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 used book guy 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 into another episode of Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Mike here alongside Johnny.
And last week, we kind of picked on eBay a little bit.
So this week we're going to pick on Amazon a little bit, right?
Because as a reseller, you hear selling on Amazon.
The first thing that comes to your mind is it's so expensive to sell on Amazon.
The fees are astronomical.
So we're going to give kind of both sides to the story here.
And do we think the fees are worth it or the fees too high?
In our opinion, what kind of comes with the fees to kind of justify it?
So I guess I'll start off here since I'm kind of sort of still the main Amazon guy
of both of us here.
So for me, the big benefit for Amazon over eBay is the convenience of not storing,
packing and shipping and the customer service of all of the items you sell.
So you don't know, I live in an apartment currently.
I'm looking for a house.
Even when I have a house, I still don't want to have a garage full.
Not that there's anything wrong.
You know, there's inventory systems that work great from home.
But I kind of enjoy the pleasure of being able to get some of my time back,
even if that costs more money.
I think this is all a money for time kind of trade off when it comes to selling on
Amazon versus other platforms.
So for me, being in my little penthouse apartment here and I used to be the guy
straight up, I'll tell everybody here.
I had like four of those big plastic totes, not the nice ones.
Like if you're watching on YouTube that Johnny's got behind them.
I had the ones you couldn't really even see into.
I had the worst inventory system, right?
I'd sell a pair of shoes and they're like buried in the bottom of the bin.
They're not bagged.
I find one shoe and I got to keep digging for the other one.
And I remember Dev just like, this is such a chaotic mess.
It was just, it was just chaos.
And when I, when I first like heard of Amazon, I'm like, whoa, wait a minute.
I don't have to keep nothing here.
Right.
I send it all to them and they put it wherever they put it and they ship it.
And, you know, cause at the time I was also working full time at CVS.
So this is another thing I can't get out, you know, and ship as often as a full timer.
You know, if there's a stretch where I'm working 10 days in a row and the
post office doesn't open what I used to do, fun fact, when UPS would come into CVS every day.
So USPS comes in, there goes my packages, right?
I would do the same thing with Dev.
So that when the post office came in to pick up CVS as mail and packages, I would have
my reselling packages because I didn't have time to get to the post office.
So the appeal of not having to store ship customer service, my own items.
At the time, I didn't care what the price was.
You want to charge me 50, 60, 70% of the sale.
I'm perfectly fine with that because right now time is what I have the least of.
And it kind of just developed into a thing where I value my time a lot higher than I used to.
So that's kind of why I enjoy selling on Amazon today, even though the fees are high.
So give me your initial take, maybe when you started on Amazon, because you were eBay
first and the fees on Amazon are like 3X what they are on eBay.
I mean, to me, there was a lot less upfront work in my opinion than Amazon.
It's like I already had books and it's like scan, boot, pack, send, scan, boot, pack, send.
I mean, it doesn't get really any easier, I think, than that unless you don't have to scan, I guess.
You just send whatever in, but you do.
So I think as far as the fees go, it didn't really bother me.
It was really more solving a problem with excess inventory than me worrying about fees.
You're going to get fees no matter what kind of aspect of business you do.
And tacking on, I don't know, $4 on something that I'm going to sell for 12, I clear maybe eight,
get to keep half or something like that.
It just was like, OK, fine.
I still clear money, solves a problem, get my space back.
This is great. I love this.
Because even when I was doing eBay and still doing eBay, by the way, I just accumulated so much.
And yes, for eBay, I don't know what to do with you yet.
So you're going to go in this pile over here.
I'll figure it out later.
And then stumbled across Amazon after I went through the YouTube rabbit hole found you.
And I was like, oh, this is an honest guy.
He actually talks about numbers and learned how to do it honestly through your YouTube.
And then you started weekly calls sometime after.
Or one-on-ones. Yeah, I remember that.
I did a one-on-one with you once.
A long, long time ago.
Do you think that the sell-through rate should affect how much you pay in fees, right?
