Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube, along with my friend
and fellow full-time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses from the ground up.
We also have a weekly zoom call and private discord for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash use book guide to join the channel and gain
access to the full length podcast zoom call and private discord today.
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up, everybody?
Welcome in another episode, resellers mindset podcast, Mike here alongside Johnny.
Today is going to be a very fun, interesting topic.
And we're going to talk about basically using the tools, the platform allows
you to use to increase your sales.
Right?
So with Amazon, I'm the Amazon guy.
Johnny is the eBay guy with Amazon.
Really the tools Amazon gives you as a platform isn't the best, but there are
softwares that Amazon lets the software to get access to their API, which in turn you
can use to increase your business.
So I'm going to let Johnny take it away with eBay.
I know that we were kind of talking a little bit about this before the call and kind
of the decision to promote listings or not promote listings.
And before you say anything, it's like, I feel like there's one side is like
completely against it, like I shouldn't have to pay to for my items to be seen
and sell and then people like myself and you are on the other side where, Hey,
if I got to pay an extra, you know, five, 10% to have my items seen and actually
sell, then that's just the cost of doing business.
So take us away here.
Yay.
And yes, I'm on the promoted bandwagon.
Um, as far as the exact percentage to promote it, I'm going to leave
that to your discretion.
Um, I would say whatever you can afford to and still maintaining some profit
for yourself would be ideal.
What that magical number is to you.
That's for you to decide.
And so promoted listings, what they do essentially is you give them a
percentage and they will raise where your placement is on items of similar
ilk when somebody is typing, typing on eBay, like let's say you're searching
for the Flintstones book and there's 10 of them, right?
So instead of position eight at 0%, you, even though you did everything right
on eBay and as to the other 10 people, it may be to position three.
If you go up to like 5% promoted as a, for instance, now you pay a little
bit more percentage wise, you may get up to that number one slot.
Um, what's too much to maintain number one again, I'm going to tell you to use
your discretion there.
Um, when you're making very little money, it's probably too much percentage wise.
Now, no, no way before we, before you continue on down the rabbit hole, I'm
going to, I'm going to play devil's advocate here.
So you're saying I have the perfect listing on eBay.
Yeah.
All the item descriptions, everything, you know, 10 photos, at least
everything's the perfect listing and you come along with the same item.
All you gots the title.
Sure.
And you're going to promote at 15% that your listing is going to appear to the
customers before my listing, which is done correctly, you're just going to be
up there because you're willing to give eBay a cut of your money.
Yes.
So I would have a inferior listing to yours.
Um, you may hold position number two, but because I'm paying eBay more money,
you're, I'm going to hold position number one in theory.
And let's say the other guys were not promoting you and I were, you're paying
5%, I'm paying 15%, your listing is better, but I'm paying more money.
I'm probably going to win as far as placement goes.
You see, you're basically saying that it's pay to win.
I am saying that, uh, or it's paid a bleed through the nose.
Um, because if you're listing a $20 book and you're giving them 15%
promoted for instance, you're clearing very little of that $20 sale.
Is there a limit on how many promoted listings they'll put at the top of the
page?
Like say if it's like a really common DVD, right?
And, uh, there's 300 sellers and 200 of them are promoting.
Like, are you always going to see all of the promoters before the organic or do
they like limited at some point?
Like I'm only going to see like maybe three promoted before an organic or I
don't know.
Well, if you're unpromoted, you may not even show up at all.
You may be on page four for whatever reason with all the junk and like, oh,
there, there I am.
Look at me.
Um, as far as a limit goes, I'm unsure if they cap it at, okay, only the top
10 promoted or at the top, everybody else gets rank and filed.
However, I'm not sure how it works, like how that exactly works.
I'm sure there's some rhyme or reason that may change from update to update
because algorithm stuff.
Um, but that's not to say the pay to win people, higher promoted people are
always going to be up there at number one, just odds are higher is what I, is
exactly what I'm saying.
