Welcome back to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as a 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 into another episode of resellers mindset podcast.
Mike next at Johnny today.
No guests, but I have my own topic, my own rabbit hole.
We're going to tell I call myself the used book guy.
So today's episode is me just kind of diving into my business
and how to grow a used book business and how there's a lot of people out there
in media, the most you know, you could argue next to clothing
is the most saturated category out there.
So how can you still make money selling media?
What are some things I've done differently?
Because, listen, at the end of the day, I like to think of my media business.
Nobody else has ever done it the same way I've done it when it comes to
the amount of hours I put in and the results I get from it,
from the little bit of hours I put in.
Why doesn't everybody just do this?
I mean, if we think about it, if you tell any reseller, you know,
to basically put in 20 to 30 hours a week,
make roughly 1200 to 1500 dollars a week in profit.
Everybody would jump at that.
So basically, I guess my question to you, Johnny, is why doesn't everybody do what I do?
I think everybody gets television on the numbers you just said.
Oh, this is easy.
And they don't have the consistency because you are consistent.
You do have a schedule.
I mean, before before you started doing a schedule, you was still pumping the hours.
It just wasn't an organized hourly fashion, but you still put in the work.
And I think it's that that separates you, me and everybody else
who's moderately to highly successful as they pump in the hours.
And there is they're the same amount of hours,
not maybe the same hours from week to week, but they do it week after week is my point.
What I struggle with the idea that we are in one of the most saturated categories,
like I said, and we still can't find profitable inventory.
Now, I want to preface this.
What if there were somebody out there that sold media
and said they were a OK with turning one dollar into two dollars?
Now, that is not the case for neither me or you.
We want to get more than that.
But hypothetically speaking, if you were fine with dropping a dollar
and then picking up two dollars repeatedly, I would argue that basically
it would be an infinite money glitch and you could find an infinite amount of items.
Like you would never, never even be able to process these items.
Right. So long as those one dollar items always sold for two dollars,
that is a fine business model.
It's a grind. It will be a grind.
Yes, but it'll work.
I got my first super hot take and I'm going to offend a lot of people.
And I don't even care because it's the truth.
If you want to argue with me, sure, we can go back and forth about this.
But if you are selling ISBN barcode media that isn't signed,
that isn't signed, you need to sell it on Amazon, not eBay.
One hundred thousand million trillion percent of the time,
you should sell it on Amazon, not eBay.
I just think the eBay model of selling ISBN media
that isn't signed by the author has some collectability aspect to it.
Unless you're a huge mega seller that uses cross listing software,
which nobody listening to this is.
You need to sell on Amazon, not eBay.
No, I agree with that.
I mean, people do sell barcoded books on eBay,
but they usually do it in lot fashion.
And to me, lots do exist on Amazon, but there's not a lot of them.
So I can understand the lot booksellers selling on eBay versus Amazon.
But book per book, barcode book should be on Amazon.
One hundred percent agree.
Is there a lot seller?
Seller that is making over twenty dollars per hour in profit.
I think Mel from Back from Burnout is the only one that came to my mind.
There's a couple other booksellers in text group that do the lot model, but.
I don't know if they're in the twenty dollar an hour plus range, to be honest,
because I think they're more hobbyist, Mel's more full time.
They could be. I'll say that.
So there's at least one confirmed.
And then a couple of maybes that I personally know.
I'll confirm the one with you, but I think overall.
And I got another thing I wanted to address is me as a bookseller.
Right. I've seen this.
You know, we have the group, we have hundreds of people, we got weekly calls,
we got everything we see it, basically everybody's business from the inside out.
The people that succeed are the people that turn and burn
and don't care about the stuff they sell.
And I do think it for some reason, a lot of people that get into selling books,
love books, they love reading, they love collecting books.
It's almost it's not almost it is.
It's a hindrance to the growth of their business,
because there's this level of attachment to that book.
Right. There's this extra tender, loving care they got to give every single book
because, hey, I love books, you know, like look at all my books behind me. Right.
And I think it is nothing but a hindrance to your media business.
If you are so attached to books and you want to save the save the planet
by selling books and making sure every book is in the most perfect condition.
And I think that is a complete waste of time.
I think it's OK to like books, but I agree there needs to be a separation.
If you have a problem when somebody sends you an offer and you know better
and you know the exact value of the book,
but you're not willing to flip it because of that attachment, that's a problem.
Now, to your to your point of over cleaning it, over prepping it,
I do think that's also a problem.
And then people who hold on to books and haven't listed them,
they're thinking about listing them, but haven't listed them yet.
That is also a problem.
So I think those are three big factors.
You should not be reselling books.
You like books too much.
Switch to a different category and yeah, buy these books for your personal collection.
I got another hot take.
They're coming in.
They're coming in rapid fire today, Johnny.
All right.
We are selling books.
I am not buying a book today that's going to take three years to sell.
I don't care.
I don't want to hear nothing about this.
My dollar today is going to make me a whole lot more over the year,
the span of three years, two years.
This idea of just listed on eBay, it's a collectible book.
Someone will eventually buy it.
20 years from now, the book is still sitting on your shelf.
We got to get out of this mindset.
We already came to the conclusion that there is an infinite amount of this inventory.
Me and you can go out today and come back with a carpool.
Like every day, seven days a week, right?
The books are everywhere.
Why did we still get hung up on some of this long tail stuff?