So like if we compare two items, eBay to Amazon and Amazon has a higher sell-through rate,
there's more eyes on products, there's more people shopping on Amazon than eBay.
Do you think that could justify Amazon charging more in fees because they know they're getting more eyes on your products?
I think that is a healthy trade, honestly.
I'm OK with that.
If it sells, it sells.
It's got to be, man.
Just think about it.
We sell used items, like secondhand items.
Imagine if you were a brand.
Sell-through is all you care about, right?
You're trying to build your brand, build your brand awareness, new products.
So like it might, because I know a lot of resellers are like, well, sell-through, they kind of are an offense about it.
But I just think about it in the terms of the overall platform.
Sell-through and eyes on your products.
If you're a brand or if you're doing some kind of wholesale product, that is way more important than the price.
I think it goes back to the old, well, you are going to hang on to something and try to get every penny or you're going to turn it fast and get some pennies, right?
And I think it kind of goes the same way with the sell-through aspect.
Yeah, I mean, even in the other group, they talk about that you could wait it out for all the money or you can get part of the money now.
I'd rather have part of the money now than wait two years.
I mean, two years is about right for a book on eBay that that's the potential turnaround time.
That's not to say when you list something, you won't sell same day or within 30 days or anything like that.
But if you're listing in bulk, you could be sitting with a book for two years before it sells, maybe even longer, maybe three years.
So accumulating that, you're always going to have to be space conscious of, okay, I have X space now.
How much is, I don't know, one cubic feet of my space worth?
And then compound that for a two-year window.
I mean, there's a lot of little math logistics in there, maybe a little too complicated for some folks.
But you got to value A, your time, B, your storage space, and three, your cash flow.
I mean, we talked about cash flow before.
So how fast can I get my cash to flow back to me kind of deal?
With Amazon, I think it provides a much quicker turnaround.
Even the stuff you have to liquidate, because again, books can't sit, even though we send it in, that it's not 100% guarantee it's going to sell.
All of us have to liquidate six months down the road on most of the stuff.
Some stuff will roll the dice for another six months and eat the long-term storage fee, sure.
But if I can sell the vast majority of it, 80, 85% of it, and got my money back, and even with the race to the bottom,
and I still get my money back because we're in control of where that bottom is, right?
So I can sell my cash flow back to me, and that just—cash flow is king.
You can do all kinds of things with your business with the money that comes back to you.
Okay, well, maybe I get into OA now I've generated enough cash flow,
or hey, maybe I can pay up for more expensive books to then send in again instead of the lower margin things.
It just gives you options with cash flow. I love options.
Do you think people would be more attracted to maybe give Amazon a try if there was just one fee, right?
I mean, I think the difference here, Johnny, you got your storage fees, you got your long-term storage fees,
you got your removal fees, your disposal fees, your liquidation fees. Pick one and figure it out, right?
I don't think—I think the problem is a lot of people see that for the fees for Amazon,
it's like a 12-thing line item, right? There's 12 different line items.
So people are like, oh my God, like the fees are just astronomical.
It makes sense. And maybe if it was just one, like, hey, 50%, and maybe more people wouldn't be kind of pushed away
because they see all the different fees, even though they're minimal, right?
Because we all know storing your stuff at Amazon, like you were just talking about it,
it's like a thousand books for a hundred bucks a month, basically.
And I think to myself, like, that's super cheap. I mean, go buy, go run a storage unit.
Storage units are expensive nowadays. I mean, my 10 by 10s over a hundred bucks now,
I'm paying close to $120 a month. So I think to myself, well, I could store a thousand books
at somebody else who's going to pick and pack for less money. Like, the storage fees are nothing,
but I don't think people realize that because they never really tried Amazon.
They just see here, oh, there's a storage fee, and they think it's just some crazy number.
Okay. So let's break it. To answer the question, yes, I think more people would do it,
but I don't want that because I think people should know their numbers. All numbers are important.
You got to know every single fee, not just, okay, here's an $80 bill. Well, what for?
You got to know what that $80 adds up to. But where I was going with it, let's break it down.
Okay. So we get special shipping rates to send in 30 to 200 books.
