Category Archives: Book Scouting Tools

The Best Places to Sell Textbooks Online Besides Amazon Part 2

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This is the latest in a series of articles that review the buyback websites you can use to sell your textbooks for the most cash.

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read my article Is the Book Condition of Your Textbook Good Enough to Make You Extra Money? to make sure you sell the right kind of textbooks before going any farther. Then come back here (don’t worry, I’ll wait!)

Welcome back! Now let’s get see how you can use what you’ve learned to make some extra money:

Valore

Valore is yet another textbook buyback company I’ve had a lot of success selling to. Many of my textbook buyback packages to them have been worth well over $50!

Valore currently has a minimum buyback order of $15, although once again, since their high textbook buyback price usually keeps this from being a problem.

One cool thing about selling books online to Valore is that it frequently offers bonuses at different times of the year which you can learn about by signing up for email alerts when creating your Valore account. These bonuses come in the form of codes you enter when selling your books, and can give you a 5%, 10% or higher bonus on your buyback order.

Textbooks.com

Finally, Textbooks.com has and always will be one of my favorite book buyback company to sell textbooks to.

While Textbooks.com’s textbook buyback prices don’t always go as high as some of the companies listed above, they do often offer a higher price for most books than other buyback companies.

More importantly, Textbooks.com buys a lot of books (last month alone, they bought over 300 books from me). This, combined with their fast PayPal payment (they usually pay in about 2 weeks), makes them a very good buyback company to sell to.

Textbooks.com offers free UPS shipping labels and has a minimum buyback order of $10 (which is seriously not a problem when you regularly sell them packages worth over $60).

Other Places to Sell College Textbooks

Of course, book buyback websites aren’t the only place where you can sell textbooks online for good prices – and in my next blog entry, I’ll share my thoughts on the question, Should You Sell Textbooks on Amazon or to a Book Buyback Company?

And if you’d like to learn more about great places to sell textbook online, check out The Best Places to Sell Textbooks Online Besides Amazon Part 1

Stay tuned! And be sure to subscribe and comment!

The Best Places to Sell Textbooks Online Besides Amazon Part 1

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Stack of Books

This is part of a series of blog posts that will go over various book subjects and/or genres and let you know which buyback companies will offer you good prices for them if you sell them online.

Once again, please note that before selling your books online to a buyback company, you should always check the company’s policies on the condition your books must be in to make sure they will accept your books and pay you the promised price quote.

Selling Textbooks Online

Ah, textbooks! Stories abound about how you can resell your old college textbooks online for a nice profit. Other stories claim that if you want to make more extra money, you can buy textbooks for a few dollars at a thrift store and sell them for over a hundred dollars online.

Guess what? The stories are true.

I should know. Just last week, I picked up two textbooks at a local thrift store for $3 and sold them for $160 to the buyback website Chegg less than five hours after I bought them.

However (and you knew there was going to be a however, didn’t you?) there are a few things about selling textbooks online that you should know before you try out this lucrative way of making extra money online.

I highly recommend you read my article Is the Book Condition of your Textbook Good Enough to Make Extra Money? to make sure you sell the right kind of textbooks before going any farther.

Did that? All right! Now let’s get to some of the fun stuff:

Two of the Best Textbook Buyback Websites

When it comes to selling textbooks online, there are a few book buyback companies I strongly recommend. These are all buyback companies I’ve worked with personally who have offered me great price quotes for my textbooks, have honored their price quotes, and paid me quickly:

Chegg

Chegg is an online learning platform that offers textbook buyback services. You can also buy or rent books here and even find online tutors.

When it comes to selling books online to Chegg, there appears to be no minimum buyback order (I’ve been paid for packages that were worth as little as $4.00). However, Chegg will only buy 20 books from you every 21 days. If you try to sell any more books after you’ve reached this limit, Chegg will not accept your order until enough time has passed.

 

This is something I keep in mind when selling books for $5 or $8 to Chegg – while these prices might be great in comparison to what other buyback companies are offering, I don’t want to sell too many books to them at once in case I find something really valuable I want to sell (like I did last week!)

I’m happy to report that Chegg is now offering to pay via PayPal and pays extremely fast (my last payment came just a little over a week after I sent my books to them).

As with most textbook buyback websites, Chegg offers free shipping and allows you to print UPS labels that you can send through any store that accepts UPS packages.

TextbookRush

TextbookRush is another buyback website that frequently offers to buy textbooks for high prices (I’ve sold textbook packages online to them for $40 or even $50).