There are situations, a tiny, a percent of a percent of situations where it makes sense.
And even then, if it's something that's that rare and sought after, even if you have,
you know, one of five out there, if you price it correctly, it shouldn't be sent for this long.
Right.
The couple situations, I agree with you for the most part, but the couple situations,
and even you had some clarifiers here, I think are the antiquarian market.
The market pool is small, so it may sit for a couple years, right by our right time kind of scenario.
And then you have your other books, like the ones I deal in, where you can get a little bit of a
catalogue of where you see that coming, where it seems like they didn't do much for you.
But what you see is an ancient structure, and then while that structure is very fancy,
it takes a whole bunch of young people to make a micro product about it.
And that's probably a problem, in a way.
That's no story.
I can even scale things myself if I had to.
Now, when you buy a book分鐘 peaks give you this multi-t privately cost high
because it's crowded, and it to the point where it's very easy�도 by facial hair,
on. There's no point because the dollar you spent today,
Johnny, to let that book sit there, if you just would turn
that dollar into two, two and a four, like that dollar now has
become way it's worth a whole lot more than that book if it
ever sells in a year or two. I just I hate this. I would have
to do such volume. Like I would have to like five times clone
myself to make that work in the first year. I really would. I
realized that after two years in eBay, what that model does. And
it's I decided to play that game. It is a model. But you
have to have other you have to have your financial means of
money outside of that game while playing that game. In addition,
if you are to do that, in my professional opinion, the only
way media scales books scale is your processes and getting your
time back. And the only way you can do that, here goes another
one on web thrillers out there. It's not by selling your duds
on whatnot. I know you're not fake on whatnot. You don't like
whatnot. No, I'm not fully against it. I mean, we kind of
talked about it before, like for me, and you dress up as Bert
and Ernie, we probably could sell every single book out
there because there ain't no other Bert and Ernie on whatnot.
But this idea that I go get a car full of books, and then the
stuff that's not worth it to sell on Amazon or eBay, if
you're doing eBay, you're going to try to sell on whatnot, like
I've seen this trend in book selling. And I'm here to tell
you, it's a waste of time. You know what, if you can't sell
your dud on Amazon, like, who in their right mind is going to
buy your dud on whatnot and pay $1 plus $8 shipping? Like, it
doesn't exist.
Right. And I think a lot of resellers are buying from other
resellers on whatnot. We had somebody high profile from
whatnot come in and text group and talk about that. And I asked
him flat out, would you do whatnot today? And he said, no,
not unless you're willing to eat it for six months, and make it
your full time platform, not a part time platform, your full
time platform and eat it for six months was his answer. Now, I'm
in another group where they're pushing whatnot pretty hard. And
some of them probably listen to this. So no offense to you guys.
But I'm here to tell you, if you were to put the same amount of
hours that you're putting into whatnot into either eBay or
Amazon, your profit per hour, I think is more beneficial. And
that's what it comes down to profit per hour. Mr. Jack is a
proponent of that. I say it pretty much every podcast. It's
never going to change. How much money are you making per hour?
Where is your time assigned? Would it not be more beneficial
to pump it into a more profitable per hour business
model?
At the end of the day, people are scared to start on Amazon,
Johnny, right? Think about this. We Amazon's the big bad
boogie man. Sooner or later, he's going to come knocking on
your door, and it's going to be the end of the line. I don't
really think that is the case. There, there Amazon has, you
know, we're talking about it before this, the account health
assurance where they're not just going to can you for nothing. We
do everything we possibly can to avoid getting banned on Amazon,
right? We're not selling textbooks, anything that could be
a red flag, we avoid. But for some reason, and I guess I'm
harping back again here, people that sell books on eBay are so
scared to start Amazon. But if you look over on our group, I
mean, we got people that are like me, they're not great with
technology, right? I mean, veterans retired, we got lots of
retired people, we got through the process, right? So like,
there's no excuse. And they've been doing this for years,
because a lot of them have been around since we started the
group. And they're still successful, they still make, you
know, if you put these people on eBay, they probably would make a
10th, maybe a 20th of what they make on Amazon, because it's
just so much easier. I just want everybody that sells media on
eBay, to just give Amazon a shot for six months a year, I
guarantee you, you will never even look back.
And to your Amazon sellers, honestly, give eBay a shot one
listing a day. So you're doing 365 listings for the entire year.
Yeah, I know you're shaking your head over there. But there is
some money to be made. I'm not talking about putting the $20,
the $10 books, but you come across the $100 books, about
$200 books that there's no listing on Amazon, you need a
way to sell that. And in my opinion, the way to sell that's
going to be on eBay. Now, do you want a bunch of this stuff? Do
you want running a full time eBay store? I mean, that's a
choice you got to make. But I agree with Mike, the money is
just quicker on Amazon for the most part, unless you're going
to do huge volume on eBay, and or cross list on eBay, I would
just do the high profile dollar books on eBay itself.
Firefly high volume for those because me and you know what high
volume is, but maybe the average person when you say high volume
books, give me a number.
I would say you need to have 10,000 active listings a year
compounding. So first year's 10 second year's 20. Now you're
going to sell some of that 10 some of that 20 along the way,
but you're even jacked at 10,000 items in your eBay store annually.