Dude, it's basically, ooh, man, it's them shipping rate. I shipped 246 in a 48 pound box through UPS,
and they were both under 10 bucks. And these are 16 by 12 by 12 bucks. I mean, their rates are insane.
Oh, so expensive. So expensive. Yeah, not really. But that's fee number one. Well, no, fee number
one is about to play this game. Well, you got to pay your subscription of, oh, $40 a month.
Okay. Now we're spending, let's just call it 10 bucks for simple math here. 10 bucks a box.
How many boxes are you sending in? Let's say you send in 10 boxes. So there's a hundred bucks. So
you're at 140. You got to reprice your tool. I mean, that'll run you 15 bucks. Okay. We're at 165.
If you have, I don't know, we'll go with the fancy, easy, cool UI one of inventory lab. That's
another 70. So we're at 200 something dollars operational cost. We haven't even factored in
your cost of goods. Let's say another hundred. Okay. Cost you about three, 400 bucks to run a
Amazon operation. You got your labels, you got your packaging supplies. So let's just call it 350,
350 to play Amazon on a casual basis. I mean, I think that's another thing that kind of scares
people off. In addition to Amazon fees is the overhead costs of software, but there are cheaper
options when it comes to software. So like, people, people always run to the newest, shiniest,
most expensive one. I'm the opposite dude. I'd rather have the stuff that I know works. The
programs have been around forever. They're clean cut and you know, yeah, sure. Like you're talking
about inventory labs. Yeah. It's the best one out there, but I'm too cheap for it. I step in my
plane, Jane, you know, windows 97 listing software. It works, but when it comes back to like,
here over at Johnny B land, we'd like to fly first class and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, like the,
the fees. So when you scan something, I think this was one thing that people kind of get lost
when they're so scared to start Amazon because of the fees, everything that we do, especially in
media and arguably anything, all you need is the Amazon seller app on your phone. And when you scan
that item, it's going to tell you exactly what you're going to make. You can put in your buy
calls right through the seller app and you'll see how much you would make if you sold it at that
price after all fees. So my argument is when people get caught up about feeds, and so I would
try to get eBay people to try Amazon is you have all of the data right in front of you. Yes. Items
are going to tank. Yes. You're not going to win every single one, but eight out of 10 times,
you're going to win. And that's how you, that's how you win an Amazon. So I don't want people,
you know, it's tough for me because a lot of my people on YouTube and listening to this,
they're heavily into eBay and it's like, uh, it's like pulling teeth to get an eBay person to try
Amazon. And usually the ones that do, and they actually like give it a real shot. They're like,
Whoa, this is crazy. Right? Like the, do you think the fees on Amazon are justified not only
by sell through, but are you fine with paying the higher fees because the ease of listing
and sending your stuff to Amazon is worth the time you save? Like it, does that just,
is that some justification for higher fees? Um, I would say my input output ratio justifies
that. Absolutely. Now, as far as you saying time saved, I just see, Oh, I can, I, again,
with cashflow from Amazon, that gives me more opportunity to spend more time elsewhere in other
avenues of my business or improve the Amazon business. Again, like doing stuff like OA or,
Hey, we're going to save up for that. I don't know, bookstore closeout, and we're going to buy it all
on pennies on the dollar, but you need a, need a little bit of change to even play that. And to me
that I don't really see time saved. I see time more reinvested, if that makes sense to other
finer aspects of business, because we're all business owners. Now, if speaking to the person
who's just doing this on a hobby level or part-time level, or may not have such aspirations,
that's fine. If you're just looking for a steady paycheck and nothing wrong with that by any means,
you're going to save so much time. You can go home to the kids every night. If you want,
you just did a box a day. Come on a box a day, 30, 40 books. You could do that a day, honestly,
or even if you want weekends off, okay. Do two boxes, two days a week, do one box, three days
a week. There's your seven boxes a week. You will be fine. I promise you. I will say this. It's,
when it comes to like, you know, hobbyist, I don't think you can be a hobbyist seller on Amazon.
