Here’s the March 2026 breakdown of all the pennies I’ve collected from the internet. I’ve organized the income sources into bigger categories and then provided details from each source.

Affiliate Commissions: $1,091.10

TikTok Shop Affiliate: $344.00

I have been creating TikTok Shop Affiliate videos since Sept 2024 and seeing steady sales. The process involves quick reviews or demonstrations of products that are sold within TikTok shop and linking them within the TikTok video. Results vary wildly depending on the product, the day, the month, the season, and the algorithm. This month took a huge dive in terms of views and sales. (link to my TikTok account)

I’ve provided a screenshot of my top selling products on TikTok Shop this month below.

• Read more about how I made over $19k in commission in the first year of doing TikTok Shop Affiliate.

Etsy Affiliate: $364.39

The primary place where I promote Etsy affiliate links is through Pinterest. I’ve had a Pinterest account since forever, so my account is already full of craft tutorial links. I post my affiliate links to crochet and quilt patterns, and these have generated the most sales for me. (link to my Pinterest account)

Amazon Affiliate: $378.53

I’ve been an Amazon affiliate since the early days of my blog and have always recommended various supplies for art and lettering. However, the bulk of my income now comes from on-site commissions, where product review videos get added directly to the product page by Amazon. If someone watches the video on the product page and makes a purchase, then I get the affiliate commission. Light start here, since I got approved for this sub-program late in the month. (link to my Amazon Storefront)

Benable: $4.18

Benable a website that has its own audience and search functionality where you can link to various products and websites in collections. The affiliate income is baked into the platform when someone clicks on your featured product and makes a purchase. Probably the lowest friction income source since you don’t need an existing audience. (link to sign up for Benable)

Other Affiliate Programs: $0

Working on generating links with ShopMy but have not made any affiliate sales here. However, this platform is promising because I get to generate affiliate links with a chrome plug-in for lots of different shops. (link to join ShopMy)

Products: $92.35

Paper Goods Etsy Shop: $13.19

I sell bookmarks here mostly, with the occasional digital download. (link to Etsy shop)

Fiber Goods Etsy Shop: $2.94

Once upon a time, I thought I was going to make scarves and blankets while my baby napped and I could sell them online. And that kind of worked, but not profitably. Listings expired, and then I switched to smaller objects like coasters and cozies, and now I’m mostly selling digital crochet patterns. (link to Etsy shop)

Used Books: $54.99

I list used books for sale using the PangoBooks app. Sales are sporadic. This was a decent month. (link to my PangoBooks shop) This month, I decided to cross-post some of my books that haven’t sold from my PangoBooks store onto ebay to see if they would move, and I was able to sell a handful of books that way.

• Read more about how I use the PangoBooks app to quickly and easily sell used books.

Ebay: $19.89

In the process of listing books for sale on ebay, I realized how quick and easy the ebay app is to use for listing products. I experimented with listing some art supplies and managed to sell a couple! Planning to add more listings next month, especially as sample products come in from being a TikTok Shop affiliate.

Digital Downloads: $0

Too many shops, not enough marketing. (link to crochet pattern shop, link to printables shop)

Print on Demand: $1.34

Once upon a time, I uploaded a ton of designs onto RedBubble. I do not nurture this revenue stream at all right now, and any sales are just a bonus surprise. (link to Redbubble shop)

Content Monetization: $14.19

Mediavine: $8.65

Clearly, this is not a very lucrative income source, since the minimum payout to transfer to a bank account is $100. However, coins are coins, so I’m leaving the ads turned on at my blog. Is it enough to off-set the cost of the website hosting and domain registration? Probably not. But it hosts content that hopefully leads to other affiliate sales. (link to blog)

Instagram Bonus for Posts: $5.47

I have no idea how this was activated or why. I was previously enrolled in an Instagram Reels bonus program, but that has since been discontinued. So I realized that even if I’m only making a few cents per post, the more I post, the more cents I can make. And what’s really crazy is that I can just screenshot my audiobook player, talk about the book a little bit, and create really easy content that way. Also, the more I post about my side hustles, the more views I get. (link to my Instagram)

Facebook Monetization: $0.07

I was randomly approved for Facebook monetization on March 29, so I pretty much only have 3 days of monetized content here. My follower count is crazy small and I have no idea how eyeballs are getting to my posts and reels. However, I’ll be experimenting more here next month as I test out different kinds of content. (link to my Facebook)

Recurring Expenses

No income report is complete without factoring in expenses. I tend to pay annual subscriptions rates for things, so this will just be a recurring list of resources that I use.

Bluehost for blog hosting and domain registration $350/year (check out the blog here)

Flodesk for email marketing $209/year (affiliate link for Flodesk)

Beehiiv for my side hustle diaries $517/year (affiliate link for Beehiiv)

USPS PO Box $210/year

Canva Pro $120/year

Upgrade to a paid membership to get even more juicy details on all the ways I’m making content and generating income.

Introduction

One the easiest used items to sell on the internet is used books. They’re uniformly shaped, there’s nothing to try on, people generally know what they’re looking for, and there’s a super handy barcode on the back for you to use to expedite the listing process. Plus, they’re fairly low-cost to ship using media mail rates (in the United States). Sometimes you’ll see resellers clear out thrift stores (or little free libraries) to source their book inventory, but I’m coming from book selling as a way to clear off my shelves from the PR packages I receive as a book influencer. In this post, I’ll talk about how I receive the books that I ultimately sell, where to list them for sale, and how to package them up.

