I was working a church yard sale a couple of Saturdays ago and was introduced to a technology that makes a lot of sense — and could help generate some extra income for those who like to keep a sideline business going.

A man came up to our book table and was picking up each book, scanning its ISBN with a PDA and either putting it in a buy pile or setting it down and picking up a new volume. We had perhaps 500 books, and it took him about 10 or 15 minutes to work his way around the collection. I asked what he was doing, and he explained that he sold books through Amazon and this was his way to quickly value whether a used book was worth adding to his inventory or not.

The scanner was using a service that would tap into the Amazon database to inform him about what the book was currently selling for. He said he paid about $30 a month for the service. I didn’t ask what service it was, because he seemed in a bit of a hurry to buy is books and move onto the next yard sale. He was buying those books that had a value worth his time. (I’ve heard that some booksellers make their profit even when selling a book for a penny simply by virtue of exploiting the fixed shipping cost that Amazon charges, but this didn’t seem to be an example of that.)

Interested in setting up your own used goods businesses? I did some searching and came across four such services.

Bookhero.com starts at $8.95 per month and checks prices against Amazon. It works with wireless PDAs as well as WAP-enabled cell phones. You can type in the ISBN or work with scanners that are compatible with the service.

ScoutPal starts at $9.95 per month and also looks up prices on Amazon. It can work with cell phones or PDAs with WAP or HTML web browsers and SMS messaging or email. The company promises instant Amazon lookups if you’re using a Windows Mobile Pocket PC device.

ASellerTool is $5 per month and also draws pricing from Amazon. This company seems to like the Socket Communications Scan Cards, which plug into the SD port of a Pocket PC or Palm device.

Last is the MediaScouter, which is $40 per month and requires a Windows Mobile Enabled PDA or phone. The device needs an SD slot as well as well as Bluetooth connectivity or a CF compact flash. The company recommends a 2Gb Sandisk SD memory card, because it says this brand “can retrieve information up to four times as fast as other cards.”

I’m not ready to give up my day job, but if my Grandma Dot were still alive, I’d set her up in a business like this. I can imagine it now, her cruising around in her gold Maverick, running her scanner while chatting up sellers, getting good deals, spreading goodwill as patron saint of Kalamazoo yard sales.

Posted on May 7th, 2008 by dian