It's insane. I mean, think about this. How long would it take
you to list 10,000 items on eBay versus Amazon if we just did a
complete time versus time? I mean, it's, I don't know, maybe
we should do this where you I'll tell you how long it takes to
listen on Amazon are talking like three seconds right for the
label then putting it in the box like it's that easy. I scan it
the label prints I put the label in the book. It goes in the box.
I'm never touching it again besides carrying the box down. So
I mean, the time difference here is astronomical. I don't think
it's the time.
So even if you have software come on in, you're pretty much
treating it on Amazon speed at that point.
So just selling Amazon.
Right. Yeah, you could. But for the people who don't want to sit
there's there's some weird hold up out there where Amazon's got
my item, I don't want to eat the fees. But I'm telling you the
premium that you get from sending in FBA outweighs that.
Now there are some questionable books out there. They got those
e scores of ones and twos. I could see an argument for doing
merchant cross listing software that way. Sure. Just so you don't
know. So could shake in your favor or not, right? So those
kind of books I get sure do it that way.
I think booksellers, they get books for next to nothing. And
they feel like, okay, I'm going to list this book I got for a
quarter on eBay for $8. And I'm going to make $2 or $3. But you
don't realize the time, the shipping supplies, the customer
service time, all of that that goes into the back end with
eBay. And I just want you to like I've been selling on Amazon
for over five years. And the number of customer messages I
have responded to, even if I read the message, and I knew the
answer to the message is zero, you are not required to respond
to customer messages on Amazon FBA. Even if they say, Hey,
what's one plus one, there's a little button that says no
response needed. Now all the eBay people are up in arms. Well,
why wouldn't you give them the answer? You know it, it's not
it's not your obligation. Why is we like this? We're almost
obligated, we feel obligated to do things we don't have to do.
Like, these are long gone for me. I got over that a long time
ago. I want to do as little as I can, and just make as much as I
can. And I don't care how scamy that sounds or like, well, you're
really not out there hustling and bustling. And well, guess
what, I don't have to I have built relationships with
libraries with thrift stores, I don't have to be out there
relying on my good wills and praying I walk in and find 10
books that are way overpriced that I can resell to make a
dollar or two. Yeah, I had a library come in yesterday, I
dealt with four, it was a one time deal. Like, hey, we want to
do it again. We decided my cool, it works for me. But no, on the
eBay front, I spoke to a lady maybe a month or two ago,
because she was listed maybe $20, maybe $15 in her store
books. They were antiquarian books. They weren't Amazonable.
Because that's her jam. She wanted to do that. Okay, if
you're going to do that, your price point needs to be at least
$30 or more. A week later, she she came out and announced I'm
doing $50 and more books. I'm like, hey, yeah, that's right.
Fuck Johnny, I'm going to go even more than what he mentioned.
Like, that is fair. And I applaud her for that. It was a
good decision on her part. Now, now we're getting I'm gonna
circle back to the point of whatnot. I'm not going to harp
on the platform too much. But people do need a dud solution
outlet. And some people are viewing it as that or a death
pile solution. I think there are other avenues for that. They
don't sit there on a time sink. That's the big thing. I was
gonna say it. Your dud solution needs to be the quickest time
solution to get rid of. Yes, I'm to the point now where the
money. Sure, if I can figure out a way I can get a little bit,
but the time like I'm not going to have obligations to like,
this is going to be an hours process. And I'm only going to
get you know, a few shuffles back. Yeah, it's all about time
and go ahead. I'm gonna let you continue. Um, some things I've
come up with is I do have a bookstore that is a solution. I
put the most minimal effort into that bookstore known to man. And
I make a couple bucks passively. Um, and it doesn't eat huge.
You got a purse sitting basis doesn't eat a huge point of time
now me having to load the shelves, or come out and
collect the money. I made the comment the other day, I don't
know if it was worth me getting out of my chair to go get a $5
bill or not. Don't know, but I still got a $5 bill. So whatever.
Another solution is I started dealing with other booksellers
like literally swapping books or I have books I know you sell
would you like to buy them? That's a quick wholesale kind of
deal. Um, because I have more book, like we said, we can
always get books, no issues getting books. It's never the
issue. It's getting rid of them. That's always the issue. So
wholesaling books is another one. On the Amazon front, there
are the buyback programs. Arguably, there's some labor
put into that. And they're a time investment going you do the
going out to like second and Charles and stuff. Arguably,
again, more time in there. So all of these things do take
time to some degree. It's just I view what not as an absorbent
amount of time. And as you mentioned, we need the smallest
amount of time put into this, whatever is the quickest and
easiest for me is putting books on shelves and talking with
other booksellers to come on down or here's a couple photos.
Are you interested? That's been my solutions thus far are will
those be my permanent and all be all solutions? No, I mean, I
don't know everything guys, despite what I say and what you
believe. I know a lot but not everything and I'm sure I'll
have some other additional things I'll tack on in my
career. But for right now, those are the ones I'm sharing with
you guys that I've done have been proven to be fast and
effective.
Give you a perfect example. So second and Charles's story can
trade books in. They'll give you cash or store credit. I just
started going back to them. I didn't go there probably for the
past year and a half two years. Well, like Johnny said, what's
the time cost here, right? I could care less about the money.
I can't be sitting hanging around second and Charles all
day Johnny to get 2030 $40 $50 credit price books is worse. You
cannot leave the store. You have to stay in the store. So I
thought about taking my whole bookstore up there, bringing my
lazy boy recliner with my laptop. And I'm just gonna wait.
