It was Christmas time, the time when my husband and I take 2 – 3-weeks off of work to clean the house, catch-up on anime, manga, movies, and videogames, and spend a weekend attacking a small section of the garage pile.  Last year after my manga collection finally took over every flat surface in our bedroom, so we headed down to the local put-your-furniture-together-yourself store and bought 4 bookshelves.  After filling the bookshelves (we have books other than manga too), my husband scratched his head and said to me, “this is rediculous.  No more manga for you until you get rid of some this.”  Huh?  Of course, I ignored him and went on my merry way and the manga piled up … Finally, it occured to me a couple of months ago that I could sell some of this stuff online from the very website I had initially purchased the manga.  I had already purchased lots of manga from used book sellers upto this point but I never imagined that I could be one of those sellers.

I’m still too timid to participate in online auctions, so I didn’t chose the obvious middle-man website.  I went with another that charges a hefty commission, but the processes of setting up a store front, listing items and the actual transaction are so easy and secure feeling that I don’t mind paying for the service.  Here’s how the process goes:

1.  From within my seller’s account I search for the item I want to sell via the UPC code or ISBN number

2.  I give a brief description of the condition of the item via a drop down menu and set the price.  When setting the price, the lowest price others are seling the item for is visible.

3.  I pick my shipping term — normal, express, and international shipping are possible

4. And then post my item

5.  Someone buys my item through the website interface

6. The website sends me a message that the item has been sold and to now ship the item to the buyer — name and address and a summary of the transaction are within the message.

7.  Money is deposited into an “escrow” account = cost of item + shipping credit – commission

8.  I ship the item to the buyer and then send a courtesy e-mail to let the buyer know the order has been shipped

9.  Twice a month the money in the “escrow” account is deposited into my bank account.

It’s a wonderful thing.  So far I’ve made $300+ in a couple of months and I’ve cleared out a good deal of manga that isn’t very dear to me.  I expanded my “store” to include video games that my husband and I don’t foresee us replaying.  Things are going well and I have a good reputation (5/5 stars and some nice comments from some of my buyers).  I sell roughly 1 book a day and I have sold books to people all over the US and some internationally.  I even have repeat customers!

Anyhow, I’m thankful for this service because it would be rather embarassing and inconvenient to hold a garage sale.  For one, I don’t want nosy neighbors picking through my used stuff and making judgements about me based upon the books I read.  More importantly, I don’t have set up in my garage on the weekend and actually sell stuff.  Managing my little storefront online maybe takes 15-mins of my time per day and $300 buys lots more manga and an extra night or two of eating out :). 

What next:  My husband and I will spend an upcoming weekend digging through our garage looking for our old Nintendo and Atari sytems and video games.  It appears that this old junk fetches a nice price online :).