To get a buyback price quote, just visit TextbookRush and enter the ISBN number of your book in their search bar. You’ll get a price quote and can immediately decide whether you want to sell to this company or not.

If you sell books to TextbookRush, you can print free FedEx shipping labels to ship your books. TextbooksRush also requires a minimum buyback order of $15, which generally isn’t a problem when selling textbooks since the price quotes are usually high.

More Good Textbook Buyback Websites

Originally, I intended to list all the best textbook buyback websites I’ve worked with in one blog post – until I realized there were just too many to fit in a single article!

If you’d like to learn about more of the best textbook buyback websites (and I suspect you do!) stay tuned for the next part of this article, The Best Places to Sell Textbooks Online Besides Amazon Part 2.

And, as always, don’t forget to subscribe and comment!

How to Find the Best Books to Sell on Bookscouter with a Free Bookscouter Account

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Laptop and Books RESIZED

How would you like to know how much more than forty online buyback companies (including Amazon.com) will pay for a book – before you buy that book to resell?

Sounds cool, right? And the best part is that all of this information is available freely on the Bookscouter website once you sign up for a free online account.

In my article, How to Sell Your Gold Dust Books Online for the Best Prices, I showed you step-by-step how to create a free online account on Bookscouter. In this article, I’d like to describe the online tools a free Bookscouter account gives you, and how you can use these tools to make more extra money by selling books online.

What a Free Bookscouter Account Offers You

As many readers of my blog already know, Bookscouter is a free website that helps you find the best buyback textbook websites (such as Textbooks.com, Powells, and Sell Back Your Book) to sell your books for cash.

By entering your book’s ISBN number (which can usually be found above your book’s barcode or on the book’s publication information page) into Bookscouter’s search bar, Bookscouter will bring up multiple price quotes for that book offered by several buyback textbook sites who want to buy books for cash or trade credit.

By comparing prices, you can decide which website offers the best buyback price for your textbook (or any other book you want to sell) and then go to that buyback company’s website to sell your book online for cash (or, in some cases, trade credit).

This is an invaluable resource not only for college students trying to sell textbooks online, but also anyone who likes to buy books for cheap prices and then sell the used books for cash online.

What new visitors to Bookscouter may not be aware of, however, is that by signing up for a free Bookscouter account, they can get more price quotes from more buyback companies, giving them more options for finding the best places to sell books online besides Amazon.

Without a Bookscouter account, you’ll only get price quotes from 19 buyback companies (Bookscouter’s “Preferred Vendors”).

With a Bookscouter account, however, you’ll receive full access to all 44 of the buyback companies on Bookscouter (and possibly more since Bookscouter is constantly adding new companies to its price comparison search).

This opens up a whole new range of online markets you can sell your books to – markets you might never have known about if you didn’t sign up for the Bookscouter account.

Selecting the Best Places to Sell Books Online

A word of caution – while Bookscouter’s “Preferred Vendors” are generally reliable companies that honor their price quotes and pay you quickly, some of the newer companies that appear on your Bookscouter account aren’t always as reliable. I’ve had a few bad experiences where I sold books to new buyback companies and was paid very slowly, or even not at all.

Fortunately, Bookscouter offers additional free resources to help you sort out the good companies from the mediocre ones.

For starters, you’ll want to visit Bookscouter’s review section where people who sold to different buyback companies can rate their experiences and leave brief reviews. Take the time to read through these reviews – they might save you a lot of trouble.

(And if you do have an unfortunate experience with a buyback company, take the time to write a review of your own and share your experience).

As you continue to use Bookscouter to find books to sell for cash online, you’ll find that there are some buyback websites you want to focus on and others that don’t seem to offer any price quotes for books you find at your local thrift shops.

When this happens, just access your online account and go to you’re My Account page and click on the “Filter Vendors” option. From here, you can select which buyback companies you want to see in your price comparison searches, and focus on only the ones that want your books and pay well for them.

Finding the Best Books to Sell on Amazon and Bookscouter

One additional feature I’ve found useful on my Bookscouter account is that when you look up books through your account, you can see the lowest price listed for the book on Amazon as well as its Sales Rank (which indicates how popular the book is and can help you determine how fast it might sell).

The information isn’t as detailed as the readings you would get by using a bookscouting service like A Seller Tool or even Scout Pal – but it’s still a nice heads up to know that you can get more money for your book by selling it on Amazon instead of Bookscouter.

Be warned, however, sometimes the lowest Amazon price shown on Bookscouter isn’t always 100% accurate. Prices for new and used books on Amazon change rapidly and occasionally the Amazon price shown on Bookscouter isn’t the price the book is currently selling for.

