I have had a lot of success selling books, dvds, and games in the past (including New Years Day, for $32), and I notice a lot of others have been doing the same.

I wanted to post a few tips for anyone interested. I hope it gets you a few extra bucks...

Selling books:

1) There are a number of book selling sites. There's an app for the IPhone (not sure about other smartphones) called BookScouter. It's free. You can key in or scan the bar code from the book, and it will automatically check 8 or 9 different sites, including Powells, Bookbyte, Textbooks.com, Sellyourbooksback, and Valore. I usually start here.

2) Cash4books is not included in the app, but they have their own app. This is my next stop. You can check all of these sites online as well as with the app.

3) Prices vary significantly from site to site, and from day to day. So I put all my isbns in an Excel spreadsheet, and go through this exercise once a quarter or so. You can also enter multiple isbns at once on the websites, so this saves a lot of time.

4) Each site has their own rules about the # of books or the minimum $ sale amount they'll accept for an order, so be aware.

5) All of these sites pay for media mail shipping. You print out the label, pack the books and mail them. They then send you a check or a Paypal deposit.

6) I also post books on half.com and paperbackswap.com. They're both hit-or-miss. With half you get money back. With PBS you get a credit that you can then use to get yourself a book. I use my credits to get high value books that I can sell on the other sites, or books that the kids need for school.

Selling DVDs/CDs/Games

1) Same principle, fewer choices. I've used SecondSpin and EagleSaver. You can also get quotes from Selldvdsonline and yousellbooks (they take dvds, etc. too).

2) Same caveats - big price differences across the sites, so it definitely pays to check them all. Also, prices change from day to day. And they all have their rules regarding # or $ of items.

The smartphone apps make it really easy to scan titles at library book sales, yard sales, etc. And thanks to one of the other bloggers (CCF?) who mentioned that Cash4Books has a promo code that will give you a 10% bonus on your sellback - I learned something new today.

So try it out and good luck!

On to other things...Three days in and I'm on track with my dietary changes - vegan Tuesday, meat yesterday, vegetarian today. So far so good. I got the kids fast food tonight for dinner, but used a gift card, so no cash out of pocket. I like boring finances...