I'm not saying it's a written in stone.
There's just a lot of unknowns about eBay.
And like I was just mentioning before, every update, the knowns become unknown
again, cause things change and the deck gets reshuffled.
I promote all my stuff on eBay, the little bit I have, uh, I, I, for me, uh,
you know, being a solely Amazon seller, uh, there's just cost of businesses, like
it's cost of doing business.
Like you have to figure out a way to get that extra three to 10%, whatever
you're comfortable promoting at, because at the end of the day, everybody
else is going to do it that wants to get their stuff to sell, so it's going to
be like, if I switch this into the Amazon world, it's when people yell at me about
undercutting prices, buy a penny.
Well, if the buy box is going to go to me for a penny, then I'm going to undercut
all day long and people will, oh, you're creating an environment where everything's
tanking well, if I don't do it, Johnny's going to do it.
If me and Johnny ain't going to do it, Bob's going to do it.
Like there's, there's always somebody else that wants to get the, I guess, upper,
I think we have to expand, like if I don't do it, and you can't, you can't do it.
accept the fact that at the end of the day, Johnny, we're like, we're business enemies, right? Like,
you're my competitor. It's like, that's exactly it. We are everybody's competitors, right? Yeah,
we can all sit down, kumbaya and everything like that. But at the end of the day, like,
everybody wants to make the money and not everybody's stuff is going to sell, especially
if it's something, you know, that's more unique and might take a while to sell. Are you willing
to not get the sale because you don't want to promote an item for 5%. And that's like,
that's an honest question. Like you, that stuff may never sell because you think that eBay's,
eBay's ripping you off because now you got to promote it 2% at least. And it's like,
listen, the fees are always going to go up. They're never going to go down. You have to figure out
ways to get margin back in your business and promoted listings. If you're an eBay seller,
I know there's people out there. I don't promote and I'm making trillions. Okay, you are a unicorn
out there in the world of unicorns. It's just, I think you're selling bars of gold. I'm going to
say you don't need to promote if you're selling bars of gold. Most common eBay sellers, everything
sellers, even some of the more popular niches like media, clothing, shoes, their the saturation
is higher than it's ever been. You have, I personally believe you have to promote if you're
going to sell media on eBay. I don't, I don't think there's any, I think you still can have a business,
but you're going to need lots and lots of listings and lots and lots of quality items to get traffic
to your listings. I don't think, you know, you can have a junk eBay store, right? Maybe you're
somebody that sells media and you list everything you get and you don't promote. I think you get
into water. I think you sell nothing ever. Right. There's two ways to go on eBay. You can go
high ASP, low small store or smaller store, or you can go high volume with low margin.
You just need to list so many, like you were saying, like a lot. Because the main thing in media,
no matter which way, well, at least on the volume end, it's about multi-quantity orders. That's
where you're going to make your money because your prices are so cheap. I want that. I want that. I
want that. The prices are so good. Everybody wants a deal. If you're the low man, you got all the
goods. I mean, hey, why not? Versus the higher end guy, the guy selling all East Impress books.
That's his store, East Impress, right? Well, he's selling, I don't know, $100 plus books.
He doesn't need as many sales as the volume guy, but maybe they're making the same. It's just the
volume guy selling like 30 items a day and East Impress guy selling two, and they're making the
same amount of money. I know this is fact, and I know you're, at least I hope you're going to agree
with my next statement is that eBay would be a better platform if the listing that was done the
best showed up at the top of the search results. It used to be that way. And yes, I do agree with
you. Promoted listings are fairly new. I think they're less than five years old. I think it's
maybe two years, maybe three that they've had promoted listing. It used to not be a thing.
Now that it is a thing, it's again, going back to the word competitor here, it's become a more
competitive market. Because the more tools eBay gives us or Amazon gives us, the more competitive
environment it has to be because you got to master something else now and dial it in exactly. You
also got to know your market. The clothing seller may not have to promote as high as the media
seller as a, for instance, maybe the clothing seller has to pay less. The media guy has to pay
more even though the media guy's items are worth less, but that's just the name of that category.