To make sure I buy the right book, I click on the “View on Amazon” link and go directly to the Amazon website to confirm the price I can sell the book for. It takes a few extra seconds – but it’s worth it, if the book is selling for $100 on Amazon and only $50 at buyback companies.

I hope you enjoyed this review of Bookscouter and that it showed you how signing up for a free Bookscouter account can help you make more extra money by selling books online. Please feel free to comment below and, as always, please subscribe to my blog for more tips on making extra money by selling books online quickly!

How to Make More Money Selling Books Online with the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner

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One of the best things about selling books online to make extra money is that you probably already have the basic equipment needed to find and sell books. If you’re just starting out, a cell phone (or tablet) with a good data plan, a computer with Internet access, and a printer are all you need to begin making extra money by selling books online.

That said, there’s a big difference between making a little extra money and making a regular stream of income that you can rely on month in and month out. After all, there are a lot of books at thrift stores, garage sales, and library bookstores that you can resell – and if you can only check a few of these places every day, you’re missing out on a lot of potential profit.

If you’re serious about making money selling books online, you need to upgrade your equipment – and one of the best investments I can recommend is for you to purchase a Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner.

Using this one piece of equipment, I’ve seen my online book sales increase from $200 a month to over $1000 – thanks to the greater number of books the scanner allows me to check for resale value.

What is the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner?

The Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner is a lightweight, portable handheld barcode scanner that can read barcodes with the touch of a button. The scanner then sends this information via Bluetooth to any device you link it to, including cell phones and tablets.

Using the scanner, you can quickly and easily send the ISBN numbers on barcodes to the Bookscouter website on your cell or tablet, letting you see if any buyback companies are offering any price quotes on your book.

Since this entire process only takes a couple seconds, a Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner offers a much faster way of looking up book prices than typing in the ISBN number by hand or even using your cell phone’s camera to read the barcode.

Making Extra Money with the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner

Using the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner, I’ve checked buyback price quotes on over two hundred books in the same amount of time it used to take me to examine less than fifty. Because the scanner saves me so much time and energy, I can now visit more thrift shops and library sales every day, find more profitable books to resell online, and increase my daily earnings.

How much extra money does this translate into? Well, in 2010 when I was still selling books online without the scanner, I was making less than $200 a month re-selling books online to buyback companies. In 2013, when I started using the scanner on a regular basis, that number rose to an average of $700 a month.

This year (2015), that number has jumped to a monthly average of over $1000, thanks largely to all the extra stores I was able to visit using the time saved by the scanner.

Keep in mind that these are only profits I make from selling books online to buyback companies – and do not include any additional profits I make by selling some of the books I find on Amazon.com.

I think you’ll agree that purchasing the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner is a great investment that will more than pay for itself – if you’re serious about investing the time and effort using it to look for books to sell online.

Cons of a Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner

In general, I’ve been very happy with my Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner, and the way it’s helped me sell more books online.

However, there are a couple things that have annoyed me about the scanner, and I think it’s only fair that I inform you about them in this review.

When I linked the scanner to my Android cell phone, I found that while the scanner normally connected itself to my phone automatically, there were times when I had to go into my cell’s scanner software and link scanner and phone manually. Only took a few seconds, but it was annoying.

I’ve since linked the scanner to my tablet and haven’t had that problem again so far.

I also found out that after a couple years, the scanner’s rechargeable NiMH batteries degraded a bit, and the scanner frequently disconnected from my phone (only to reconnect automatically a few seconds later). Replacing the NiMH batteries solved this problem, so I recommend that you purchase a couple extra rechargeable NiMH AAA batteries when this happens to you. (Just make sure they’re NiMH – the scanner won’t take anything else).

Note: Since publishing this review, I’ve had the chance to review the SP2100 Laser Barcode Scanner which offers additional benefits for selling books online. Feel free to read my review of this scanner at Making Selling Books Online Easier with the SP2100 Laser Barcode Scanner.

I hope you enjoyed this review and that it showed you more ways to make extra money by selling books online. Please feel free to comment below and, as always, please subscribe to my blog for more tips on making extra money by selling books online quickly!

Websites Like Bookscouter

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As many of you have probably noticed, I promote Bookscouter a lot in my blog. There’s a reason for this – Bookscouter is hands down, the best buyback company comparison website I’ve ever seen. No other website (that I know about) compares as many buyback company price quotes (up to 57 buyback vendors as of now!) as Bookscouter.

Even better, if you sign up for a free account with Bookscouter, you can choose which buyback company price quotes show up on your searches – and also get real time price quotes from Amazon.com as well. Pretty cool for a free website!

