Proportionately

I was thinking yesterday that it might be worthwhile doing a little Google Adsense ad relating to this site – if I were to include books that could be bought on it, rather than just talking about ones that have already been sold.
But if it took off, I’d probably be struggling to keep up with it as well as my day job. For the time being I might stick with what I’m already doing – which is enough, even though the returns at present aren’t great.
And books, as I’ve found, aren’t necessarily the big seller on these online auction sites. They do sell, but it’s slow, and the returns aren’t always huge. Part of the problem is that each item you list is a one-off. Unlike my daughter’s friend, who sells clothing on Trade Me. She can sell the same sort of thing over and over and she does very well, by her own admission – even employs someone to do the wrapping and email answering. Though it’s still work – there ain’t no easy way of dealing with selling.
When I say the returns aren’t huge, I’m talking proportionately. Many of the books I sell have cost me under a dollar to buy, so virtually anything I get on them is profit, and (proportionately) a big markup. A book that costs me only a dollar and sells for four or five is doing very well in terms of return; it’s just that the actual dollar amount of the return isn’t high.
Now if I was buying books at $100 each and selling them for four or five hundred, things would be rather different!