That's the game you got to play. What do you say to the person that's like, I don't know, maybe
they've been selling on eBay for a while before promoted listings started. Maybe they're stuck in
their ways, they're stubborn, and they say, I'm not going to pay eBay an extra 3% for promoted
listings. Maybe they're just setting their ways. How would you go about convincing somebody like
that to try out promoted listings? Exactly how I'd word it. I would say give it a three-month
cycle at a percentage that you're comfortable giving away right now. If you don't like it,
dial it back or turn it off. Give it a solid three months. Here's a good experiment for you
as far as figuring out where your listings are currently ranking. I would take 10 common items.
They don't have to be gold items. Search on a different web browser like incognito mode or go
to your friend's house and search on their computer for those 10 items and see where you're
ranking as far as where it's sorting your items. Then look at the people that are ranked higher
than you. Why is that? Is it their title structure? Maybe you can glean some ideas to help your
listings, but you can also extrapolate maybe they're just promoting higher than I am and what is that
promoted percent at? Maybe I'm under promoting. That's why I can't give you exact numbers because
what works for me and my stuff because I'm vintage. I sell some newer stuff too, but I know where to
dial that in at for me. I can't tell you if you're the textbook guy what you need to do because books
just like clothing, there's all kinds of different books. It really depends. If you're not an
exterior and everything bookseller, I can't help you. There's no way for me to even start to help
you. I'm putting you on the spot with everything today. Sure. You have 5%. 5% is what we're going
to promote at. Would it be better to promote your listings at 5% or run a sale for 5% off?
I would choose promotion over the sale, honestly. I'm just curious. I was just curious what your
take was there. Speaking of sales, sales are good. I've talked to other book and media sellers.
Percents don't perform as well in media on eBay as buy something, get something for free does.
Now, I'm public with this, so I don't mind sharing it in my other groups. I do two for two. You buy
two items, you get two items free. That sounds much better to a customer than, I don't know,
a 10% off sale. I think you're right because you would argue that because we already just said you
could have the best listing out there and you would even argue you could have the best price out there.
The promoted listing will always show up even if they're charging $100 and their
promotion at 100% is going to charge up over years that you're charging one penny for because
they're promoting theirs and you're not promoting. Right, I think so. You may be position number two,
but if they're paying, I don't know, 80% promoted, how do you compete with that?
They're probably losing money at 80% to be fair because that's just the promoted fees. There's
other fees in addition that eBay tax on than just promoted. You got to keep that in. You got to know
your numbers. We talk about that a lot. You got to know your numbers, right? That implies to the
promoted percent that you're going to give eBay because that tax on. For the guy that's not
promoting or programming it, I don't know, the standard, what is it now, 2%? 2%, yeah.
Let's say everybody else, let's say the market's at 8% and you're at two. You're not at the market
value, but most every other seller is. Yeah, there's some guys that are just set in their ways
like we were saying that are at zero. You're going to rank above the zero guys. Maybe you did a better
listing, so maybe you're going to rank a little bit higher than the promoted guys. The guys
on the upper echelon as far as percent, I still think they're going to be above you at the end
of the day. I still think that people, when they're searching for something to buy online,
are highly likely to just click the first result they see. They don't even understand that it's a
promoted listing. They're not even going to price shop around. If there's 100 copies of the same
thing and they search for that specific item, maybe they're searching for the Halloween DVD.
And the first one that pops up, the price seems decent. They're just clicking on it and buying
it. I think a lot of resellers, because a lot of us are cheapos, we like to shop deals,
like when we shop for something on eBay as an eBay seller, we scroll through the listings and we think
that customers do the same thing. I would argue it's the complete opposite. I think customers
are clicking through one of the first three that they see and that's it. I know that you can say,
oh, you got to at least be on the first page. I think you got to be on the top half of the first
page of 10 results only. You got to at least be on page one at least to have a hope and a prayer.