That said, there are other websites and free apps like Bookscouter that also showcase prices from buyback companies, and I highly suggest you familiarize yourself with them and become prepared to use them when you go out looking for books to sell online.

Why? Well, for one thing, while Bookscouter is normally reliable, it does experience an occasional glitch from time to time. Once while I was searching for books to sell online, I was thrilled to see that one (and only one) buyback company was offering over $40 for a book I just scanned. My elation turned to confusion, however, when I saw Bookscouter telling me that the same buyback company was offering $40 for every book I scanned.

A quick check at the actual buyback company’s website confirmed it – there was an error in the price check and the company wasn’t offering anything for the books I had scanned. I quickly returned the books I scanned to their shelves – but I would have wasted a lot of money if I’d bought them.

On other (rare) occasions, Bookscouter can temporarily shut down due to some maintenance issue. These issues usually resolve themselves in a few hours, but it can be frustrating if you’re out bookscouting and can’t use the website to compare buyback company prices.

When these problems come up, it’s to your advantage to have some backup websites and apps ready to turn to so you can at least find a few books to sell to buyback companies until Bookscouter resolves its issues.

Here are some “back up” websites and apps that I suggest you study up on:

Bookfinder

Bookfinder is an ecommerce search engine that helps people find books they want at good prices. More importantly for you, however, it has a feature on its website that compares buyback price quotes.

Bookfinder doesn’t compare anywhere near the number of buyback companies Bookscouter does (as of now it only compares seven – Textbooks.com, TextbookRush, Abe Books, Amazon.com, eCampus.com, Bookbyte, and Valore) but it does allow for some comparison buyback shopping if you’re in a pinch.

One cool feature about this website is that you can enter multiple ISBNs from the books you’re checking and then have the website show prices for all the books simultaneously (as opposed to looking them up one by one).

Overall, I prefer Bookscouter to Bookfinder – but I’m glad I can turn to Bookfinder if I need to.

Sell Back Your Book App

This is a free app for your Android or iPhone that you can download off of the Sell Back Your Books website.

Sell Back Your Books is one of my favorite buyback companies to sell to. They offer competitive prices and only have a $5 minimum buyback order (meaning they need to offer you a price quote of at least $5 for all of your books before you can finalize your buyback order and send out your books).

The downside to this app is – you guessed it – it only gives you price quotes from Sell Back Your Books and not any other buyback companies.

Nevertheless, Sell Back Your Books does offer good price quotes for a lot of books (I recently made almost $50 just by selling them six books – check them out to see if you can sell any of your books to them!) and you should definitely download their app in case of an emergency.

Cash 4 Books App

This is another free Android and iPhone app offered by another buyback company I sell to on a regular basis – Cash 4 Books. Like Sell Back Your Books, Cash 4 Books has a minimum buyback order of $5, and their buyback prices are usually so high that it’s very easy to sell books to them (I frequently sell buyback packages to them in excess of $25).

To top it off, Cash 4 Books frequently emails special bonus codes to people who open a free account with them that increases their already substantial price quotes.

Again, the downside to this app is that it only offers price quotes from Cash 4 Books. Even so this is a good buyback company that will offer good prices for any books you choose to sell to them, so the app is definitely worth downloading. (You can find it on Cash 4 Books main page under “Quick Links” “Mobile Apps with Barcode Scanner”).

Buyback Company Websites

If you don’t want to download apps and prefer looking up prices online, you can always go directly to a buyback company’s website and look up price quotes if the Bookscouter website is down and/or experiencing a glitch.

The only issue with this method is that it’s too time consuming to check a bunch of different websites against a single book. You could be scanning for hours and only find a small number of books you can sell online to buyback companies.

To combat this problem, you’ll want to limit your search to buyback companies that accept a lot of books and offer competitive price quotes for them.

Again, I suggest you visit the Sell Back Your Books and Cash 4 Books websites when searching in this way.

I would also suggest you visit the Powells Books website and see if you can sell any of your books there. Powells doesn’t always offer the highest price quotes – but they do accept a lot more books than most buyback companies, and will pay quickly.

A word of caution – Powells only accepts books in excellent condition (i.e. no highlighting, markings, tears, or ex-library books) so be sure to inspect your books carefully before selling to them.

Final Thoughts

When selling books online – especially when selling them to buyback companies – it’s to your advantage to compare price quotes from as many buyers as possible to ensure you’re getting a good deal. For this, Bookscouter can help you like no other website.

