Half.com is the sibling site of Ebay, catering specifically to the sale of new and used books at rock bottom prices. Once its own entity (like Paypal), the site was acquired by Ebay a few years back.

At Half.com, you can peruse and purchase all kinds of paperbacks, textbooks, CDs, DVDs, and more at half (thus the site’s name) or even less of the original retail price. The site experiences a surge of activity and sales during the back-to-school season, when students galore look for cheap textbooks. Christmas is also a big buying time on Half.com. 

How can you make money on Half.com? Well, if it weren’t enough that you can actually save money here, you can also make money by selling your own books and other media. It’s not too difficult, and the most complicated thing you’ll need to do is register with Ebay first. Once that step is out of the way, it’s time to gather up your unwanted Best of Disco CDs and The Joy of Jello Molds (yes, there is such a book) and start listing!

Half.com’s selling page supplies spaces where you input your item’s ISBN, its condition, and your asking price. As you go through listing your stuff, you’ll notice that Half.com provides some additional information, like just how many of a certain item are already listed, as well the range of the item’s prices. This is valuable to know, because you certainly don’t want your item listed as the most expensive of 50 other identical items. However, if your item is the only one of its kind that is listed, you can rack up the price well beyond the suggested half value price of Half.com.

The nice thing about Half.com is that, unlike Ebay, your items can stay listed for eternity. You pay a commission to Half.com only when your item is finally sold. The not-so-nice thing about Half.com is that, quite often, you end up paying some of the item’s postage out of your own pocket. Especially when it comes to heavier books like textbooks, Half.com does not calculate the additional media mail postage required from the buyer. The site recommends that you raise your item price to make up for the extra postage, but that doesn’t serve you well when you’re trying to beat other sellers for the lowest item price.

Where can you find more books to list, once your basement and bookshelves are cleared out? Well, you can buy more books to sell at garage sales, but the truly book-savvy will look up and go to special library book sales. At library book sales, you can peruse and purchase books individually (ranging from $1-$10+/piece), or you can bide your time until the library decides to either a) do a bag sale or b) trash its unsold books. 

I’ve done numerous library bag sales, which have served not only to stock my own bookshelves with fresh books, but to also make me $-10-$25 per book sale. And that’s the money that I made only after taking into account the few dollars spent for the bags of books.

Library book sales typically occur on weekends and are listed beforehand in a local newspaper or sometimes online. Once you go and start packing your bag with books, keep in mind what potential buyers will be looking for. DO NOT pick up any sort of romance or other novels (excluding classical or best-selling novels). DO pick up books, CDs, and DVDs discussing stocks, travel, work, career, college, and professional topics.  Self-help and language books also seem to fare well in terms of sales. And textbooks are great as long as they are current (copyrighted in the last 3 years).

If you want more information on selling your books through Half.com, click here.