Yeah. I think I know like, oh, I don't want to pay. Like honestly, if you don't,
this is a hot take coming in here, but I really don't care. If you don't have five to 10% margin
in your business to promote, the game ain't for you. You're doing it wrong. The reselling game
ain't for you. I mean, the reselling business thrives on high margins, right? That's how a lot
of us make a lot of our money. If you can't squeeze out an extra seven, 8% to actually sell your items,
unfortunately, I don't want to hear, listen, we don't care. I don't want to hear no complaining
about no sales because this tool is a proven way to have your items rank higher. Yes, it's pay to
win. Somebody get tissues for the people yelling out there right now that I'm never going to promote,
it's more fees. Guess what? That's the reality of the game we are playing. It's perfectly fine if
you don't want to do it, but I can't expect the same results of somebody that's promoting all
their stuff at X%. That's just the reality of it. Now here's some different perspective
since we're talking about searching on eBay. So yeah, you do the search thing and then you
filter or use left-hand navigation. Hey, I want just the guys with free shipping. So the guy at
50% that's charging shipping, he's going to get filtered out. He's going to go away.
But like you were saying, how many people are actually using left-hand navigation or filtering
versus the ones that are? The other thing is the guys that are at zero promoted, not promoting at
all, we're not saying you're going to get zero sales altogether. We're just saying it's a very
uphill battle for you versus the guys that are. I think if you're at zero, you really need to be in
the high volume game or you need to have no competitors. So really rare, rare stuff.
Then I could see an argument for not using promoted in those two scenarios, but even the
volume guys, I still think you need to promote at the minimum of two. But if you're the super rare
guy, maybe you don't need to promote. If you've got the one copy of whatever this is,
I'll make the statement that you don't really need to promote.
Yeah, I think you're right. I think there are certain business models that can get away with
it, but the actuality of probably 95% of the people listening to this is we sell in categories
where there's lots of other people. We're not selling super rare items. So I think
you, I think everybody needs at least, give it a week. Even if you don't want to do Johnny B's
crazy three month trial to see if you can make the Marines, the eBay Marine Corp. Give it a week,
give it a weekend and just test it out. And you should have the margin anyway. I know, listen,
I sell on Amazon, they take all your money. So me giving eBay an extra 5, 10%. Hey, you ain't got
nothing on Jeff over there, right? Like, I think a lot of people just, like you said, eBay has
changed a lot over recent years, just didn't used to be a thing. So everybody thinks, oh my God,
eBay is just trying to get more money. Well, they are a business that would like to make as much
money as possible like any other selling platform. It's an option. You're not forced to. It's an
option, boys and girls. Yeah, but see, the problem is with you saying it's an option is all the sissies
come out and whine that they don't get sales, but they don't promote nothing. So like, yeah,
that's fair. Yeah, that's the argument that it's unfair because it's pay to win. And I feel like I
shouldn't have to pay to promote my items because I, you know, I shouldn't have to. This is unnecessary.
It's unfair to me. Why do I got to pay to have my items seen? Right. So here's another tool eBay has,
sending offers. Some people believe in sending offers. If you don't have offers on, we can't be
friends. Unless we're talking about that situation where you're selling something you know is going
to sell, it's highly in demand. I think even if you have no intentions on taking an offer,
you have offers turned on because I solely believe and I don't have like solid, you know, hard evidence,
but there's been cases where I got offers on the item and I declined it or I countered and then the
items sold for full price right away. So I do think offers play some kind of activity in the
algorithm for those items. I think everybody should have offers on and I don't want to hear somebody
send me, I'm tired of people sending me one nickel offers on my items. Who cares?
You're not taking their nickels. You counter it.
Yet again, we don't care, right? Like you have to have this on. So it not only does it boost your
items, you're going to be able to get sales. I take offers all the time. Oh, well, why are you
taking five hours less for an item? Well, I got it for a dollar. Like why am I trying to hang on
and get every penny out of every item? You are going to go away real quick as a reseller playing
that game. Right. And on offers, they'll send you a, well, I can get it here for blah. I can get it.