There's a whole you all outside for you guys. I'll be here till
tomorrow I suppose since you got to go through every single one
and won't let me leave. Oh, and can you bring me my pop up tent?
I'm going to need to have a good sleep as well. That's that's
how second and Charles used to be. You can only put in three
the mailing totes right the white mailing totes everybody
has seen in the post office or even have them to take your
packages. And you can only do three at a time. Well, that's
not a lot of books, Johnny. That's like, barely you know,
it's like what I got on my table behind me. So think about the
idea of I got a full carload of books, I got to go to second and
Charles like 30 times dude to get rid of this. Yeah, because
I got that once a day thing, don't they? Once a day, right?
One today and three totes. How many years will it take?
So like, all right. And like Johnny said, you don't have to
stay in the store, but you have to come back to get your offer.
Right. So like, even if I'm going out thrifting, it's only
10 minutes away. It's still 10 minutes out of my way. So like,
if I'm headed out that way, I'm coming back that way, it might
make sense. But
So is the initial 10 minute trip there, and then wherever
you're going, so that amount of time back and then the 10
minutes back home. So minimum 20 minutes is what we're eating.
It did make sense. So I gave it up. Well, three weeks ago, I
said, Hey, I'm gonna go back to second and Charles see if
anything's changed, right? Kind of like I tell everybody, always
checking on somebody's thrift stores, even the ones that's
up, you know, management changes, supply changes. So they
completely revamped everything, basically can drop off as much
as you can at mine. And they auto credit your account. So you
never have to go back. So I just say, Hey, here, I load up
the backseat, take everything. Here's what they should do both
these places, anybody else. It should be an auto credit to
your online profile account. If you want store credit, if you
want cash, yeah, you're gonna have to come back. Yeah, that's
what they do. That's what they do. Well, and then that's the
problem is, a lot of people that go in those places to trade
in feel like you know, they're nor a Robert's book, they paid
20 bucks for a Barnes and Noble, like they want more than
a nickel, then that's what second and Charles is going to
give you. So I do think it all comes down to time. My type of
business does not exist. If you're just wasting time, right?
Like I tell everybody, I go thrift in two days a week, I'm
probably sending in close to 400 500 pieces of inventory from
two days sourcing. That's it. No, nothing special, nothing
crazy. I struggle with this idea that we're selling on
Amazon, it's as easy as peasy. Listen, eBay sellers already
said you sell you sound barcode is being media on eBay, you're
a fool, get on Amazon. If not, then guess what have fun working
60 hour weeks and making a fraction of what the Amazon
seller can because we can send in so much more. So two days a
week sourcing. Like you said, I used to be I'm out four or five
days a week going to thrift stores and I'm just burning
time. Just burning time, burning time, burning time. Finally
got smarter about it. Refine my routes, go to more stores in
one day more focused approach. Every single person that is
working 20 hours or more in their business should be making
the same amount of money as me. The only outline factors we're
going to have here is the amount of sources you have,
right? Me versus you, I got more thrift stores than you,
right? So you're going to be a little bit, it's going to look
different for you. But I do think that the idea of not
being in your reselling business 40 plus hours a week,
you don't have to be to make a full time income anymore. And
people almost make it seem like, well, you got to be in there
full time and you got to be grinding, not on Amazon. I mean,
this is easy, dude. And I suppose it's the easiest, stupidest
money I'm ever going to make in my life. I mean, besides doing
like the Amazon influencer program or somebody just
watches me reviewing the slap chop, like the slap chop guy,
like that's the stupidest money. But like this Amazon media
business, dude, I mean, you know what, like we were just
talking about all the CDs sitting behind you, like that's
thousands of dollars. Even if I were to sell these locally,
it's thousands of bucks. I struggle with it, man. And
that's the whole reason I wanted to have this, you know,
talk about books and media is all of us should be crushing
it. I find it hard, you know, for us not to be making a
decent amount of money. And we have people that only do this
part time, but they accept, hey, I'm going to put in five
hours, I'm going to get five hour results. And as long as
you're a okay with that. But I mean, we've got people all
walks of life, you know, old, young, disabled, not disabled,
whatever it is in the group. And every single person makes
money. And the reason they make money is because they treat it
like a business, not I'm a book lover collector, all this
nonsense, everything's out the door, there's no sentimental
value. And listen, we all got a favorite show series that's
probably been made into a book, right? Like, if I see a
Halloween book, you know, I'm keeping it for myself. Sure.
Problem is, when you got bookcases and bookcases and
bookcases of all this money.
Yeah, but your your book selection that you want to keep
is vastly small to some of these people who have the
equivalent of what's behind you on their shelves that these
are my books.
I guess, I guess the honest question for you is, since I
hate books, or like, attaching myself to the things I sell,
like, does that make me evil? Like, like the doctor evil of
the book selling community, because I tell everybody I could
care less, like, I just want I just want the money.
No. I don't even call these things behind me books, CDs and
DVDs anymore. They're widgets, how much money or units? How
much money does this unit give me? That's how I'm viewing
it. I don't view them what they are. I don't know, there's
probably somebody's favorite book behind me or favorite CD or
DVD behind me. I could care less. It's a unit. How much
money does it give me? If you're running a business, that's
how you have to treat it. Even on a hobbyist level or a part
time level. If you want your money for your efforts, you got
to be unattached to it, I'm afraid. Now, if you're the
hobbyist who pulls a few books for yourself, and then sells
the rest because you like doing the estate sale run, no shame
in that I get I get what you're doing that for you're just
supplementing your hobby. You're outside your business
hobby with your actual passion hobby makes total sense in that
regard. For anybody else trying to make this for a living or
subsidize their living income because your social security and
our pension not really good enough. You need to take it more
seriously, in my opinion and treat the things with
unattachment their units their widgets. How many dollars does
this thing in my hand bring me? That's how you need to view it.