Nevertheless, when Bookscouter isn’t available, you should always have some backup online resources so you don’t end up wasting your valuable time at a thrift shop or library sale. Visit the websites and download the apps listed above, and you’ll be in a better position to make a profit even when the unexpected happens.

By the way, if you know of any additional websites and/or apps that work similar to Bookscouter, please feel free to comment below. And, as always, please subscribe to my blog for more tips on making extra money by selling books online quickly!

How to Prevent Carpal Tunnel Syndrome When Using Your Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner

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Bluetooth Scanner

This is my third post offering strategies for finding books to sell online without straining your hands and contracting carpal tunnel syndrome. If you’d like to read previous posts in this series, you can find them at 3 Ways to Prevent Carpal Tunnel Syndrome When Selling Books Online and How to Make a Hands-Free Cell Phone or Tablet Platform.

Most book scouts who use Bookscouter to find books to sell online use a Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner that connects wirelessly to their cell phone or tablet and scans the barcodes on books. The scanner then sends this information to your cell or tablet, letting you see if the book can be resold for a profit or not.

This saves you a ton of time and also lets you look up more books than you could otherwise, increasing your overall profits.

However, while the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner is a lightweight device, holding it in your hand constantly can lead to the wrist pain associated with carpal tunnel syndrome.

Therefore, it’s important that you adopt certain strategies to protect your hands by only holding the scanner when you need to.

Strategy #1: Wear the Scanner Around Your Neck

Bluetooth Around Neck

If you purchase a Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner, you’ll find it comes with a lanyard that you can wear around your neck, letting the scanner dangle across your chest until you need to use it.

While this is a good way to keep from holding the scanner all the time, I personally don’t like it. The scanner constantly bangs against my chest, which can be distracting when I’m looking for profitable books on the shelves.

Strategy #2: Pin the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner to Your Shirt or Vest

Bluetooth on Vest 3

This is the strategy that works best for me. By attaching the scanner’s lanyard to the top of my shirt or vest with a safety pin (as shown in the photo) the scanner will just hang down my side, and won’t get in my way. When I need it, I can grab it and scan a book – and if I want to give my hands a rest, I can just let it go until I need it again.

If you’re wearing a vest, like the one shown in the picture, you can also keep the scanner in your pocket when it’s not in use, protecting it from accidentally slamming against something and getting damaged.

As you can probably guess, I recommend wearing a vest when bookscouting. Not only is it easier to pin your scanner to a vest, but if you buy a vest with lots of pockets, you can easily store your other gear (PDA, store coupons, battery charger etc.) without worrying about it getting in your way.

(Friendly heads up – wearing a vest at most stores will make other customers mistake you for a store employee, especially if they see you scanning books. It’s actually pretty funny, although by the time the fifth customer asks me for the key to the changing room, it can get annoying :))

Bonus Tip: How to Scan Books

A lot of book scouts I see constantly hold their scanners as they pull books out of the shelves one by one to scan their barcodes.

Unfortunately, this is a waste of energy and creates the repetitive hand movements that can lead to carpal tunnel syndrome.

Instead of scanning books this way, I advise you to keep your scanner in your pocket while you examine the bookshelves. When you see a book you’d like to check out, pull it halfway out of the shelf so the barcode is exposed, but don’t take it out completely.

Repeat this process until all the books you want to examine are sticking out of the shelf.

Now it’s a simple matter for you to take out your scanner, scan each exposed book barcode, and look them up on Bookscouter using your hands-free phone or tablet. Place the books you want in your cart and slide the ones you don’t back into the shelf.

After you’re done, put your scanner back in your pocket and repeat the process on any other shelves that interest you.

Granted there will be some books that are harder to scan (since their barcodes might be on the inside covers or you might have to enter the barcode’s ISBN number into your tablet or cell phone manually) but this economy of movement will greatly reduce the strain on your hands and wrists and keep you from suffering any pain down the line.

I hope this helps you in your bookscouting! By the way, if you’re wondering what books are the best ones to sell online, please subscribe to my blog to receive updates, as I will be covering such topics in future posts.

Want to learn how the scanner can earn you more money? Read How to Make More Money Selling Books Online with the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner.

How to Make a Hands-Free Cell Phone or Tablet Platform to Sell Books Online and Prevent Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

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Tablet Clipboard

In my previous post 3 Ways to Prevent Carpal Tunnel Syndrome When Selling Books Online, I outlined some strategies to manage and prevent the chronic hand pain that you can get from holding a cell phone and/or scanner too long while you’re looking for books to sell online.

