Monthly Archives: April 2016

How To Make Sure You Get Paid for the Books You Sell Online

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Recently, I encountered a problem everyone who sells books online dreads. My payment for some of my buyback orders wasn’t sent to me.

This is something you’ll encounter every now and then if you sell books to buyback companies on a regular basis. While the companies you find on Bookscouter are usually reputable, even these companies encounter occasional glitches that delay your payment.

This is why it’s so important you keep good records of all of your buyback orders (something I cover in How to Record Your Sales When Selling Books Online) and keep track of which of your orders were paid and which are still unpaid.

To make sure you get paid for all of your books, please follow the following tips:

Learn How Buyback Companies Pay Before You Sell to Them

Most of the buyback companies you’ll find on Bookscouter are good businesses that pay quickly and efficiently.

That said, different buyback companies pay in different ways and on different time tables, and you should always make sure you know each company’s payment policies before you sell them any books.

Most buyback companies like Textbooks.com, Valore, Chegg, Cash4Books, and Sell Back Your Book pay via PayPal and deposit your money within 1-2 weeks into your PayPal account. (If you don’t have a PayPal account and/or don’t want to open one, most companies will mail your money via check – but this can take a month on average).

A few companies like Sell Back Books offer to deposit money directly into your bank account (which requires that you share your account numbers with them). Sell Back Books also offers the mailed check option.

And still other buyback programs, like Amazon.com’s Trade-In Program, pay in trade credit (not cash) and deposit your payment in your personal online trade credit account. While most people prefer to be paid in cash, trade credit does come with advantages that I cover in Should You Sell Your Books for Amazon Credit?

Make sure to review each buyback company’s website to learn their personal policies on payment. Many of these companies also have policies on the type of books they will buy that may affect which companies you can sell to. I cover many of these issues in my article 8 Great Book Buyback Companies To Sell Books To.

Bookscouter also offers a five-star rating system and a place where sellers can leave reviews of their experiences with different buyback companies. You can find these reviews by going to Bookscouter, clicking the “Vendors” link, and clicking on any buyback company you’d like to research. Read these reviews before selling your books to a new company – they might alert you to any unexpected polices regarding payment.

Email Buyback Companies That Haven’t Paid You

Okay, but what happens if you do all your research and a buyback company still doesn’t pay you?

First, double check your Buyback Order Records to see how much time has passed. If it’s been two weeks since you sent your order to this company, wait a few more days – sometimes a company can experience a slight delay as it processes your order.

If it’s been over a month and that company promises payment in two weeks, however, you need to contact the company. Go to the company’s website, find their email address under the “Contact Us” link and send them a message informing them of the situation.

Make sure to inform the company of when you sent your buyback order, the buyback order number, and the total price quote the company gave for your books. (You should have this information in your records – your online account on the buyback company’s website should have the information as well).

Politely inform the company of how long it’s been since you sent your order and ask them when you can expect to receive your payment.

Here’s a sample email that I use for these situations – feel free to modify it for your own use (I’ve marked the critical areas in bold).

Hello XYZ Books

Last March 21st, I sent a buyback order (Order #123456789) with the quoted price of $35.

It has been over a month since I sent that order, and I have still not received payment.

Could you please let me know when I can expect to be paid?

Thanks!

Usually, this is all it takes for a company to fix the problem – in the situation I described above, both buyback companies (Sell Back Books and CKY Books) responded politely to my emails in less than a day and sent my payments in full immediately.

By the way, if the company resolved your issues quickly and politely, please leave some positive feedback for them on Bookscouter. Just click the “Vendors” link on the top of the website, find the company, and click on “Leave Feedback.” (Both CKY and Sell Back Books got good reviews from me).

If The Company Refuses to Pay

Sometimes, a buyback company may refuse to pay for some or all of your books – claiming the books did not meet their criteria for books in good condition.

This doesn’t mean the buyback company is trying to cheat you – if you sent them a lot of books without checking them closely, it’s possible some were water damaged or had excessive markings inside, making them impossible for the company to resell. In these cases, you just need to be more careful about the books you sell.

In other situations, however, a buyback company will flat-out refuse to pay you with no explanation – and may even fail to respond to your emails at all.

Sadly, this happened to me with a new buyback company I tried to sell to – and I wound up losing several books I could have sold to other buyback companies.

Unfortunately in these cases, it’s virtually impossible for you to get paid – which is why you need to be careful about selling to new buyback companies that don’t have a proven track record of paying quickly for their books.

If this happens, you should leave a review on Bookscouter informing others of your bad experience – this will warn others against doing business with that company and can get Bookscouter to remove that company from their website if enough people give them low ratings.

Fortunately, such experiences are rare – after over six years in the business, I can honestly say that I’ve only encountered two companies like this. As long as you research good buyback companies, keep good records of your buyback orders, and communicate with your buyback companies, you’ll easily generate a steady stream of reliable income from your online book sales.

