Sell Your DVD’s, CD’s & Books Online

How to Make Money Online Selling Used Books and DVD’s

A few years ago I went through a major life change and found myself downsizing from a HUGE home to a medium size apartment. At that time I did a major purging of all my belongings and got rid of quite a bit of stuff. But moving into a 2 bedroom apartment with attached garage still gave me a lot of storage space so I still had quite a few possessions.

I’ve moved 4 times in the past 3 years, so it seems like I barely have gotten everything unpacked when it’s time to move again. I am tired of packing, unpacking and repacking all my movies, books, etc… I’ve decided I really need to downsize. The next time I move I want to be able to fit everything into a one bedroom apartment without a garage, or a one bedroom with den.

My last two apartments were 2 BR, 2 bath with attached garage. Kind of expensive and really more room than a single person needs. I really don’t want to be tied down to books, movies, clothes , and other items I barely ever use. It’s time for me to get down to basics and keep only the essential items. So I started looking into ways I could start cleaning out my closets and drawers and make a few dollars in the process.

Trade Your Junk for Cash

All the sites I used give you a quote for your items. Once you accept their quote, you box up your items and use their FREE shipping label to send them your package. Some services use UPS, while other use FEDEX or the United States Post Office.

Once your package arrives, it is checked against your invoice to verify you sent what you said you were going to send. Your items are also checked for condition, if anything is damaged beyond repair, you won’t receive payment for those items and your final payment will be adjusted accordingly.

Each service has a different method of payment; from sending you a paper check, to paying you through your Paypal account or as a direct deposit to your bank account. I like to use Paypal if that option is available. Otherwise you have to wait for the company to mail your check, which can take a while.

Sell Your Items on Amazon

Years ago I sold some of my new and used books on Amazon.com. It was a major pain in the arse. You had to list each item individually and once it sold, wait to receive payment, then pack it up and send it off to the buyer. I never made that much $ selling my books on Amazon. There was too much competition, and some of the bigger companies started offering books for only pennies. Not worth my time.

But then I discovered you can TRADE your items to Amazon in exchange for an Amazon gift card. Because you are basically trading for store credit, as opposed to cash, I seem to get better offers for some gear compared to taking the time to try to sell it myself. So far I’ve “sold” my old 1st generation iPad and a really OLD digital camera through this program. You input the item you want to get rid of, and mention what condition it’s in. You’ll get an offer according to what condition the item is in. Not all items will result in an offer. Amazon wasn’t interested in my old compact CD player, but I eventually sold that item through my eBay store.

Amazon will give a FREE shipping label to send them your stuff. Once Amazon receives your items, and verifies their condition, they will deposit the funds into your gift card account. You can use your gift card to pay for any purchases made through Amazon.com. Pretty nifty if you ask me.

Make Room and Make Money on Decluttr

I rarely watch DVD’s anymore. I have a smart DVD player, which lets me connect my TV to Vudu and my Amazon Prime account. Other than occasionally borrowing a movie from my roommate, I watch all my movies online. Decluttr.com buys used movies, games and music: CD’s, DVD’s, Blu-Rays, and video games. I had a bunch of old DVD’s and Blu-Rays I wanted to get rid of and I wasn’t interested in having another yard sale.

Using Decluttr is as simple as entering the bar code for each of your movies. Decluttr looks up the item and will give you a price quote. Most of my DVD’s were quoted at 50 cents, a few were a bit higher and some a bit lower. I think the highest price was $3.25 and the lowest 30 cents. It’s up to you if you want to accept their offer or not.

So for a guaranteed price, I only had to pack the DVD’s one time. No more hauling them back and forth to garage and yard sales. And if your only other option is to donate, or even throw out, your unwanted videos then even a few dollars is better than nothing. I recently had a booth at a local indoor yard sale and brought a few DVD’s and Blu-Rays with me. I think I sold one Blu-Ray but other than that, there was absolutely NO interest. So again, Decluttr is the better option in my opinion. And you know something? 50 cents to a dollar+ adds up if you have a lot of videos to sell.

• Items sold: CD’s, DVD’s, Blu-Rays, video games
• Enter: bar code
• Shipping: free via UPS
• Payment: direct deposit

Here’s the details of the sales I’ve made to Decluttr during the past few months:

1. 7/07/15: $16.10 for 36 items
2. 7/07/15: $14.20 for 32 items
3. 7/09/15: $56.70 for 72 items
4. 7/06/15: $51.75 for 80 items
5. 7/13/15: $24.42 for 37 items
6. 7/15/15: $29.34 for 43 items
7. 7/23/15: $13.00 for 20 items
8. 8/28/15: $10.31 for 14 items

Total amount made selling my used DVD’s, CD’s, and Blu-Rays on Decluttr: $215.82.

BookFinder

I’ve never had any luck selling books at garage sales or yard sales. I’ve tried twice and both times I sold ZERO books. Both times I ended up packing up all the books and donating them to my local library. So getting even a few cents for a book was worth it to me.

BookFinder.com is not a book buying service. You enter the ISBN number of your book, and BookFinder searches their database and gives you a price quote from the top book buyers. The majority of my books received NO offer, and the ones that had an offer ranged from between $1.00 and $5.00 per book. That might not seem like a lot of money, but do you really want to keep lugging around all those books?

Some book buyers have a buy back minimum, and won’t make you an offer unless your books total at least $10. Each service is different. While BookFinder helped me sell a few books, they weren’t interested in the majority of my books, so I guess when it comes time to move I will donate most of my remaining titles to the local library.

Enter: ISBN

You could search each individual book buying site, to find out if they are interested in buying your book, but that could take a lot of time. BookFinder lets you enter the ISBN number of all your books and will search all the sites for you. BookFinder will show you a list of price quotes from about 8 different booksellers. You click on the offer you want to accept, which will take you to the website for that bookseller.

Bookfinder Lists offers from different book buyers including:

1. eCampus.com
2. Text Book Recycling
3. Text Book Rush
4. Textbooks.com
5. Amazon.com
6. AbeBooks
7. Valore Books
8. Bookbyte

I did have a few old textbooks, which were worth a bit more than the rest of my books. I think one of my sports nutrition textbooks sold for over $50, wish I had a whole closet full of books like that!

AbeBooks

AbeBooks is an Amazon company. They are one of many sites that buy new and used textbooks and books. Like other book buying sites, you simply type in the ISBN number of your book to see if they are interested in making you an offer. They are one of the book buyers that BookFinder (mentioned in the last section) uses. They seemed to offer the highest amount for the books I sold.

• Items sold: new and used books and textbooks
• Enter: ISBN number
• Shipping: free via FEDEX or USPS
• Payment: Directly via Paypal or mailed check

• 7/15/15 – AbeBooks: $21.50 for 10 books
• 7/21/15 – AbeBooks: $37.44 for 19 books
• 7/27/15 – AbeBooks: $87.32 for 6 items

Total amount made selling used books on AbeBooks: $146.26

Share Your Tips with the Creative Cottage

I would love to hear how you’ve gotten rid of your excess inventory of books, DVD’s, and other household goods. Do you have a creative way of selling your stuff that isn’t listed here? Drop me a line at: lynn@thecreativecottage.net.

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