While these strategies will provide relief from carpal tunnel syndrome, if you keep going back to thrift stores and spending hours holding your scanner and/or cell phone while scanning books, your hand pain will return, especially if you overexert yourself.

Thus, if you want to find more books to sell online and minimize the pressure you put on your hands and wrists, you need to create a hands-free cell phone and/or tablet that you can use when you go out bookscouting.

The good news is that a hands-free cell phone or tablet is something that works better for people who sell gold dust books than book scouts who sell books the traditional way.

Why? Well if you’ve seen most book scouts, you’ll see they scan books using a PDA and Scan Card. They download the Amazon database into a Compact Flash (CF) Card, insert the CF Card into their PDA, and use that device to search for books to sell online.

Now this method has its advantages (which I’ll discuss in a future blog post), but it doesn’t change the fact that these book scouts constantly hold their PDAs, which can put a lot of strain on their hands and wrists.

People who sell gold dust books, on the other hand, use a cell phone (or tablet) and a Bluetooth Barcode Scanner that links wirelessly to their cell or tablet. This lets them scan barcodes with the scanner and look up prices on the Bookscouter website.

Since you only need to carry the scanner to read barcodes, it’s very simple to create an inexpensive platform that holds your cell phone or tablet while you scan barcodes, taking a lot of pressure off of your hands and wrists.

Here’s how I made mine:

What You Need

A Wooden Clipboard with a Strong Metal Clamp: (these are inexpensive items you can buy online or at an office supply store. I recommend you get a wooden one – like the one in the link – because Velcro patches stick better to wood than something with a slicker surface)

Velcro Patches: (Again, relatively inexpensive items you can buy online or at a hardware store. You need strong Velcro patches that won’t come apart easily with some tough adhesive on the back to stick to the back of your clipboard, phone and/or tablet)

Lanyard: (Optional, but I do recommend getting a tough, long lanyard that can provide extra support and security for your tablet and/or phone if you accidentally drop it)

Your Cell Phone and/or Tablet: (I actually made multiple platforms for both my cell phone and tablet so I always have a few spares if I need them)

Instructions

1. Measure three strips of Velcro (use the “rough” side) and stick them onto the middle of the clipboard as shown in the photo below. Be sure to make this Velcro patch slightly bigger than the width of your cell phone or tablet to ensure it has plenty of room. (Note: in the photo below, I created an additional Velcro patch below the central one for my hotspot. You may not need to do this if your tablet can get WiFi without a hotspot.)

Clipboard

2. Now stick three strips of Velcro (use the “soft” side) onto the back of your cell phone or tablet (be sure not to cover your camera!) as shown in the photo below.

Tablet 1

3. Stick your tablet or cell phone onto the clipboard and test the strength of the Velcro. It should take a very strong pull from you to separate the two, and the clipboard should be able to support the entire weight of the tablet or cell phone at a vertical angle (see photo).

Tablet Clipboard 4

4. Optional: Remove the cell phone or tablet and attach a lanyard to one of the corners. You can wear the lanyard around your neck or attach it to your shirt or vest, ensuring that you’re always connected to your cell or tablet – which can help save your device if the clipboard accidentally drops.

Using the Platform

Now you have a platform to hold your cell phone or tablet that you can easily clamp onto the front handlebar of your shopping cart when you scan barcodes using your Bluetooth Barcode Scanner and check up prices on Bookscouter.

You can even adjust the platform on your cart so that it’s vertical when you’re checking books on lower shelves, making it easier for you to see the screen on your tablet or cell.

Some thrift stores also have bookshelves that you can attach your clipboard’s clamp to (just make sure the platform is secure before you start scanning!). This will make it easier for you to scan book barcodes while taking pressure off your hands.

Final Thoughts

When I started selling gold dust books online, I used my cell phone, since it was easier to hold in my hand than a tablet.

Once I created my platform, however, I found it was more convenient to use my tablet since the screen is easier to see and I don’t have to scroll around as much to search for buyback company prices. (Granted you’ll probably want to attach a lanyard to your tablet, especially if it’s an expensive one!)

Finally, you may have noticed that while the platform can hold your cell or tablet, you still need to hold your Bluetooth Barcode Scanner when scanning books. In my next blog entry, I’ll cover some easy ways you can keep yourself from holding that scanner all the time. Please subscribe and comment if you have any questions or anything to say!

3 Ways to Prevent Carpal Tunnel Syndrome When Selling Books Online

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – selling books online using Bookscouter is one of the most fun ways I’ve found to make extra money.

Unfortunately, like many people who use computers and cell phones on a regular basis, online booksellers can also develop carpal tunnel syndrome, a condition where repetitive movements of your arms, wrists, and hands can inflame the tissues in your wrists, leading to chronic pain.