So no, you're not an evil son of a bitch, Mike, even though I
call you that sometimes. Oh, I feel like I should just share
my share my screen if we can go into our discord we have for
members and show everybody that there's not a collectible tab.
Right. There's not like show us your collection tab. It does
not exist. We are here. Make money. Our path to making money
is books. I guess I could be the used money guy because
the books really have no value to me like Johnny said or the
used widget guy right that would be Johnny's, you know,
YouTube handle because it is what it is. It's how much money
can I make? So now I got another one on the throat. If if we say
that because I think today, even if you started today, I think
you can make tens hundreds of thousands of dollars selling
media on Amazon books on Amazon. So if me and you both agree to
this statement, then why? Why aren't there more people doing
this? Or why aren't more people successful in this line of work?
Consistency and volume. The people sending in now,
depending on how you're defining yourself, you're calling
yourself full time and you're doing one box a week, you're
doing it wrong. You may have a pile of more than one box of
material, but you only put in one box of effort for the week
and you had all week. I'm sorry, my friend, you either need to
change your work ethic or change your line of work. One of the
two. Now, if you're more time strapped, you got a full time
job. You're going to thrift stores between lunch breaks on
your way home and then you get home and you pack a box. One box
an evening you put in all the time that you're allocated
because you got that full time job and or other family
commitments. I think you're doing it right. You put in the
full time effort. You gave all you can gave. No shame in that.
But it's consistently that person doing that night after
night is going to make it versus the quote unquote full
timer who does his one box a week and had a full week of
hours to do this. I think it's using your time effectively.
And those people, I mean, they're in our group, they're
in the remote areas. Apparently, sourcing is hard and there
are other outlying circumstances. You need to figure out the
workarounds to that because I've tried to help you. Mike's tried
to help you. You're still nothing else. You don't find the
work around your goal. Yeah, two options. I mean, I sat down
with a couple of booksellers yesterday and mentioned a few
sourcing things that blew their mind. I was like, if you guys
took 10 minutes to think about where books are, that's not a
thrift store. You could find them in abundance in a 10 mile
radius. I'm sorry. But this seems to be really hard because
people think all the books are at the thrift store. They're
not. Yeah, I mean, we're going to throw out the seed, some of
the secret sauce here because you are right, right? We think
the books only exist in the thrift stores. And I'm here to
tell you, I stumbled on going to a record shop three weeks ago.
I just Googled DVDs near me. Don't you know, Johnny, Google
is a marvelous tool. You can put anything in that little thing
and it's magical. It's magical, but we can't like, we rather go
down the rabbit hole emailing me and you know, the whole nine
yards. But anyways, back on topic, record shops. I got a
record shop that's been here since before I moved to this
town. I could walk there, Johnny. I could take my key back.
I could walk there. I'm going to walk back. It's only like five
minutes. They had thousands and thousands of CDs and DVDs. Okay,
so what happens? I drop, of course, you know, I put it out
there. My whole business is on YouTube, right? So if anybody
has like any questions from day one to where I am today, I've
documented the journey the whole way. Every single process,
every single software is all out there, right? The formula is
out there. So in the group, you know, like whenever I do
something, I don't got no secrets in this business.
Unfortunately, anybody can do it. It's just a matter of you
actually doing it like Johnny's saying, actually getting out
there and getting it done. Well, all of a sudden, Johnny say,
hey, anybody check out like your local record shop? All of a
sudden, people are like, what are you talking about? And then a
week later, everybody's like, I went to my local record shop,
but I just found like hundreds of DVDs and CDs like, guys, we
have to get out of this mindset of thrift stores, Goodwill,
Sabres, Salvation Armies, these should be-
I'm gonna blow everybody's mind. At bookstores, guys, they
got CDs. I promise you, they do. At actual bookstores, they got
CDs. And sometimes DVDs too. But at least CDs, most
bookstores have them these days. And they're quote unquote a
bookstore. They couldn't possibly have CDs in there, Mike.
There's no way. There are books go in. There'll be a bin of
them or a couple racks of them. This is cocky of me to say, and
I don't even care because that's how confident I am in this
statement. Anybody that joins my group and wants to start
selling media, if they follow the pathway, we have let out
for them, right? I got the Amazon side cover and weekly
calls. You got your eBay. They can ask you any question when
it comes to selling media on eBay. I got the Amazon front
covered. Any single person, if they give themselves six
months to a year, can make thousands of dollars selling
media on Amazon. I don't think there's any hiccup, whether you
live in Alaska, whether you live in Philadelphia, whether you
live in New York City, it is all out there for the taking. But
the question is, you got the work ethic, you got the guts to
get out there and actually do the work that goes into it.