Want to receive more tips and tricks for how to sell books online for extra money? Subscribe to my blog!

Do you have a question or suggestion for a future blog article? Email me at sellbooksfastonline@gmail.com.

How to Record Your Sales When Selling Books Online

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If you sell a lot of books online to buyback companies you find on Bookscouter, you’ll soon find more money every day in your PayPal account and get checks mailed to you on a constant basis. It’s great – kind of like standing under a money tree that keeps showering you with payment after payment.

That said, keeping track of which of your buyback orders have been paid and unpaid can be a hassle. While most buyback companies are reliable, they do make mistakes – and you wouldn’t want to miss out on several hundred dollars just because you couldn’t keep track of all the money coming in, would you?

Fortunately, the solution to making sure you get all the money from your buyback orders is simple – you just need to keep a record of all of your buyback orders and adopt an easy way of showing paid and unpaid orders.

Here’s how I keep my records:

Step 1: Open a Blank Document on Your Computer

You can use any word processing software you like – Microsoft Word, Open Office etc. – or even write your records by hand in a spiral notebook (although updating records this way is difficult).

Label the document “Buyback Orders [This Year]” and save it to your hard drive (make sure you also copy it regularly to a flash drive to be safe).

Step 2: Record Your Buyback Orders as You Make Them

Once you start selling books to buyback companies through Bookscouter, you’ll want to open your Buyback Orders file and record all the vital information.

First, type the month and date you placed your order (for instance, if you sold your books on April 25th, you’d just type “4/25”.

Below that, make a record of each buyback order you made that day – one per line. At the very least, you’d want to record:

  • The buyback number assigned to your order (this is a line of numbers you’ll receive once you complete each order – you can copy and paste it from the website onto your Buyback Orders document). This is a very important number you’ll need if you have any issues with payment.
  • The buyback company you sold your books to (Textbooks.com, Powells, Sell Back Your Book etc.)
  • The number of books in your order.
  • The total price quote for all of your books.
  • The money you paid for the books you sold.
  • Your net profit from each order (just subtract what you paid for your books from the total price quote).

Here’s an example of how one of these records can look:

4/25
108727 Valore (3) $150.39        $20.25           $130.14

As you can see, this lists the day I made this order (4/25), the buyback order number (108727), the company I sold my books to (Valore), the number of books in the order (3), the total price quote ($150.39), the money I paid for the books ($20.25), and my net profit ($130.14).

Step 3: Mark Paid Orders

Once your payments start coming in, you’ll want to match them with the records in your Buyback Orders document so you can mark which ones have been paid.

Most of your orders will be paid via PayPal and you’ll receive an email when they come in. Just match the buyback order number on the email to the number in your records, and you’ll find the order.

Other payments will come via check – and will have the order numbers printed on the pay stubs. Make sure you match these numbers with the ones in your records before cashing in the checks and/or throwing away the pay stubs.

To mark your buyback orders as paid, just put the paid orders in bold face like so:

108727 Valore (3) $150.39        $20.25           $130.14

This will distinguish your paid orders from unpaid orders and let you know at a glance which orders still need to be paid.

Use Your Records to Make Sure You Get Paid for ALL of Your Books

Most buyback companies on Bookscouter (and all the ones I recommend on my blog) are very good about sending prompt, regular payments for all of your buyback orders – often in less than two weeks if you get paid by PayPal (mailed checks can take a month or more to reach you).

Occasionally, however, you’ll experience an issue with an order. Maybe one of your packages got lost in the mail or was incorrectly filed when it reached the company. Or maybe some of the books you sent were damaged, causing the company to issue you only a partial payment for your order.

When this happens, you’ll want to make a note of all this in your records – especially if you run into a situation where you don’t get paid for one of your buyback orders.

In my next article, How To Make Sure You Get Paid for the Books You Sell Online, I’ll show you step-by-step what you should do if you ever run into a situation where a buyback company doesn’t pay you for your order.

In the meantime though, if you’d like to receive more tips and tricks for how to sell books online for extra money, feel free to subscribe to my blog!

Do you have a question or suggestion for a future blog article? Email me at sellbooksfastonline@gmail.com.

Sell Textbooks Online with Bookscouter for Easy Vacation Money

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If you’re like a lot of college students, you probably have a lot of places you’d like to go over your summer or winter vacation.

The problem? The last two semesters of college life have tapped out a lot of your savings.

Hey, I’ve been there – and I know how rising textbook prices, increasing tuition rates, and other unexpected expenses can put a big dent in your vacation fund.

Fortunately, there’s an easy strategy I’ve personally used to fund my vacations – and as luck would have it, it’s something I cover in great detail on this blog!

It’s called selling books online fast – using Bookscouter.

Using Bookscouter to Turn Your Textbooks Into Cash

If you’ve read How Sell Books Fast Helps You Make Extra Money, you already know the basics of what I teach on this blog – basically I reveal how to find low-priced books in thrift stores, library bookshops, and garage sales and discover which of these books can be sold for a profit online via a free website called Bookscouter that shows you the best places to sell books online.