Think about it – when you’re shopping at thrift stores and garage sales looking for books to sell online, you’re constantly holding your phone and/or scanner in your hands and pressing the same buttons over and over again, which can put a lot of strain on your wrists.

Then when you’re back home looking up book prices to sell your books on Amazon or to buyback companies, you use your hands again to type, move your mouse, or print documents – all movements that can aggravate your fingers and wrists over time.

As someone who’s experienced carpal tunnel syndrome pain, I’d like to share three strategies I’ve adopted to manage and even stop carpal tunnel syndrome pain from happening so I can keep scouting for books and selling them online for extra money.

Full disclosure — I’m not a medical doctor and this blog entry should not be taken as professional medical advice. That said, I’ve gotten a lot of relief by following these strategies, and I hope they help you.

Limit Your Book Scouting Time

Take it from someone who’s been selling books online for over six years – hunting for used books to sell online (or “book scouting”) can be addictive!

Let’s face it – it’s fun to buy books for a few dollars and then sell them online for $5, $10, or even $100. And when you consider all the places where you can hunt for books – thrift shops, garage sales, library bookstores and more – the temptation to spend several hours every week book scouting can be strong.

But be careful! Spending too much time perusing book shelves and scanning barcodes can and will put a lot of pressure on your wrists – which can cause you a lot of pain.

So how much time should you spend book scouting? That’s up to you – but I would suggest limiting your book scouting time to maybe a couple hours a day at first, and take a few days off in between book scouting trips to let your wrists recuperate.

If you do start book scouting on a more regular basis, be sure to listen to the aches and pains of your body and take some time off whenever you need to – remember if you work at an office or spend a lot of time on the computer already, you’re wrists are probably being exposed to a lot of repetitive motions already.

Practice Self Massage Daily

One of the best methods I’ve found to relieve my carpal tunnel syndrome (and to prevent future cases from happening) is to practice some deep tissue massages on my arms and wrists every day to help keep my muscles loose.

This is a cheap and very easy way of making sure you don’t develop any major muscle problems down the line – and it’ll help you start and end your days feeling much better if you practice self massage daily.

I’ve personally gotten a lot of relief following the simple instructions from the two YouTube videos below:

All you really need for relief is a little unrefined oil (I’ve personally gotten great results with extra virgin natural coconut oil, but any unrefined oil will work well) and a little time every day to take care of your arm muscles.

I recommend you spend at least 20-30 minutes every morning using these massage techniques (especially on days you go out book scouting) and another 20-30 minutes every night massaging your arms, wrists, and hands to help relieve any muscle pain you might have picked up during the day.

And don’t just stop at arm and hand massage! Remember, your legs and back are also under a lot of strain if you keep bending and crouching at thrift stores to find books to sell online, so be sure to study leg, knee, and back massage as well (you can find several videos about this massage on YouTube).

(Please feel free to comment below if you’d like to see a future blog post focusing on these other types of massage).

Wear Compression Gloves

Some people have differing feelings about this, but I’ve found wearing compression gloves (the flexible nylon gloves with a strap that wraps around your wrist giving it extra support) can help relieve your hands of a lot of pain that they might experience if you didn’t wear them.

You can find these gloves at most drug stores in the same section where they sell hand splints. They’re fairly inexpensive and last a long time. (Just make sure you pick out a pair of gloves that fit you well and are comfortable).

And remember – even the best compression gloves can’t prevent carpal tunnel syndrome if you go book scouting every day. Listen to your body, take some time off if you need it, and practice self massage on a constant basis. Trust me – you’ll be glad you did!

Want to get additional tips to relieve your hands of unnecessary pressure when you go out book scouting? Please subscribe to my blog and get notices when I offer more strategies to make book scouting simpler and more fun!

A Review of the Bookscouter Android App

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Those of you who read my post How to Sell Your Gold Dust Books Online for the Best Prices know that the free website Bookscouter.com allows you to compare price quotes from over fifty different book buyback companies, letting you make an informed choice about which buyback companies to sell your books to.

I highly recommend that you open a free online account on Bookscouter.com and then sign into it  on your cell phone or tablet whenever you’re out looking for books to sell online. By doing this, you’ll be able to see more buyback price quotes for the books you’re checking, sell books to more online companies, and earn more extra money.

That being said, it’s always a good idea to have some back up online resources available in the event that the Bookscouter.com website goes temporarily down and you still want to find books at thrift stores and garage sales to sell online.

