Make an easy profit selling children’s story cassettes, plus a new source you’d be mad to overlook

By Sharon Fussell, October 21, 2011

I recently talked about selling children’s books on Amazon – if you missed it you can find the article here.

I received a couple of reader emails in response to this which threw up some really interesting and potentially profitable ideas I thought would be good to share with you. The first concerns an easily overlooked product you could sell on Amazon – children’s story cassettes, while the second looks at a possible new stock source…

Can you make a profit from children’s story cassettes?

Cassettes tend to be seen as old hat and not worthy of selling…

This is not the case at all!

For instance it is easy and relatively cheap to buy converters of cassettes to MP3 or CD formats. Older products, which are not available on these newer formats, are eagerly sought after. (Please note you should not do this yourself and then sell them on CD as this is in breach of copyright).

In some cases, because they are in short supply, prices for these products can offer healthy profit margins. That said not all cassettes are profitable or in demand, so you will need to do some research into which ones may be worth picking up from charity shops, car boots, church fairs. Usually it is possible to only pay a few pence for them.

Here is some advice when buying cassette tapes to resell.

• Make sure the cassettes are in the packaging before you buy
• Ensure the tapes are not chewed up within the cassette.
• Play them to ensure their condition is good
• Mention any defects in the listing, such as cracked casing
• Favour unabridged story tapes over abridged

Free books?

Freecycle: this is a popular website which householders use to give away their unwanted items. You can find it at www.freecycle.org.

Here is some information from their site:

“Welcome! The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,988 groups with 8,795,679 members around the world. It’s a grassroots and entirely non-profit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by local volunteers (them’s good people). Membership is free. To sign up, find your community by entering it into the search box above or by clicking on ‘Browse Groups’ above the search box. Have fun!”

N.B. Freecycle is not supposed to be used by ‘dealers’ looking for free stuff – but you should always be transparent with the giver regarding your intentions.