Now, I got a crazy business model. And I applaud the
person who listens to me right now and does it. And I don't
care if you're in a remote area or not, this would work
probably better in a remote area. Actually, it wouldn't
work better. I'm just saying if you have more limited sourcing
options in a remote area, this would be a solution. If you
create one of those neighborhood libraries, but hit every
single neighborhood in a 20 mile radius, set them up,
upload it to that dot org site they have letting everybody
know. And you come and rotate the inventory, maybe put a pink
sticker on the stuff you put in. And then you take the things
without pink stickers and reload more pink sticker books.
Boom, free inventory relatively so because you got to build
the damn thing. Sure. And that cost a little bit of money.
Sure. But if you build that infrastructure and create your
own sourcing route for yourself, boom.
Wow. I mean, I don't know what it is. I'm confident that
everybody and listen, if you're selling media full time, part
time, anytime, if your bank account isn't going up, you need
to take a hard look in the mirror because we just get in
this rat race of I'm working Johnny, Johnny, I'm working,
Johnny, I'm working. And then you're like, hey, Mike, you want
to go out and get some Domino's Pizza? I'm like, Johnny, I got
the 699 for the medium to top and dude, like I'm a reseller.
Like, she's pizza for you, my friend.
We have to be making money, dude. This drives me nuts. Like,
how aren't we making money reselling? And by making money,
I mean, your actual bank accounts going up, your savings
account, you're paying off your debts, whatever it is, you have
to be getting money back and fully transparent. When I started,
sure, a lot of the money you make has to go back into the
business because we already talked about this is a volume
game or you got to send in thousands of pieces into Amazon.
Even at a dollar piece, I got 3,700 items sitting there,
Johnny, that's $3,700 that we have to give back today.
It's doing us nothing. Our money is just sitting at the
Amazon warehouse. Our bank accounts need to be going up,
especially if you're putting in all of these hours, especially
if you're spending all of this money on inventory. If you're
paying up for a book or CD or DVD, you should be getting that
money back a lot quicker than the items you're getting for
free, technically, because if you're paying up, it should
have a better sell through. There should be more desire for
that item. But for some reason, here we are as stinky media
sellers. And we wear rags every day, and we reek of books, and
we got no money. And we drive my 2008 Ultima with the sunroof
because I can't afford a Lamborghini. But the problem is,
that's the reality, man. A lot of us, a lot of media sellers,
book sellers in general, are dead broke.
True. So I got a quick solution for you people that are bad at
money management. So I don't care. I don't care what kind of
debt you have. I don't care what kind of bills you have. If
you take 10% of every deposit you have used to repurchase
inventory and or pump back in the business, just 10% of what
hits your bank account, no matter what, from hell or high
water, that goes in the business somehow some way. The 90%, I
don't care what you do with, pay your bills, pay your debt, pay
whatever. Take the girlfriend out on an ice meal, don't care.
If you just put 10% of your money toward improving your
business, that compounds payment after payment after payment,
and you will have more and more money. So that 10%, maybe 10
bucks, first payment or two, soon that becomes 20 bucks, 30
bucks, 100 bucks, because you've grown your business where
it's compounding itself. Now, that's just a simplified model,
because everybody can understand 10%. You can put
whatever numbers you want there. But if you want it easy, just
10%. That's it.
I got a, this might be the hottest take of this podcast
I'm about to throw out there. We're selling media. You have
to be the lowest price to sell your media on Amazon, and most
likely on eBay. Every book I've ever listed on eBay that was
collectible, I listed it at the lowest price that was listed. I
don't care what it's sold for, right? Where everybody's like,
well, I can sell Mariah Carey's Christmas CD at Christmas time
for $3 million, but it's worth $3 today. What are we getting
today? I don't care about money we might eventually get down
the road, right? Sure, I could buy a scratch off and I could
hit for a million dollars, but I'm not worried about that. I
want to be the lowest price today. I want all my stuff to
sell today. If someone was willing to give me a fraction of
what I paid for everything today, my 3,700 inventory,
somebody's like, hey, I'm gonna give you 10 bucks apiece.
You're like, I've made a post about this a few weeks ago. I
would take $17.99 for every piece of inventory at Amazon,
and I would only make like probably seven bucks across the
board. I would take it for every single piece, and I would
take my $21,000 because I got $3,000 in there, seven, whatever
the math really burns out to. I would just go buy more,
Johnny, because we already said it's everywhere. Look out the
window. There's a book walking by right now, Johnny. Why aren't
we willing to just take the quick money? We have to hang on
and feel like, well, I know I can get this much, Johnny. I
got one of the Stephen King books this week. I don't know.
The Bachman books or whatever it is.
Oh, yeah. It's a pseudonym name. Yeah, it's the same guy.
Yeah. Yeah. So it's like it's worth like on Amazon, it's
going for like 100 something dollars, whatever. But it's
like, sure. Can I be like, I know what I got like prices firm,
you know, when you see like Facebook marketplace, I know
what I got. I'm just like, nah, I paid a buck for it, Johnny.
If I can get if I can be the lowest guy at $99, if I can be
the lowest guy at $49, like I'm in it, dude. I just heard my
dollar into 30. I'm gonna go find 30 more of those Bachman
books and just compound it. But we refuse and people give me
crap because I undercut and I tank all the prices on Amazon.
But hey, what's my bank account doing, Johnny? It's going up
while your stuff's still sitting at the Amazon warehouse
doing absolutely nothing for you.