Just the way, you know, they're taking the buy box from people. It takes a while to get the buy box
if you're not sending a lot of inventory in. I don't think you can be that hobbyist seller
that just comes on and sends one box a month because you're going to need a professional
account to even be buy box eligible until you have the buy box. You're not getting 90% of the sales.
I think the people that win in Amazon are part-timers that treat it like a business.
And kind of like Johnny said, said, okay, I have two days a week. Here's exactly what I'm going to
do. I'm going to get in one box every week, one box every two weeks. I don't think you can play
the game of just falling away for kind of like how I do with eBay, right? I'll list, you know,
10 days every three months, and I can come back and I can just get back into the swing of things,
start listing again. Amazon, I think now punishes sellers for that by taking the buy box away if
you had it, or if you don't have it and you're not sending in inventory constantly, you're never
going to get the buy box. And without that, your Amazon business is basically dead, honestly.
That is a very fair point. And my logic was, I don't know, a guy goes to an estate sale,
buys the whole bookcase once a month, and then processes that. When he's done, he's done and
does it again the next month. But your buy box point puts my whole idea to shame. It doesn't
work. You're right. I mean, you would, like, I would almost say if you're that person that goes
towards it once a month and wants to have an Amazon business, you know, if you're scooping up
500 books, I'd probably do one box every single week, just to keep the flow going to Amazon so
they see on your account you're actually sending. So I mean, there are things you can do, but I
don't think you can kind of just show up and sell on Amazon for a month, go away for the next season,
come back and, you know, expect things to kind of be the same. I don't think that works on Amazon.
And just so you're talking about with the fees, right, because you're going to need the professional
kit. What does 40 bucks a month get you on eBay as like a store, like say I want to get a store on
eBay and I got 40 bucks, you know, off the top of your head what that what that'll get you?
It's the store above mine because mine costs 50 at the premium, whatever that store is.
You couldn't go to anchor with that because that's 200 bucks. I don't even remember what the store,
below mine is, eBay stores. I got the cheap store. I got the $5 store.
Yes, I think it's the $25 one. Let's see here, subscriptions and fees. There we go.
$21.95 a month is what you'd be able to do. It's called a basic store, gets you a thousand a month
of free fixed price listings, 25 cent insertions, 250 free auctions a month and 25 cents insertions
above that. Mine is 10,000 a month and 500 month free auctions and 15 cent insertion fees. So for
about double the money, I get a nickel cheaper on extra insertions and 10 times the amount of
free fixed price listings. So yeah, I mean, that's kind of the comparison when you look at the,
there's always going to be costs with everything too. And you jump into this one, you know, if
anybody selling on Amazon got the email last week about their fee increases, but they also did
decrease some things. I try not to, you know, the fees are always going to go up. Everything's going
up. I know this is like being a dead horse. Everything's going up. The price of eggs is
the price of eggs is $30 a dozen and a gallon of gases, you know, it's, but I think with platforms,
even, you know, the ones that haven't announced fee increases, you can expect it. I think it's
almost like a line item every year you have in your budget that, all right, well, I'm expecting
Amazon fees to go up 2% next year, eBay fees to go up 2%, whatever it is, however they bake it into
it. And the Amazon one was a low inventory fee where you have to pay a certain amount based on
how quick the item sells. If you don't carry enough inventory, well, most resellers don't carry enough
inventory to avoid this fee. So you're basically tacking on anywhere between 90 and like,
basically between a dollar and a quarter per item you sell. And a lot of people are just like,
so bent out of shape about it. I think that myself, yet again, with Amazon, when you're
sourcing an item, you can see exactly how much you're going to make, right? Whether that's
using the seller app, seller and scoutly, scout IQ, you see all the data it's presented to you
before you even ship the item. I can't do that on eBay. I mean, I got an eyeball and look at sales
and I can look at Terapeak, sure, but I don't have a streamlined piece of software like Scout IQ that
just does all that for me. I got to do all the mental math myself and then make a judgment call.
