had a business idea about how to exploit asymmetries between paperbackswap.com and other online used booksellers (like half.com). paperbackswap is an online marketplace where - after someone requests it - you mail off one of your books for one credit, and then can redeem that credit for any other book in the system. paperbackswap's website is surprisingly transparent about what books just entered their system (here's the most recent thirty books posted), so a comparison between books newly-available on paperbackswap and books requested on ebay's sell it now feature might net you some cash on an ongoing basis if the sell-it-now price is above the $3.79 cost of one paperbackswap credit. lots of programming languages can webscrape the data off of both of these sites quite easily (here are the tools). now there's only about 50,000 books with a pre-order (more than 90% are above that $3.79 floor, click here to view them if you have an ebay account), so that might not result in a profit too often - although this avenue is ideal, since you have a guaranteed buyer and the paperbackswapper could be instructed to ship directly to that buyer. the alternative is to figure out a price point or some statistical model where you can predict the probability of being able to sell any paperbackswap.com book on another used book website and average more than the $3.79 + shipping. for example, perhaps an algorithm should snap up any book newly posted on paperbackswap.com that's also for sale on half.com by four sellers for a minimum price of $20. this is riskier, since you wouldn't have a guaranteed sale and you'll end up with a closet full of books while you wait for buyers. still reading? let me get you started. here's the r code to download the 100 most recent books posted..
..copy your results into the half.com search, and you'll find (unsurprisingly) most are for sale for $0.75. steal this if you like, but tell me how it goes.
can't believe the colombian circus was free.
toured some embassy open houses with kirsten. here's the line for japan..
..and concert outside equatorial guinea. notice the full african security guard garb.
advise not wearing such an awesome hat if you don't want strangers taking your picture.
think i saw birds fucking. is birdy-style doggy-style? too bad it's not mid-air dragonfly-style.
went to the exchange counter with seven hundred dollars and walked away with this.
5/10