If a dollar turned into 20 and clear 10, so you're turning a
dollar into $10 every time, or better yet, if you're in bulk,
you turn a nickel into 20 and you're clearing 10 over and
over and over and over again. And I'll break it down even
simply. Me and Mike are back in grade school. We got a bag
full of nickels and dimes, but we got the whole rest of the
schoolyard lining up to give us $10 bills for our nickels and
dimes. That's the game we're playing, ladies and gentlemen.
All you have to do is have a bag of nickels, bag of dimes, get
to work. You got to show up at the playground, get your money.
Maybe, maybe we'll, I guess I'll go first. We'll say what the
hardest part of our business currently is. And I'm going to
tell you mine right now. Driving an hour and 15 minutes is the
hardest part of my business. Straight up. This week I drove
an hour and 15. It might have even been a little bit longer.
And I'm like, I'm just driving back and I got devil on the
phone. And like, I'm just like, this is brutal. This drive
sucks. That is literally the worst part of my business,
Johnny. There's like peel a sticker sucks, but like driving
an hour and 15 minutes, like that is just dreadful to me.
That's the worst part of me doing 10 K and sales a month on
Amazon is me driving. How pathetic is that?
Oh, that's so sad.
Oh my God. What a baby. What's yours? What's the hardest part
of your business?
It's processing to be honest, because it's the most time
consuming. I don't have the drive time like you. Like I'll
do maybe a pickup once a month. If that everything else comes
to me these days, or I'm currently processing what I've
gotten because it's just that's book life. So like yesterday,
I spent the whole day, the whole day processing what you
see on the tail behind me, what's on the bookshelf, that
other table down there. You can't see me the smaller table.
I still haven't finished, which is cannibalizing case
swapping stuff. Anybody who knows in CDs knows exactly what
I'm talking about. But it's not that it's intolerable, but it
is the hardest, longest stretch of my day is processing.
Same for the books. Got tables of books. The books are in
boxes. Take the books out of the box, process the books,
put the books where they need to go. Are they going to Amazon?
They go into eBay? They go in the bookstore? They're going
outside on the dime rack? Or they're going in the trash
dumpster. So it's processing for me. That's the longest part.
Again, doesn't necessarily suck. It is what it is, but it's
a grind. It's, I think another reason that we kind of are having
this conversation is people see reselling as a way to get rich
quick, right? You see all the, all the big YouTubers,
everything that's going to push to you is, you know, the gold
bar, YouTube's going to Goodwills and finding $1,100 items.
If you had an infinite supply of items, you could guarantee
it would make you $2 that you bought for a dollar. Like
every, every single person should do that because you're
doubling your money instantly. Like we have to get out of this
mindset. Well, I got to make at least $50 per item. When, if
there's no work that goes into this on Amazon, it's just a
label, right? Like that's all we're doing, throwing a label
on the book and just fanning through the book to make sure
there's no money in it. Or like, I don't know, whatever you're
going to find in books. What's the hold up here? We all should
be pumping out inventory into Amazon. And you reference
Jack earlier. He does video games by himself and the dude's
a machine, like seven figures by himself. I think that is
possible for a media seller. If you really iron out your
processes and just work your ass off. Now, is there room for
me to do more work? Yes. 100% and anybody that's in the group
knows that I've been securing more bulk sources, right? So my
time in the business is going to go up. But with my time,
Johnny, you guarantee, you better guarantee my profit per
hour, which people hate that term for some reason, it's
going to stay the same, or it's going to go up because I'm not
going to waste my time. If I'm not getting a bang for my buck,
I can just keep doing what I'm doing. I'm not going to be
like, well, I got more time, Johnny, right? I'm only doing
this 25 hours, I got an extra 15 hours, but those extra 15
hours, I'm making three bucks an hour because I'm just wasting
my time just because I want to be busy within the business.
Oh, yeah. I mean, here's a crazy concept for people. Book
has released out in the world, sells for $20 to some consumer.
Sometime down the road, the consumer discards the book, it
ends up at Goodwill, you're buying it by the pound for 64
cents. That guy takes it to the flea market, sells it to you,
Mike, for a dollar. Mike flips it on Amazon or eBay for 40
bucks, more than what it originally sold for. That's the
kind of market we're dealing with. And if you understand
that these items maintain or go up in value, or they're worth
more than what you spent at the flea market, the thrift store,
the library, the bookstore, the pawn shop, I have a laundry
list, but I'm going to stop now. If you understand this
concept, you can make a shitload of money. Now, am I saying
you're going to work five hours a week to make a shitload
of money? No, I'm not. I'm working towards it, dude.
You're working towards it. If you can refine your process,
the long hours you put in today will become shorter and shorter
and shorter. But even on Mike's, what do you say do? 20 hours
a week, 30 hours a week, something like that?
It falls between 20 and 30, depending on if I have a library
pickup or something.
Yeah. Even if you were to put in that amount of time every
week, you're going to make pretty much on par with above
what the average annual salary is in America. You can replace
whatever job you're working at within reason. If you're
working the top 1% job, maybe not within a year. I truly
believe that. If you were to put in 20 to 30 hours week
after week, but use those 20, 30 hours effectively with the
term everybody hates, now I'm going to use it more.
Hour.
Yeah. You got to understand this is a business treated like
a business. And I mean, when I first started, I was kind of
clueless to what was going on. And I thought it was cool to
be in the thrift stores all the time. And it kind of...
That fades.
It's not only that it fades. You start to, I guess you
develop the business sense that you actually have a business.