I got a tough question for you here just to kind of justify Amazon fees over other platforms. How
many items could you list on Amazon in an hour versus eBay in an hour, you think? Because you
do some of the best listings out there on eBay. So if you had to just put it, you don't got to be
exact, but how many listings on eBay in an hour? How many listings on Amazon? Are we talking like
packing a box or doing merchant or what on Amazon? Pack in a box. I want to do FBA because that's
where the fees are. Fees are all FBA. Hour, we could do about 40, depending on what we're putting in
there. Let's just say average size books. So you could do about 40 books in a box in an hour,
pack it, do all the labeling and all that. On eBay, for me, it'd be about 12. So almost quadruple.
Do you think that would, in your mind, you think that justifies you willing to pay more and fees?
Yeah. 100%. There's no question there. Four times the amount of stuff in the same amount of time,
profit per hour. And that's not even, and we're not even factoring in the time you have to
put that eBay book on the shelf, deal with the customer service for that eBay book,
and then pack and ship that eBay book on itself. Well, kind of. I mean, you still got to drive,
unless you're having a UPS pick up your boxes, you still got to drop off your box somewhere.
That's true. But I would say even on that, Amazon wins because you got to pack all the individual
items. And Amazon, it's one item, one box. Well, lots of items in one box.
All right. So enough of me defending Amazon with their high fees. I do think
every year the margins are going to get thinner. How you combat your margins going down is you find
better items. The fees, I agree, they're super high compared to any other platform. As much as I sit
here and try to justify it because, you know, he sells on Amazon, of course, he's going to say the
fees are worth it. I just understand the time value, how much my time's worth. But I will say
this, you know, the fees going up every year, it's frustrating. I ain't going to lie. But I mean,
Deb said it the other day, because I put out the YouTube video talking about the fees,
you can't control what the platforms do. If you don't like what the platform does, then
you can go somewhere else. And she's 100% correct. If you don't like it, then start a Shopify,
selling a different site that's got less fees. But just be prepared that any platform you are
a part of, they always control the fees on their platform. And I mean, I don't even know if the
fees have ever gone down on any platform in the history of reselling. So the fees are, yeah,
they're, you know, it's a lot. You sell a book for 10 bucks on Amazon. You're lucky if you make a
dollar after fees, that's not including your buy costs. Well, you sell a $10 book on eBay,
at least you put, you know, two, three, four bucks in your pocket. So yeah, you know, the fees are
a lot higher on Amazon. And it does get frustrating every year when you get nickel and dime. And I
kind of, you know, think about it this way. Everywhere you go now, Johnny, they want a tip.
You can go order takeout, you know, you just go in and pick up your pizza. They want a tip, right.
So I think it's like, kind of translate that into the reselling world every year. They want
a little bit more, you know, they want that 60 cents. Hey, Johnny, you want to round up that
sale on Amazon and donate the proceeds? You know, I think that's kind of what I equate it to. And
it's frustrating for me, right. Because everywhere you go now, they want to, oh, you donate to this,
donate to that, donate to this tip here, tip there, tip here, tip there. It's like,
and if, and the platforms are just the same way, and Amazon does it a little bit
more sneakily, right, because they have all these line fees. It's not just, hey, we're raising the
final value fee, or the promoted listing. So like, well, we're going to tweak the square root of pi
fee, and then we're going to tweak the per per agri and theorem fee. And then, you know, like,
it's stuff that it's like, what the heck is going on? And I think they make it complicated on purpose.
So like the average person doesn't really understand what's actually going on in the fee
structure. Like, you got to sit down for a full day, and have a notepad and click through all the
links on the email that actually understand what's going on versus other platform. It's like, hey,
final value fees going up a half percent, or this is going up 1%. And you're like, okay.
So let's just do some quick math of what I said. So 12 books on eBay. Okay. Let's say they're all
$30 books. Okay, so that's $360. Wait, fees divide by half. All right, 180 bucks. Same thing with
Amazon here. So we said about 40 books, 40 times $30, divided by, so $1,200 divided by two is $600.