I don't really interact with these people that send long winded messages of why they think it's
priceless way. I just send them, I just, I just focus on the dollars. They sent me this.
That's not really what I'm comfortable with. So I'm going to counter it. They're going to
that's not really what I'm comfortable with. So I'm going to counter it this. And I actually,
in that little chat box there, I sent them a link for my coupon. If they want a better deal,
there's a better deal. It's in the coupon. I didn't even think of that. Like that's,
that's kind of like a cheat code, dude. You're spilling secret sauce out here. I've never,
I mean, I don't operate eBay like you. So I don't even, I never even created a coupon code in my
life, but like that right there is like, that's kind of like the tip of the day, right? We need
like a, you can take this deal or you could use my coupon for the better deal. Yeah. It's like the
came more, let's make a deal. Let's make a deal. Came more blue light special, right? Like everybody
runs, right? Oh my God, there's a special. So that kind of covers what we want to talk about
on the eBay front. I do think offers and promoted listings are permanent place in my eBay business,
even if they keep raising the minimum, the 3% to 4% to five, but honestly, everywhere you look,
go search on Google for any product. And as you want to see sponsored, everything sponsored,
you pay for placement, any company, anywhere, everything has an option where you can pay to be
basically seen more often. That's how you win. Yeah. All right. Amazon side of things. I kind
of already hit on the topic of like, Amazon lets us use software to our advantage. Now these
softwares can turn you into a monster, right? You can become lazy. You can become, I see it all the
time. Yeah. Right. You just rely on the software, right? You just have a scanning app, right? Whether
that's, whether it's for media, you know, or it's for other items, right? So we got like scouting,
Scott IQ, seller, and for anything else, you just become so complacent with just looking at your
phone and not analyzing the data yourself. You're just trusting what the software says.
I think this is a huge problem in the Amazon space. A lot of people just, well, my phone said I
should buy it. So I buy it. And then they get home and it was the wrong listing or something like
that. So the tools that were allotted as Amazon sellers are amazing. They allow us as a single
person operation to scale so much faster than say an eBay seller like Johnny. It's given us all the
data in front of us for exactly what's going on on the platform. How often this item sells, how much
it's selling for exactly how much you're going to make after fees. It takes the guesswork out of
everything you have to, I understand that, you know, myself, even me myself, right? Like when I
started, I didn't have a fancy printer. I didn't have a listing software. I did it all through my
phone and my computer through, you know, seller central. I do think there is some merit to doing
that. Like when you start out, but I do think now it's more important than ever because I feel like
people don't have an attention span like we used to, right? Like we used to try something and you
would give it a while, right? To see if it works. Now it's like, if you don't get results and you
start something new, like a reselling business, like if you don't get results in the first probably
month, like you're out, dude, you're checked out already. Like, and Amazon lets you have these,
have the software that makes it easy. But the turnaround time with your money on Amazon is kind
of what holds people up. But just on the topic of like different softwares, like you have to reprice,
you have to undercut, buy a penny. Your conditions mean nothing on Amazon. I talk about this as like,
you know, one of my top five things is your conditions don't matter. It's all about price.
And unfortunately, the reality is things tank on Amazon. That's the way the world who's to say,
you send something in on Amazon and Johnny B doesn't come. He doesn't know what he's doing.
He listed at, you know, he's losing money. He lists something at five hours. It's actually a $50 item.
Well, the next person comes along and does the same thing, the same thing. Then your stuff never,
it can be a frustrating battle, but taking advantage of the tools Amazon lets us have,
like, I think about like an eBay app where you can actually see, like, you scan a barcode out in the
thrift store. And it shows you how many times this item sold on eBay in the past 90 days,
what the average selling price was in the past 90 days for those items, like something like that.
