books Archives - Joe Tech

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What do you do with your games when you’ve beaten them or you upgrade to a different console? In the past, I’ve found myself making my way up to the game shop to get their trade-in value or sometimes have my older games turned away completely. Then there’s eBay, where I’ve been known to take my chances on it selling at all. But now I’ve found a new way to sell old games. Some ex-eBay employees have harnessed their knowledge about online markets and user experience into Glyde, a site made specifically for buying and selling things like your games.

Sell Old Games Online

Glyde’s selling process is a little different from what I’m used to. To sell your old video games, you just have to start typing in the name of a game, select it when Glyde finds it for you, and click the Sell button. Then you tell Glyde the condition of your game and it will auto-set the market price for you. You can raise or lower the price and then list the item. Although you have to fill out some required information for your first listing, the process is a lot faster and easier than most sites.

To review this site, I figured the best thing to do would be to create an account and start selling. In a test scenario where I might sell the Halo 2 XBOX game in Excellent condition gave me a suggested selling price of $2.25. After the $0.27 transaction fee and $1.25 mailer cost, the total money made from the sale comes out to $0.73. My first thought was that this seems like a pretty low price to let go of my game for. Despite it being an older game, I found it to be a bit low compared to other online shopping sources, as well. I next checked out how much I’d get for Halo Reach, which fell a lot more in line with the average selling price on other sites at $11.51 after fees.

The thing that I found most appealing about the selling process is the shipping procedure. Once someone has purchased your game, Glyde sends you a pre-addressed mailing envelope to ship your game in. All you have to do is pop it back in the mail and you’re done. This is a vast convenience over the way I have to ship things I sell elsewhere, which usually includes a lunch hour wasted at the post office.

Buy and Sell Anything Online

While Glyde may be well-suited for selling old games, you can buy, too, and they don’t stop at just games. I found the iPad, iPhone, Nook, Kindle, and even books. The selling process is pretty similar throughout, but the questions displayed on the selling page are geared towards what you’re selling. When selling an iPhone, for example, you’re asked about if it works and the amount of scratches on it. With a game, you’re asked more generally about the condition of the game.

Buying is pretty straight forward, but the feature that stands out is that Glyde shows you the item that is closest and cheapest for your search. This seems like it would be a no-brainer, but sadly, eBay, Amazon, and Google don’t default to such a listing. In addition, I like that the packaging isn’t suspect to the whim of the seller. You can pretty well expect your item to be delivered in what Glyde deems adequate packaging.

Conclusions

Where Glyde may occasionally fall short in seller earnings on a sale, it doubles up on convenience and ease of use over all. The shipping system stands out in a way that promises to quietly eliminate the usual shipping concerns most buyers and sellers face on other platforms. Personally, I will definitely look to Glyde when it comes time to sell games or some of the books I have sitting around here.

Although the preceding was a sponsored review, as always I strive to provide an honest opinion of the product or site reviewed.

One of the smartest services to be offered on the internet was NetFlix, so it amazes me just a bit that the idea wasn’t translated to audio books sooner. But you know how the saying goes… Better late than never.

A service for me, too
BooksFree.com was introduced to me recently and I thought, “what a great idea… for other people.” I only say that to make a point. I don’t read much. I used to, but I’m so busy these days that I mostly only make time for books that involve instruction and computing. Still, I found myself searching through the audio books and found something I was eager to receive. Something else occurred to me only after my selection arrived. An audio book is much easier to enjoy while writing code or working on graphics than a paperback. My hands and eyes were freed up for work while I listened and I found a new respect for audio books.

Signing up, selecting, ordering
Even though I was testing with a free month in order to write this review, I had a charge on my credit card because my discount code was invalid or I wrote the wrong one down, perhaps. Not only was I able to call the company, which is less and less an option these days, but the problem was not one for long. The first person I spoke with transferred me to someone else who quickly resolved the problem. It felt like a small company which is refreshing when you just need a small mistake fixed quickly. Anyway, beyond that, my signup process was pretty quick and easy. The process involved three basic steps. The first is to choose the plan that fits your reading/listening needs and budget.

Once your choice is made, they throw a form at you. It’s really not that bad, though. For the most part, this is just all your shipping and billing addresses, name, any special discount codes, username and password, etc. I had this one filled out in about a minute.

The last step to get all signed up was to enter in my credit card information and agree to the terms of service.

Using the service to get and return books
Once I had an account set up, using the service was a little frustrating at first, only because I kept searching for stuff that I’m guessing doesn’t exist as an audio book like any of the O’Reilly stuff. It makes sense but like I said, that’s mostly all I read. Eventually, I searched for Douglas Adams, which brought back all of his books that I’ve read and a few more selections. I searched and tried browsing for other stuff. Browsing is not as useful as the search, but I find that true for most product-centric sites.

After picking out the original, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I waited for it to show up and within a few days, it was in my mail box. As I mentioned before, I found that I could easily listen and write code at the same time, so I was able to get through the whole thing rather quickly. A few days after pulling the CDs out of the packaging, I put them right back in, re-sealed it, and dropped it in the mail. A few more days, and I received an email to let me know it was safely back at BooksFree.com.

Is it worth the price?
In America, there’s no doubt that the economy is hurting and most people are keeping a tighter grip on their money. In such an economy, will a service like this do well? The fact is that there are lots of luxury items and services still doing just fine in our economy, and this could very well be one of them. The trick is to offer something that is still valuable enough to the consumer that they’ll opt to keep it over some other luxury when trimming the fat from their spending. And it doesn’t hurt if the cost is tempting. Originally, I was wondering why I’d ever want to pay $23 for one book a month. It’s the one-at-a-time plan, but I assumed that with shipping and the time to enjoy the book, etc., I’d only ever get one book a month out of the deal. Assumptions are often wrong, which is why I wanted to actually get and return a book. For me, the whole process, including enjoying the book, ate up about nine days. If you wanted to, then, you could probably get 3 books a month out of the deal, making the rentals cost about $7.50 per book to rent. Of course, moving up to the two-at-a-time plan for $27.49, you could probably enjoy 6 books per month for about $4.58 each. Additionally, a family who all enjoys books could benefit quite a bit from the six-at-a-time price plan. It’s still not the most appealing idea when you could always pop into the library and check out books, but if the audio book selection is better, that might make a difference, as well as the obvious benefit of not having to leave the house. I like any service that makes things easier for me and I’ve already pointed out my new respect for audio books, but should you use the service? If the convenience is important and you like to enjoy more than a couple books per month, I think it’s worth a try.

Tag: books

How To Sell Your Old Video Games Online

Sell Old Games Online

Buy and Sell Anything Online

Conclusions

Booksfree is Like Your Online Library