One nice resource you can use as a backup is the free Bookscouter app that you can download onto your Android phone. This app functions like the Bookscouter.com website and is a definite must-have for your bookscouting equipment.

(Bookscouter.com also offers a Bookscouter App for iPhones. Since I’ve only used the Bookscouter Android App so far, however, I’m limiting this review to the Android app).

How to Install and Use the Bookscouter Android App

To download the Bookscouter Android App, go to the Android Market, search for “Bookscouter” and download the app onto your Android phone for free.

The first time you open the app, it will ask you for a Barcode Scanner. This is a device that scans book barcodes and enters their ISBNs into the Bookscouter App, letting it look up prices faster. It’s a great time saver that will help you find a lot more gold dust books.

You have two options here – you can either download a free Barcode Scanner App from the Android Market which will let you use your cell phone camera to scan barcodes, or you can buy a separate Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner which connects wirelessly to your cell.

I highly recommend you buy a Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner. Most cell phone cameras don’t make good barcode scanners and you’ll waste a lot of time waiting for your camera to scan ISBNs. A Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner, on the other hand, uses a laser scanner to read barcodes and can scan dozens of books in seconds.

(To read more about my thoughts on this scanner, check out my post, How to Make More Money Selling Books Online with the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner.)

To use a Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner with your Android cell phone, you’ll first need to install the Serial Magic Gears App, which you can find and download for free at the Android Market.

You may also need to download some additional scanning software depending on your phone. Be sure to consult your instruction manual for this.

Now you can start looking for gold dust books. Open the Bookscouter App, connect it to your Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner, and scan the ISBN number of the book you want to check. Tap, “Get Prices” and the app will search for and display any price quotes it finds for the book from Bookscouter’s Preferred Vendors.

If you don’t have a scanner (or if you find a book with an ISBN but no barcode) you can still look up prices manually. Just type the ISBN into the Bookscouter App search bar and tap “Get Prices.”

After you decide to buy the book or not, just press the back button on your phone and the screen will revert back to the original Bookscouter App screen, allowing you to enter in an ISBN from a new book and look up more price quotes.

Advantages of Using the Bookscouter App

I enjoy using the Bookscouter App as a backup to the Bookscouter.com website for two reasons.

For one thing, it shows price quotes from many buyback companies (as opposed to only one book buyback company if you use an app provided by a buyback company), allowing you to find more gold dust books and sell them for the highest price to the best book buyback company.

For another, the Bookscouter App is very easy to view on a cell phone. The buttons are simple to manipulate and once you get comfortable using this app, it’s very easy to fall into a rhythm and search through dozens of books.

Drawbacks of the Bookscouter App

Along with these advantages, I’ve also experienced a few drawbacks from using the Bookscouter App.

First, you’re limited to only seeing price quotes from Bookscouter’s eighteen “Preferred Vendors” and not the fifty-plus book buyback companies on the Bookscouter website. That’s still a lot better than other buyback company comparison sites, but it can’t match checking up books on the actual Bookscouter website.

Since the Bookscouter App looks up prices in real time via the Internet, it can sometimes take several seconds to show all the price quotes for a book. To not waste time when this happens, I look through bookshelves and select other potential gold dust books to scan later.

Finally – and most annoying – the Bookscouter App can sometimes temporarily stop working if you use it too long. When this happens, the app brings up a blank screen instead of showing price quotes.

For these reasons, I rarely use the Bookscouter App these days except as a backup to the actual Bookscouter.com website.

If you find the Bookscouter App isn’t working for you, however, you can also try the free option I list below:

M.Bookscouter

In addition to the Bookscouter App, Bookscouter.com offers a mobile version of its website called m.bookscouter.

Basically, m.bookscouter looks and functions like the Bookscouter App, but I’ve found its buttons handle less smoothly than the app.

Nevertheless, if Bookscouter.com goes down, I simply enter my web browser, access m.bookscouter, and continue searching for books.

Final Thoughts

One of the key things to remember when looking for books to sell online is to always have backup plans available in the event that something goes wrong with your equipment.

To that end, I’ve made a point of finding as many online resources like Bookscouter.com so I’ll never have to cut my bookscouting trips short because of an unexpected malfunction.

If you’d like to learn more about other resources like Bookscouter.com, please check out my article Websites Like Bookscouter.

That said, these are still just tools – and only as good as the person using them. To really find and sell gold dust books successfully, you’ll need to be familiar with the buying policies of buyback companies and learn what type of books these companies want the most.

In future posts, we’ll learn more about both of these topics – so be sure to subscribe and make sure you get the latest updates!