Part 1 of Joe’s Article appears here…
By Joe Waynick
In first part of this two part series, I told you there were two important concepts for
you to understand if you wanted to successfully integrate Internet bookselling into your
business. Those two concepts were:
- New Listing Sales
- Residual Sales
We already know that New Listing Sales are those sales made within the first 30
days of listing a batch of books. You can read the full article about New Listing Sales.
In this article, we’re going to discuss the concept of “Residual Sales” and how they can
add to the profitability of your business.
Residual Sales”
Since sales that occur within the first 30 days of listing a book is considered a New
Listing Sale, then obviously, sales occurring after 30 days of listing a book can be
considered Residual Sales.
As with all Internet Bookselling, when you list a batch of books online there will be an
initial “rush” of sales as the most popular books with the most favorable sale velocity
quickly sell off.
After the first 30 days, the rush is pretty much over, and what you’re left with is a steady
stream of sales at a much lower sales velocity. Typically, you’ll see a New Listing Sales
Rate of roughly 33% of listed books.
However, estimating your Residual Sales rate is a little trickier. For the period between
day 31 and day 60, you can reasonably expect residual sales of 7% – 10%. For the period
between day 61 and day 90, a Residual Sales rate of 4% – 5% is reasonable. The older
your inventory becomes, the lower the residual sales rate.
If you did not more listing after the first 30 days, your residual sales rate would grad
dually decrease to around one half of one percent where it would most likely level off.
But that could take as much as nine months to a year to happen.
Develop Steady Income From The Long Tail
If you continuously add books to your online inventory, you’re more likely to see a
leveling off of 4% – 5% over the long term, simply because you’re regularly refreshing
your offerings.
Of course there will come a time when you will want to purge very old inventory as price
competition erodes the profitability of those items and it’s no longer cost effective to
keep them on hand.
By building up a large enough inventory, it’s possible for your business to pay all of its
ongoing expenses from residual sales alone. Thus, leaving you sizable profits in the form
of New Listing Sales.
By applying the proper strategy to your buying habits you can maximize both the long
and short term profitability of your listing efforts.
Good hunting!
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Part 1 of Joe’s Article appears here…
For more free articles about selling used books online for profit, visit: http://
www.internetbookselling.com
Joe Waynick is author of “Internet Bookselling Made Easy! How to Earn a Living
Selling Used Books Online” (ISBN 978-0983129608). You can contact him at: http://
www.internetbookselling.com/contact.html.