Where I Get My Books

Sometime around 2021, I started binge reading romance novels. Call it a post-Bridgerton semi-pandemic haze. I wasn’t really creating book content immediately, especially not within my main Instagram feed. However, when an opportunity came up to apply for the Avon influencer program, I took it, and I got in! At that time, they sent about one book in the mail to me per month. As someone who is a reader, but not a book collector, I would take photos of the books, post them in my feed, and then try to figure out how to sell the new books. Keep in mind, these were finished copies of the books, the same as you would find in a bookstore, not Advance Reader Copies (ARCs). ARCs are unfinished copies of books and have a big old disclaimer on the cover saying that they should not be listed for sale. Since then, I’ve been on different publisher influencer teams sporadically and have been grateful for the opportunity to receive free books to showcase as part of my bookish content creation.

An easy, but totally unreliable source for books entering giveaways, especially the ones on Goodreads. (link to Goodread Giveaways page) Publishers use Goodreads to host giveaways of their books, hoping to get the book in front of a larger audience. The probability of winning is really small because there are usually thousands of entries per book, but it’s worth trying anyway. Entering the giveaways is a tedious and somewhat time-consuming process, but I usually do this while I’m sitting on Microsoft Teams meetings during the workday.

As a TikTok Shop affiliate, I have also been able to receive many books as free samples from sellers. Many of the major publishers like Harper Collins, Sourcebooks, and Hachette have storefronts on TikTok Shop and send free product to creators to promote on TikTok. After receiving a free book from this source, I’ll make a video for TikTok, link to the product, and if someone makes a purchase using my link, then I receive a commission. (read more about how I make money on TikTok Shop here) Of course, I can keep the book on my shelf so I can continue to make videos over and over again, but there are times when I have so many books stacked up, that I need to list them for sale to clear out my space.

Where I sell: PangoBooks App

Of all the selling platforms, I have found PangoBooks to be the easiest to use and the one that consistently brings me the most sales. With the quantity of books I have available there, I usually sell about 5 to 7 books per week. The way to use it is to download the app onto your smartphone, register for an account, and start uploading photos of books. I will usually photograph the books, then edit them, and then start the listing. The app integrates a barcode scanning step that will import all the essential book information: title, author, summary, format, weight, etc. You just need to review everything and then set the price. After the book is listed and someone purchases it, you’ll get a notification and an automatically generated shipping label. The buyer pays the shipping fee (unless you have set up free shipping) and the package will ship via USPS Media Mail.

Photography Process

When I’m photographing books to sell, I try to make sure I’m in a well-lit environment and capture the book as clearly as possible. I will also try to photograph any flaws or signs of the condition of the book (such as dents, cracked spines, torn pages, etc). I’ll use a plain white poster board background in front of a window to set the book on top of and a piece of white foam board to help bounce light. After taking the photos with my iPhone, I’ll use an editing app to brighten the pictures or increase the saturation. This helps make the photos stand out among the other books for sale on the platform.

At my absolute laziest, I’ll take the photo within the PangoBooks app on a table lit with softbox lights and white posterboard.

Affiliate link to lighting kit

How the Money Works

On the PangoBooks app, it costs $0 up front to list the book for sale. After the book sells, there’s a platform fee of 20% of the list price (with a $0.40 minimum). Most of the time, the buyer pays the shipping (unless you’ve set the pricing or your store to have free shipping). You get paid 3 days after the item shows as delivered to the customer. For me, this means it’s best to ship out the orders as quickly as possible, so that I can get paid sooner. Once the money clears in the PangoBooks earnings section, you can transfer the money to either Paypal or your bank. You could choose to keep the funds inside your PangoBooks account to buy books with, but we’re trying to side hustle here and earn money, not buy more things we don’t need. I generally transfer the funds to my bank as soon as available.

Shipping Supplies

Label Printing

I usually print my shipping labels on 4×6 inch thermal label paper using my Munbyn thermal printer. Before I purchased a dedicated label printer, I would print with a black and white laser printer onto half-sheet label paper. If you don’t want to purchase label paper, you can print the shipping labels onto plain white paper and use clear packing tape to secure it to your packages.

Packaging Materials

For packing and sending out books, it’s important to protect the books from being bent or dented. I recommend using bubble mailers as a quick and easy way to protect your items. I have also used these heavy duty rigid mailers (which I was gifted by the company to try out) but they’re not as cost-effective as the bubble mailers. I also like to wrap the books with packing paper for extra security.

Overall Income

The income here is totally inconsistent because some months I get a lot of new books that I can list for sale, and some months I don’t have anything to list. Since I’m mostly just trying to get rid of books I got for free, I’m listing them online at very competitive prices. I’ll post the price at around half of the retail price of that book new, and my Pango Shop has a perpetual 25% sale running. After fees, a trade paperback book gets me $5.40 deposited into my bank. There’s also the cost of shipping supplies to consider.

Conclusion

Selling used books online falls into the category of selling stuff you have lying around your house to make an extra buck. I put no upfront investment into this and approached it as a decluttering process from being a book influencer. I have not tried to source books from thrift stores or discount stores, so I really don’t know if it’s worth buying inventory. Sometimes the books don’t sell very quickly, and I just have a huge stack of books taking up space. In some cases, if books aren’t moving and they’re still in my house, I’ll delete the listing and just donate the books to clear up space. At the time of this writing, I’m sitting on 74 books listed for sale in my Pango Shop, and I haven’t made a sale in a couple of weeks. I’m actually testing out listing the same books on a separate platform at the same time, and seeing if the books sell someplace else. This is a tip that clothing resellers share a lot (if you’ve already got the inventory and the photos, list the item on Poshmark, Mercari, Depop, and so on). I’ll come back and share how that experiment is going when/if I make a sale. Overall, if you’ve got extra books lying around that you don’t want (or if you manage to pick up a huge box of super cheap books at a garage sale), selling books online is a pretty low-effort side hustle and I’m definitely going to continue this one.

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