Building a map of second hand bookstores - How to monetize it?
I'm building a map with second hand bookstores in Bogotá, I'm an avid reader and have found painful to find books. Most of the shops are messy, well that's part of the charm, but I would like to have a better way to search for my next book. From the reader side, I think there is a problem: Finding second hand books is an inefficient process. Not so sure from the seller part, they don't need an inventory management software (?).
I'm looking for examples in other industries, where you geolocate stores of products similar to books and have successfully built a business on top of that feature.
You could...
That's all that comes to me right now, but I'll think on it. Are you collecting email addresses?
Thanks for brain-storming! 🤟
I was thinking about creating themed clothes.
The top position or more relevance on search is a good way. I'm thinking to create a community around the map, so eventually I'll get some emails.
Great list of ideas.
Who is the potential customer? If it's not the stores, then the stores are simply the attraction for the actual customer, the shopper.
Two ideas:
Many second-hand stores in the US sell online through Amazon as well. Just a few months ago one in my area closed down because the rent of the physical location was too high vs. the proportion of revenue coming from the physical location.
Does Amazon not have second-hand book sales in Colombia? If not, that could be a platform you could build for the booksellers, and then just simply take a portion of sales. Having a map of second-hand stores is a novel idea as a way to build consumer brand awareness. Some of us truly love to spend the rare idle Saturday sifting through the stacks :)
Thanks Michele for the support! I feel the same about this flow experience where time disappears inside the stores.
Here, they use MercadoLibre and eBay as way to sell books. Escalating to an e-commerce solution would be a natural step after a good amount of recurring users.
I don't how to monetize it, but it seems like you should tap into an API from a larger travel co, like TripAdvisor or Lonely Planet or something
Data ;) That's where the value is.
Yeah but you're dealing w/ 2nd hand bookstores... they aren't the most tech savvy, and ppl are looking for a bargain anyway. Not sure if the money would equal the time put into it. Cool hobby though
Someone I know runs https://flippiness.com/ but it is limited to the US market.
You could build something similar for the Colombian market where your users could subscribe to a listing of people looking to buy books, go to these second hand shops, procure those books, and ship them out to the buyers for a profit. Your money would come from
Yeah, as another avid reader, I can't imagine that it would work. The main problem is that sellers don't manage their books at all.
But!
I have an idea. What if somebody else would manage books and enter into the database? Or, you need to find some way to convince them to start some kind of stocktaking...
You could try to monetize it of course. But your first priority is it to get people using the site. With good traffic you then have more options, and talking to the book store owners and users will make it clearer what they want.
I think the most obvious is to list book stores for free, but premium listings with photos cost more. The book stores really would love the service I think.
Other things like events "Book Lovers Sunday" and if they visit three stores/buy a book they get a free coffee at XYZ cafe.
If you can get it right, it's a system you could reproduce city after city. I get excited just talking about it...
I think the problem is the bookstore doesn't care to organize inventory to put it online. Do you already know what books (title/author/isbn) you are looking and you just want people to find/catalog them?
There are lots of people trying to sell their ebooks, maybe you can help them too and make some profit?
I'm looking for a tribe, looking for physical books. Thanks anyway!
I think this is a great idea. I know finding used bookstores is always a treat when I'm traveling.
Monetizing it doesn't really have a lot of options outside of selling ads though. I would certainly make an easy way for bookstores to do that, and maybe contact them and offer them a free trial.
You could also provide tools for them to sell online and take a commission, but you have to get them to load and maintain their listings. I would think that'd be worth their while, but hard to say what shop owners would do.
Gracias, Bill! Second hand bookstores like to keep this antique shop style and they preserve their websites are outdated. So maybe a way to upload their listings and helping them to sell online will be a good stream of income.