You can then sell these books online quickly to buyback companies that will send you a check or PayPal payment for your books – often in as little as two weeks.

This is a fast, easy method that can quickly generate a steady stream of income for anyone – working mothers, retirees, self-employed entrepreneurs – but is particularly effective for college students who need to raise money quickly.

Here’s why: Some of the most profitable books to sell online are college textbooks. These are the books professional online booksellers (like me) always look for when we search through thrift stores and garage sales for books to resell online for a profit.

An in-demand textbook can easily be sold for well over $100 online – more if you’re talking about a textbook in a specialized field like medicine or law. I’ve personally sold textbooks that gave me a net profit of over $300, and I know there are much more profitable textbooks out there.

That’s why college students are in a particularly good spot at the end of their fall or spring semester – you already have a stack of textbooks that can potentially sell for profitable prices and don’t have to go out looking for them like online booksellers.

The problem is that most textbooks depreciate very quickly. New editions come out, classes stop including books on their reading lists, and your college bookstore won’t pay you even half of what you paid for your textbook in the first place.

After a couple years – sometimes even a few months – some of the textbooks you may have spent hundreds of dollars on will drop dramatically in value as college students flood online markets like Amazon with their textbooks, offering increasingly lower prices in an attempt to get rid of their books.

That’s why it’s so great that free online resources like Bookscouter exist today. Because Bookscouter offers cash bids from dozens of different buyback companies, college students now have multiple places to sell their textbooks for cash before they depreciate.

Moreover, since these buyback companies are located in states all over the U.S., there’s an excellent chance that a textbook no one wants in your city is still in demand elsewhere – and can be sold for a lot more extra cash than what your college bookstore will offer.

Plus, the buyback companies on Bookscouter will pay you cash for your books immediately (often in two weeks or less) – there’s no need to wait for someone to buy your book on Amazon. Most buyback companies will even pay for shipping costs, allowing you to keep more money in your pocket.

Selling Books Using Bookscouter

Selling books online using Bookscouter is simple – all you need to do is enter the ISBN (the 10 or 13 digit number code located usually above the textbook’s barcode or on the publication information page) in the search bar.

Bookscouter will then bring up a list of buyback companies, along with the amount of money they will pay for your book. You can then visit the website of the buyback company you want to sell to and sell your books to them directly.

If you’d like to learn how to do a more detailed price comparison on Bookscouter (and potentially make even more extra cash) read my article How to Find the Best Books to Sell on Bookscouter with a Free Bookscouter Account.

Please note that you won’t be selling your books to Bookscouter but to the buyback companies you find on its website. As such, it’s a good idea to keep the following two tips in mind:

Tip 1: Make Sure Your Textbooks Are in Good Shape

I cover this subject in depth in my article Is the Book Condition of Your Textbook Good Enough to Make Extra Money?

To summarize – every buyback company has its own guidelines for the books it will or will not accept, and you should make sure to review these guidelines before you sell to a buyback company.

Some buyback companies – like Textbooks.com – will pay for a book if it has some minor highlighting, underlining, and/or notes in the margins. Textbooks.com will even purchase ex-library books as long as they are in good shape.

Other buyback companies – like Powells or Sell Back Your Book – want books with no markings, which may limit the number of books you can send to them.

As a rule, buyback companies will never purchase books with water damage, broken bindings, or missing supplementary materials (CDs, DVDs, computer codes etc.) so if your textbooks have these flaws, you won’t be paid.

(Incidentally, if you know you’ll be selling your textbooks via Bookscouter at the end of a semester, it’s a good idea to take good care of them – don’t eat or drink when you’re reading, keep any included CDs or DVDs in their plastic pouches when not in use, and copy any pages you want to take notes on so you don’t have to mark the book).

Tip 2: Make Sure Your Sell Your Textbooks to a Reputable Buyback Company

In general, most of the buyback companies you’ll find on Bookscouter are reputable companies that will pay you for your books – but you do want to do some research.

Bookscouter offers a rating system where past sellers can share their experiences with individual buyback companies and even grade these companies on a five-star scale. Feel free to use their system to decide which companies you’d like to sell to.

To throw my two cents in, I’ve had excellent experiences with the following buyback companies – Textbooks.com, Sell Back Your Books, Cash4Books, and Valore (Valore, in particular, offers very high prices for textbooks).

I offer more in-depth reviews of these buyback companies (and others) at 8 Great Book Buyback Companies to Sell Books To and 2 More Great Book Buyback Companies to Sell Books To, so feel free to read the articles in my blog to find a good buyback company to sell to.

And if you liked this article and would like to learn more tricks for earning extra cash by selling books online, feel free to subscribe and send me an email at SellBooksFastOnline@gmail.com with any questions!