That's what we have on Amazon. That's why I love selling on Amazon in comparison to eBay,
it's because we have all the data in front of us. So it's almost foolproof when you buy these things,
because we're spoiled. I say it all day long compared to eBay sellers, Amazon sellers are spoiled.
Hell of a lot easier, I'll say that because you can, in a lot of it's math, you have mathematical
proof if it sells X amount of times, and there's only Y amount of listings, and I'm within that
threshold, it's going to sell, right? Unless there's a huge influx to come along, which is low,
but yeah, unless you're in textbooks. It's the same way with eBay when it comes to,
like if we make the comparison of Amazon to eBay with repricing, Amazon, it's all automated, right?
And yes, you can set up like, you know, date buckets for sales, right? So you can have it,
if something's 90 days, it goes on sale for 10%. But with Amazon, the competition is so heavy
that these repricers, it's around the clock. You undercut a penny, you get undercut by a penny.
20 times a day. And that's on the low end, like there's repricers that don't have a limit.
So it reprices infinitely every time you're not the lowest price. The one I use is only 20 times
a day. So if you think about that, you have 5,000 items, 20 times a day, you're undercutting by at
least a penny. That's how much in margin you lose every single day in your business if all of your
items are going down in price. But- 20 cents a day, 20 cents a day, 20 cents a day, yeah.
Yeah. What's 20 cents times 5,000? Too much.
$1,000. Yeah, a thousand bucks.
Thousand bucks a day. If all your items were repriced down one penny, you had 5,000 items.
That is the reality of selling on Amazon. That is the equivalent to the cost of doing business
of eBay promoted listings. If you're selling on Amazon, repricing is the equivalent of promoted
listings because the only way 95% of the sales come through Amazon is the buy box. The only way
you get the buy box is the lowest priced in most cases. You ain't got it. You ain't ever going to
sell. I mean, we can sit here and say there's some sell through on eBay, but you being a person that's
had the buy box, not had the buy box, you know the difference. I mean-
I'm in it right now, man. I'm like, I want the glory days back. Those are good times.
Yeah, I mean, it's so different. I mean, the same quantity, instead of doing like $100 a day,
you're doing maybe $100 a week. And that's if you have like thousands in there or
maybe 200 if you have thousands in there or maybe in the course of two weeks. It's so slow
because it's well, like kind of like placement on eBay. Everybody's on one listing, right?
The guys with the buy box, they're not paying anything for this, but it's equivalent promoted
listings, right? So they're going to rank higher on you every time because there's only one listing
and you're expecting a customer to go find your listing amongst 50 other people and choose you.
Not on Amazon.
I'm sorry. It's not happening.
No, there is no little scroll your page on Amazon. Like they bury you. If you're not the buy now
button, you ain't getting found unless you're the lowest price and you're merchant fulfilling it
yourself. Even then, it's a grind. It's completely- But I do think at the end of the day,
kind of reverting the full circle here is in the reselling business, these things we're talking
about, it's the cost of doing business. If this means you have to factor this in to your overall
spreadsheet you have or something that breaks down all your fees, it's got to happen. I don't think
there's a way forward. If you're not willing to be the lowest price on Amazon, if you're not willing
to promote your listings on eBay, I don't see a path forward. You might be doing decent now,
but I think it's only going to get more competitive, especially everybody talks about,
oh, things are slowing down. The comments coming to hit the earth in seven days.
What happens here is the people that rely on eBay and Amazon get more aggressive because they say,
okay, well, instead of 5%, I'm going to do 15%. And I'm willing to pay the 15% because I'm still
going to turn my inventory, keep the cash flow flowing. That's like one of my patented sentences.
Reselling, you got to have cash. You can't just keep all your stuff sitting around your house.
I mean, even if it's just you and you ain't got nobody else and you just got a house full of stuff,
you got to sell the stuff. You're not even reselling at this point if you're just storing
it in your house. And if that means you got to pay an extra 15%, if somebody came into you today,
Johnny, and said, what's your number for it? What's your listing price on everything you have? And
you're like 10 grand. And they're like, well, how about I'll take 15% off and I'll buy it all.