$180 opposed to $600. Six times amount of money, but the same amount of time worked. There's where
it works out. But Johnny, you're the eBay guy. You do eBay. Yes, I do. Because some things
only fit on eBay that will not fit on Amazon. So I allocate time to do eBay as well. But if you were
just to do Amazon, okay, $600 an hour. How many hours can you work? I mean, but you got to have
the material. It doesn't count for the going out and sourcing and getting it and finding it and
scanning it, bringing it back, prepping it, highlighting, underlining, stickering if you're
into stickering or heat gunning if you're into heat gunning, then you get to do your box per hour
kind of deal. I think about it this way. If I spent the same amount of time on an eBay business
that I do on my Amazon business, I probably wouldn't make 25% of what I do. That's just the
reality of it. There's a lot more, right? The photos. You never got to take a photo with Amazon,
right? If I went to any eBay seller right now and said, how much of your profit are you willing to
give up to never take another product photo again? What do you think the range would be? I think some
people would go up to a third. I think people will give up a third of their profit to never take a
photo again as an eBay seller. That's about right. I agree with that. Yeah. I mean,
here's the thing though. People are afraid of change. You got the old timers that have done
eBay since the dawn of time. I've been selling on eBay for 40 years. Yeah. You've got the same
stuff you listed 40 years ago in your store. That's exactly right. They were sold it.
I thought it would sell. There was a sale on there, proven sale, so I can sell it, right?
That doesn't mean it's true. It's never going to sell, so you got to burn that item somehow someway.
Anyway, if you had a person do eBay for one year and then have them do Amazon for one year,
give it a fair shot for two years on both platforms. Kind of like what I've done, honestly.
Amazon just wins as far as the money goes. Now, after you've done this intensive experiment,
two years is a long time, you'll find that some things just fit on eBay better than they will
ever fit on Amazon. Amazon may even want that particular product. I got a lot of foreign stuff
and foreign language things that there's not even a product listing for. Where does it go? Do I throw
it away? Do I pump more time into Amazon if I do throw it away? You could do that. Or if you're
like me, I've just, well, that's an eBay only item. It goes to eBay. I can make some money on it.
Now, should I allocate my whole business toward eBay and just focus on those things? That's really
a judgment call, to be honest. You can make money on eBay. You can make money on Amazon.
But if you're time-conscious and want flexibility with your life, Amazon wins. If you want rigid
scheduling and you're going to work really hard, you're going to earn, literally earn, every dollar
that comes in, eBay is your game. Now, if you choose to do both, I think that's the sweet spot,
honestly. But again, it's a lot of time. I don't want to earn none of my money,
Johnny, on eBay. But I do think, I said earlier in this podcast, I keep a little five-dollar
mud hut store that's somewhere down the road. Every once in a while, somebody will stop and buy
something, but I have no expectations. But there are things, right? Signed books, we all know you
can't get any kind of extra price on Amazon. Book sets, things like that. Some of those go a lot
better on eBay, depending on the topic and the set. Or Japanese wrestling magazines. I'm still
selling those things like candy. Amazon has very little of them and nor will take a listing from me.
Antique books, pre-ISBM books. I mean, you got to be knee-deep in eBay. And I think it all boils down
to, don't let the large, it's like sticker shock. Don't let the sticker shock of the fees scare you
away. Because if I told you, if you pay double the fees and you're going to make six times the money,
I mean, you'd be stupid not to do it. And I think when you really start analyzing
the items you're sending and you understand the fees of the Amazon platform, you quickly realize,
okay, I'm not losing money, right? Everything we send in, it's nowhere close to breakeven.
We have wiggle room for it to go down in price and we have all of the data in front of us.
We know the exact sell through, how many times an item sells in a six month period. On eBay, sure,
you can go look at the comps, but then you're going to have to pull out your calculator and
do how many sold versus how many listed. And why did these sell and other ones didn't sell?
