It's a well-kept secret but many people are selling their old cookbooks to raise some cash in these harder economic times. They want to keep it a secret so they don't have as much competition. Because they've found that after selling their own old cookbooks that they can easily pick up the best used, old, rare, vintage and antique cookbooks at garage sales, yard sales, estate sales, etc.
The average person will have no idea that their cook books are valuable and could bring them a lot of money. They just consider them to be old cookbooks with no real value. If they do wonder, they don't know how to go about finding out what they're worth. The average antique appraiser is not going to know without a lot of research either.
Vendors, who are in business to put on garage sales, are completely unaware of the value of any of these cook books. These old, collectible cookbooks go for unbelievable prices of fifty cents to a dollar easily.
You can take advantage of this and earn yourself some nice cash. You can sell cook books for much more than you bought them for.
Go through your own old cookbooks first, if you have any, or through you mother's grandmother's or relative's books to start with so you can build up a little knowledge.
What to look for. Although there are hundreds of cook books you can make a lot of money with you want to at first concentrate on the Better Homes and Garden Cookbooks and Betty Crocker Cookbooks. Look for those books that are from the 1950s and 1960s and older. Also look for the plaid covers or pie covers. You can also look for the Betty Crocker Boys and Girl Cookbooks. This is a good place to start because they're plentiful and still bring in a lot of money.
What you should forget about - newer cook books are generally not going to be sought after by collectors. They can easily get these. The only time you can make any money with these is if the publisher did a short print run and it's a small publishing company but this is usually not the case. Even then you may not get much for it.
You can sell cookbooks to collectors - old, rare, antique or vintage cookbooks - because they buy year 'round and the state of the economy doesn't make a bit of difference to them. In fact they know they can find even more as people are finding out that old cookbooks have value and selling them. Of course there's a lot more to learn and a lot of secrets in the cook book market but too much to go into in a short article. You can quickly learn how to sell old cookbooks.
Discover how to write ads with a simple formula: HPSA. It's an acronym for Headline, Pain, Solution, Action. HPSA works for any kind of ad, from a simple classified ad to a long direct response sales letter, whether for the Web or print.
Think you can't write ads and that you need a copywriter? If you can talk, you can write. Certainly you'll want to use a pro copywriter for long direct response letters in which you'll invest a lot of money for printing and postage, but you'll be amazed what you can accomplish yourself when you pick up the skills of writing everyday copy.
The major benefit of do-it-yourself copywriting is that you can get an ad selling for you fast - you won't have to wait for your favorite copywriter to fit you into his busy schedule.
Put Yourself in Your Customer's Shoes
The more you can put yourself in the shoes of your customers, the more easily you'll sell.
So start by making a list of the benefits of your product. Customers buy benefits, not features.
For example, if you're selling a dog bed, a feature might be that the bed has ten inches of foam cushioning. So what? Your customer thinks. Sell the benefit of the foam, which is: the luxurious foam relieves pressure on sore or arthritic joints ensuring that the bed's comfortable for aging, arthritic dogs.
The easiest way to list benefits is to write down all the features of a product, then beside each feature, make a list of the benefits the feature provides.
You can even get your customers to help you with this. From now on, ask each customer which particular feature of your product caused them to buy - what benefits particularly attracted him?
Got Benefits? Now You Can Use Headline, Pain, Solution, Action
Your ad's headline does two things: it stops your customer in his tracks, and classifies him. When he stops and reads "Dog Arthritis? Your Faithful Friend Rests Easy On Our Dog Beds", the customer will keep reading if he's your target audience.
The more specific you can make your headline, the better.
Next, remind your customer of his Pain, which in our dog bed example, is his pain when he sees his dog whine when the dog tries to lie down, and get up again, because he's old and his joints are sore.
Tell a story here, about how your luxury dog bed helped a particular old dog - you can include a customer testimonial too, if you have sufficient space in the ad.
Now you've targeted your customer, and have reminded him of why he needs a good dog bed, you can describe the benefits of the dog bed - why your dog bed is the Solution to the customer's problem.
Finally, tell your customer how he can take Action - how he can buy the dog bed - and you're done.
Angela Booth has sinced written about articles on various topics from Article Writing, About Branding and Copywriting. Want instruction? Angela Booth's ?Copywriting Master Class - Ten Weeks to Copywriting Genius? teaches you copywriting secrets of. Angela Booth's top article generates over 33100 views. to your Favourites.