You're not going to think twice. That's an instant yes. And I don't think people realize
that's the power of some of these tools. It's like, yeah, you're paying an extra 10%, 15%,
but that means your items are going to sell. Here's a perfect scenario. Let's say you got
a library book or a local pickup, both free, cost you zero, other than time, maybe a little bit of
gas, $50 item, guy sends you an offer for 25. Are you taking that, Mike? Are you taking that deal,
Mike? Every single time. There you go. Dude, I'm not even countering. I'm not even countering that.
Yes. And that's a good point. If you counter, you run the risk of them not doing anything.
I can admit when I first started eBay and the best offer thing, I would counter every single time.
Them days are long gone, buddy. I'm taking my money and I'm running.
Yeah. Unless it's super low or like, I may make money or may not. If there's a question mark there,
then I'll counter. But any other time, because our cost of goods are so low in media.
Yeah. For anything though, like almost even if you break even and that item's been sitting there,
can't you go redeploy that same money and make it better buying decision today than you could
for that item that's been sitting there for a month, two months, three months? Absolutely.
I used to get mad at low offers. I did. I found it insulting because I did all this work, right?
And they sent me an offer for half of what I was asking for. How dare they? You know what?
Thank you, ma'am. I'll take your money. I got a hot take. If I had an item sitting for a month
and I paid $15 for it and someone offered me and maybe I had it listed for 30,
and it's been sitting for a month and someone offered me 10 bucks, I'm taking it.
Yeah. I think there is a point where in a reselling business, you have to take the loss,
take the money you get from the loss and make a better decision in the future.
Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I have probably a couple of thousand junk items on my eBay store
that I should not have listed on eBay to begin with. I'll take really low offers that maybe even
some of the negative. Well, that's not true because my shipping pays for it. But anyway,
that's either here or there. It happens on Amazon though, right? An item tanks to my minimum price
and it's basically break even. Do I get all- Break even or pay to have it liquidated? One of the two.
Do I get all upset? Like, oh my God, no. I think to myself, well, it's gone. It's out of my inventory.
That three bucks will be in my bank account when I paid for the item. The next DVD I buy for $3
will be a much better one and it'll sell for more money. But I think people do get too offended
by offers and- This is business. It ain't personal as a wise gangster used to say.
That is like, I mean, that should have been the title of this, right? That would have been
a more appropriate title because we're all businesses competing together on these platforms.
If there's an advantage you can have over the next person, if it costs you X percent,
then factor that in. Maybe you stop buying the $10 junk. Maybe you go up to the $20 stock.
And a lot of it is like, unfortunately, a lot of it is the garbage that people don't promote
and it never sells. So what do you think is going to happen?
So yeah, let's say Mike and I were on the same listing and I'm doing him wrong, but I'm
saying, no, I'm not. It's business and he's not going to take it personally. Well, he might,
but in a joking way. And I make the sale and he may have to wait another extra week before
he has to does. He gives me a ring on the call. Damn you, Johnny.
Do you know how much trash probably gets talked about me because I undercut Amazon prices by a
penny and I tell every single person to do the same thing. I know for a fact there's people out
there that are like, the used book guy is stupid and he's destroying the Amazon marketplace. I'm
thinking to myself, there's how many huge booksellers out there that do this and have been
doing it since day one. I guess I'm just a scapegoat because I'm actually out there saying,
yeah, go undercut everything. You're a public figure that people can engage with.
And I just embrace it. I'm just like, yeah, go undercut everybody, buy a penny the hell with
them. Who cares? Do you want to make money or do you want to store your items at the Amazon
warehouse? And it's the same with eBay. Do you want to make money or do you want to store the
items at your crib and look at them all day long and smell the stinky sweaty socks that you're
trying to sell for way too much money because you never went back and seen if somebody else came on
the... I'm guilty of this. I never go back and look at my listings after I listed them on eBay to see
if somebody else has come on the listing for cheaper. I only do that with higher priced items.