Best offers taken, how much did it really sell for? But think of the fees, honestly, at the end
of the day, as much as I don't want to sound like an Amazon homer, I work 20 hours a week,
maybe on Amazon and I make a full-time income doing this. If I did 20 hours a week on eBay,
I'd be back at CVS working again. That's just the reality of it. Because the time
I can spend in my Amazon business, sourcing, prepping, packing is astronomical. Especially
for me, who's somebody who sucks at eBay, right? I list everything through my phone. I do the
photos. You got to store the items and you got to go get... For me, my speed when it comes to Amazon,
if I'm looking at an hourly rate, I'd probably be the same as you around, maybe I'd probably do a
little bit more listings than you because mine's are, they're half-assed listings. I'm not filling
everything out, right? Get more listings up an hour than I can. Maybe I'm at like 20, 25 listings
an hour on eBay. But if I sat down and did boxes for Amazon, I'm probably getting out three boxes.
And regardless of how many items are in that box, I probably say I'm doing close to 200 items per
hour on Amazon. And that's literally just Bluetooth scanner, listing software, boom, boom, boom, boom,
boom. Because all you're doing is slapping a sticker on it, throwing it in the box. That's it.
It's crazy to me how much more productivity I can have just because of the tools the platform has.
Now, maybe down the road, eBay has some kind of listing software. And there are services out there
now. I see that. Yeah, there's cross-listing things where you can hit them all. Sure. Yeah. I still
think the cross-listing thing compared to just Amazon overall, I still think it's a lose-lose.
I would take Amazon. If I had to choose Amazon or every other reselling platform, dude, I'm not even
thinking twice. I'm going straight to the Amazon line every single time. Now, this may change if
we have the same conversation next year, two years from now. Things are always changing. But today,
dude, I'm running away from every other reselling platform right to the Amazon line,
regardless of the fees. Fees could have went up 10% this year. And I could care less. I know
that's where the items are going to sell. The most eyes on media items are going to be on Amazon.
Sure, eBay has its things for collectibles. But the overall 98% of the media, you're going to get
a higher bang for your buck. So that would be another justification that comes to fees is,
yeah, you pay more in fees, but you also can command a higher price on Amazon compared to eBay.
Look how many people have these businesses where they source stuff from eBay to sell on Amazon,
and they still make 20% profit margins. And they're paying full price, somebody that's
selling it on eBay at full price, and they're still selling it on Amazon and still making a
whole bunch of money. Yeah. I mean, so let's see here. I welcome fees, honestly, because here's
what happens. I have less competition because of fees now, because people aren't going to do it,
or the people that are doing it, some of them are going to bow out. And the people that are remaining,
now they're going to make the money that those other people are going to bring in. Now you're
going to make that and probably more because we don't have to play as stringent a race to the
bottom game. That's how I like to look at it. I'm like, all right, fees. Well, how many people that
I was selling against are going to get knocked off so I can command more of a premium dollar.
I'll take fees all day every day because I'm going to continue to do this. I'm just going to
change the way I do things because of fees. Margin's need to go up. Great. What I mean by that is,
okay, I was doing $5 send in, now I'm profit. Now I'm going to do $10 send in because of all the
fee changes. Okay, I've adjusted. I'm still playing Amazon or I'm still playing eBay. Fees are great.
Love them. Oh my God. You're going to get quoted on this and that's going to be the end of you.
I hope so. I hope all the flames and where I can buy a Gaylord come to you. Oh my God. I'll be in
the comments section. This guy said he loves fees. He's an idiot. He don't know what he's doing. Yeah,
I can hear it now. But I think I'm going to wrap it up here with my final Jerry Springer style
thought on Amazon fees is they seem high from the outside. If you walk up to the store and it says,
everything's marked up 50%, you're probably not going in. But those that go in, all of a sudden
they realize even though you're losing that 50%, in theory, you're making more money. This is crazy.
I know it's like, boom, like your head's exploded right now. I'm telling you the fees are,
are two or three X on other platforms, but you're still going to make more money because you can
command a higher price. Think about it that way. Don't be scared to start Amazon because the fees,
yes, they're high, but we understand what we're looking at when we're outsourcing. We know exactly
what the fees are, how much we're going to pay, how much we expect to pay. And you just figure it
out from there. So as always, we appreciate you watching or listening out there and we'll talk to
you in next week's episode. Thanks for listening to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
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