Question: I'm getting started in online bookselling and I want to build a large business with low startup costs. Gathering discarded books seems to be a sure-fire way to build the right inventory rather quickly. After all, the cost of goods is perfect -- free. I'm curious what type of profit margins can be achieved selling used books online.

ANSWER: Over my five years in online bookselling, I've run the numbers several times, and I always come out to averages of a book cost of about $1.75 each and an average sale of $10 or $11. However, I have limited storage space, and for every 10 books I buy, I probably discard a couple later on.

I hand-pick most of my books at library book sales, so that helps keep the value of my individual sales high. Certainly if you were taking in inventory for free or very low cost you could live with a lower per-item sales price.

To answer your question directly, I'd say that for every $1 in cash I put into my business, I'd say I get about $5 back within two months. But like I said, that involves my time in hand-picking books, and I'm not counting the cost of my time picking books. When I say in my book "The Home-Based Bookstore" that I sold $1 million of books, that doesn't include what I paid for the books or the cost of the 50-60 hours a week of my time (probably more the first year or two).

So to sum up, selling books on the Internet is not a get-rich-quick scheme, but if you're willing to work hard to make $30,000 to $50,000 a year, it's an opportunity wide enough to drive a bookmobile through. You just have to get organized and put some elbow grease into it. Most people who start a business just want to know how they can make money without doing much of anything. That leaves a lot of opportunity for the people like us who are willing to provide a service that people want.

See a real-time list of the most highly sought after used and collectible books.

Read more free articles on selling used books profitably online: http://www.weberbooks.com/selling/selling.htm

Steve Weber is author of "The Home-Based Bookstore: Start Your Own Business Selling Used Books on Amazon, eBay or Your Own Web Site" (ISBN 0977240606). Got a question for Steve? Send to: steve_weber@yahoo.com