning, I had an e-mail in my inbox that said that some guy in Conneaut Lake, Pa. (pop. 708) had ordered my copy of Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s “The Worst Journey in the World.” At first, it panged me to part with one of my all-time favorite books, but I that I can always buy another copy if I want. I do hope that the buyer enjoys reading the book as much as I did, because it’s awesome.

A few hours later, armed with the buyer’s address, I went down to the Excel Post Office and put the book in the mail. While there, I learned that the cheapest way to mail a book is to send it “book rate.” Altogether, it cost me a little over $5 to mail the book because I had to buy an envelope at the post office, which cut into my profit some. Amazon gave me a $3.99 allowance for shipping, so anything over that cut into what I stood to make on the sale. Lesson learned.

In the end, I enjoyed scratching another item off of my bucket list. It wasn’t a biggie, but I do count it as a confirmed kill. How many of you out there have ever sold anything on the Internet? What did you sell? Have you ever made any serious money this way? Is it something you do often? Let us know in the comments section below.