And even then it's not a proactive. It's just, I got a spare minute. I'm thinking about this right
now. Let me go check. But it's not something to my routine really. Yeah. So all of us are like,
hey, we'll list it and forget it. And then all of a sudden you don't know how many other people
have listed that same item for less than you. And the argument would be, well, at least if you were
promoting that item, you'd still be at the top of the search, even though they have a lower price.
I mean, right there, it kind of just blows up. Cheaper items? I don't even care. I don't care.
I listed it and it's done. Now, if there's a change or an update that eBay has comes along,
then I have to go then re-edit all my listings, which does happen every couple of years or so.
Everybody has to go in and update their item specifics because they change things around.
That's the only case in point where I might reevaluate what I put in there.
I'm going to give you one last eBay topic to cover and I'm only going to give you like
60 seconds to explain yourself. A tool eBay has that I use, but I think I use it kind of
sort of in the right way and a lot of people don't, is the Sell Simular Tool. 60 seconds,
you're on the clock, every second counts. Go. All right. When you click the Sell Simular
button, it will copy a listing that you previously listed. So most of the items just fixed are filled
out for you. So let's just say you had a generic romance novel and you had another one you wanted
to list, you would hit Sell Simular and most of the item specifics are filled out. And it helps if
it's the same publisher because it's even less to fill out and it helps even more if it has the same
author from the same publisher. So less you have to fill out, but more quickly you can get done with
your listing. And done. What about the dark side? Say if I got my pile of 10 things and they're all
different things and they're all different things and I'm just hitting Sell Simular off of other
people's listings on eBay, not my own. I wouldn't trust it because you don't know what's right and
what's wrong with that actually double checking. The only person you can really trust is yourself
because you know the kind of quality work you put into your listing. So I would never, unless
you're just starting and maybe you'll try to correct as least as possible and hope they did a good job.
And without that, I would only trust yourself because you know the kind of quality you put
into your listing. So Sell Simular off yourself. Now for the multi different thingies, well,
you got genres. There's your base point. So okay, it's a history book. I've sold a history book
before. Let me take that one and the least amount of work I can do, I'm going to have to put some
work in it because I'm not exactly the same. Sure. But you save yourself some time. So you can go to
your active page, type in the word history, assuming it wasn't your title, find another history book
and sell off that. So templates, I don't like to use templates. So similar is not necessarily a
shortcut. I'm here to tell you that I do it. And most of the times I wind up spending a lot more
time fixing the broken listing that I hit sell similar off of the other specifics. And I want
to waste more time than if I just would have created the listing from scratch 100%. So that's
just, don't think you're saving yourself time or doing yourself any favors because listen, most
people, unfortunately, they don't know what they're doing. They don't know what they're putting. I
can't tell you how many books I listed that the years are wrong. The author's wrong. The genres,
everything is wrong. The ISPN is wrong. Why is the ISPN wrong? Yeah, it's a deep dark hole. So
that's going to do it for the episode. Take advantage of the tools eBay and Amazon gives you.
Even if it does seem kind of scammy, pay to win, promoted listings, repricing and losing $1,000
a day, like we talked about, right? These are the costs of having a business. You are a business
owner, whether you do this part-time, full-time, no time, all the time, you are reselling, you have
a business, right? You have to pay taxes, file taxes. You are a business owner. I know it sounds
crazy, right? You have a business, your little reselling business, your little reselling
warehouse like Johnny over there. Treat it like a business. You'll get the results, use the tools,
even if that means factoring in an extra 10% of your margin going out the door, that's fine.
Lower your buy cost by 10%. All of a sudden you're winning more, you're making a lot more money. So
as always, we appreciate you watching or listening and we will see you in next week's episode.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast. Today's full
episode and all previous episodes are available to all YouTube members along with the weekly
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