Want to Make Money? Use College to Your Advantage!
Do you have extra money you can invest? Do you have a rich uncle? Do you want to have more money? If so, use college to your advantage! Besides providing money making things like degrees, college also provides a labor force of young, attractive people, and unfilled niches. Some of the most successful and secure jobs stem from bookstores of college towns. Start one of these, and you are guaranteed your retirement funds.
Why Bookstore of College Town, USA?
One sector of the job field that practically guarantees job security is the education field. Teachers, guidance counselors, job counselors, school librarians, principals, parent coordinators, etc will never be outsourced or off-shored. There will be a constant demand for education professionals so long as people continue making babies, and I can't see that stopping any time soon. Education is the stepping stone to career, so people are bound to sweep their kids up into the vats called school.
Ok, Why Bookstore?
Now that we have the Education part down, let's move on to the bookstore necessity. Do you know how much books cost? If you've been to college, I hope I did not stir up any bad memories of you serving food to ingrates at the dining hall. Books are expensive! A company changes the cover of a textbook, add some pictures, raises the edition number, and now you have to buy the new edition for $100 more. The worst part of this is the buy-back policy. At the end of the semester, students have the option of selling their books back to the store. Sounds like a good deal right? Of course, these are stores, not libraries, and businesses, not non profit organizations. In my first semester, I've spent over $200 on textbooks. Once mid-December rolled by, I went to my college bookstore and the 2 bookstores off campus to get the best deal for them...$30.
I was planning to keep the books, but I don't need to know "What it means to be 98% Chimpanzee" or "Excursions of World Music".
(Side note: For example, one of the books that I needed to buy was Machlis's The Enjoyment of Music for Music 101. This is for one of my gen-eds, or core classes that every college make every college student take. There is about 10 classes that students are forced to take to gain a "broad background knowledge" that the previous years of schooling apparently did not sufficiently provide.
This book in particular costed me about $70. It is pretty hardcore for Music 101 and comes with 5 CDs. When I took it back to one store, they offered me $5. This is one of the more ridiculous offers I got. $5?! Come on, for a big book complete with 5 CDs, you can't even get a deal like that on the streets. End rant)
This is how bookstores make so much money. The best place to start a bookstore is one within a walking distance from the college, and where the college is in need of an alternative bookstore. All you have to do is hire a couple of college students for an hourly rate of $10 and get them to post flyers around the school as well. Your only competition would be the college bookstore, and book prices are always retail priced there because colleges have a bunch of other sources of revenue. Quite frankly, they don't care that you're competing for part of their income. Sell your books for 5 cents cheaper, pay 5 cents more when buy-back comes around, and voila, the beauty of business!
Comments
Great Hub, I tried something like this before. The bookstore at my college would often refuse to buy back books if the class wouldn't be held again. Even if the book was brand new, so most students were just throwing away the books the store turned down. I saw this as an opprotunity, so I made a drop box for book's the store wouldn't buy back. I got tons of books, I ended up getting tons of books. Then all I had to do was load up the ISBN onto some websites. I picked, pick my price and wait for a buyer. I'd often get up to $50 on some books. Since you can afford to make the prices cheaper than bookstores, you can sell almost all the books you collect.