And a lot of, for some reason, a lot of resellers can't get
over the hurdle of, well, I'm just a reseller. No, you're a
small business owner at the end of the day. You have to
treat this thing like a business and stop burning your
time. Sure, there's things. You want to help
somebody out, X, Y, Z. You know, the books ain't great, but
it's a family member or something. Yeah, you're never
ever always going to get the bang for your buck, but that
should always be your focus at the end of the day is getting
the most out of your time. And if you can figure something
out where you don't have to spend 60 hours a week, 40 hours
a week, and you can continue to make the same amount of money,
don't feel bad about it. I laugh when people say, when I
get a DM and say, hey, you're only doing this 20 hours a
week now, I'm like, yeah, I don't care. I'm making more
than I ever have. Right. And I'm doing the least I ever
have. So like, sure, call me what you want to call me.
I was speaking to a lady from Australia yesterday. She's
her name is Liz. Hi, Liz. If you're listening to this,
probably not. And everybody was talking about these big
numbers. And she said flat out, I don't want to make those
numbers. I'm making enough. She's pretty much like Tommy
boy, right? She only wants X amount extra dollars. And
she's already doing that. And I, and I said, what did I say
to her? Because I was talking to two booksellers at once
giving separate advice. And I said, okay, you over here need
to do this. Liz, you can do whatever the fuck you want.
Because you've already made it. You're already there. Yeah, I
know. Yeah, it's good enough. I mean, think about it, all the
retired people we have in the group, and, you know, we always
ask them like, hey, what's your goal, right? It's like, oh, I
want to make $500 extra a month, $700 extra month. And when I
make it clear, like, hey, when you get there, it's a okay that
you don't feel like you have to keep growing, right? Your 500
doesn't need to turn into 2000. If that's what you're
comfortable with, then ride it out, right? Sure. If I want to
be the 20k a month seller, Johnny, then I got to step my
game up big time, right? It's and I guess we can reference
you like you've just got back on the Amazon train in 2024.
Yeah. Your inventory numbers over 15,000, you're doing well
over 10k a month in sales, like, and all you did was process
and send inventory and I mean, I really factory coming from the
eBay world, like I haven't heard you complain about anything on
Amazon, right? Besides dealing with some of the little hiccups
with pricing and things like that. Yeah, just like, you see
this as like, what is what is what do you think the limit is
for yourself? And the current business model you have when it
comes to like sales per month.
It's hard. Well, if I were not to I plan on including video
games, currently not doing video games. So we'll exclude
that. I think I could probably do in sales round two, 200,000
just and now keep in mind, I had an employee the first six
months. Now I don't, but I still think solo, I could probably
do 200,000 in sales just myself. If I were to do CDs,
DVDs and books only, now if I incorporate video games,
probably even a little higher, honestly, maybe closer to three.
But we got Jack over there who does seven figures. So I'd
have to take that gauntlet challenge. But he just he just
does video games only. He's not mixed media to clarify.
I think the big thing is you have the resources in front of
you, right? If you're listening to this podcast, you got Johnny,
you got me. You sell video games, you got Jack, you can
reach out to him, shoot your straight answer. Like, we have
the resources, but for some reason, we're scared to do
something. And I see these people on YouTube, they have
these huge media stores, I got 50,000 100,000 listings, and
they're not making no money at the end of the day. We had Tom
on the dudes got over 100,000 listings on eBay, he's got
employees, and he sees a future it's not he's just not
thinking eBay, he's thinking next level beyond that. So eBay
is a stepping stone for him. This idea that oh, I'm going to
have a 50,000 item eBay media store when you could literally
just send it all into Amazon, let them deal with everything.
You got to be out of your mind, dude. That's why I'm going
bald, right? Because I see all these eBay media sellers, and I
just start stressing, I start pulling at the little bit of
hair I have. And that's probably the reason I'm going bald,
dude, because I know any single person, regardless of how old
regardless of any type of disability can make money on
Amazon selling media. I just need people to commit to the
process and put in the time. And in the beginning, it's going
to be more time you have to put in your profit per hour and
going to be there in the beginning because like any
business, there's hurdles, you're going to learn along the
way. But as you grow, you should start looking at ways to
make a whole lot more money with the time you're currently
spending or spend less time. So you make a whole lot more
money per hour because you're spending less time making the
same amount for more. Now I got to give Tom a whole bunch of
credit. He runs a very lean operation, like him and three
other people. And it started with just him, he built it up
and he grinded it out. He did the eBay grind because he lives
in Australia as their only online presence that's big over
there. So much applaud to him and his success was in his work,
his whatever around him, looking at when he's on camera,
and he's showing us his factory, his his place facility
and everything that's involved with that. That came with just
grinding it out, putting in the work. Everybody can have if
that is your goal, everybody I believe can have that if you
want that. But you got to put in the work to get that it isn't
just the think about it. Oh, that'd be nice to have. And I
hear people say that too, when they hear the hundred thousand
dollar a year mark, that would be great. Yeah, I want that.
That's not your real goal. Tom had real clear cut goals every
single time. Not this abstract, this would be a nice to have. I
think everybody needs to have I don't care what it is. If it's a
house, great. If it's a factory, great. If it's one employee,
great. You have clear cut goals. You will work hard to get
them. You have an abstract goal doesn't mean much just sounds
nice to have. I think you won't be as successful. All right,
I'm going to wrap it up here with my final thought. I do
think, you know, that what they deal with over there, Tom and
Mel eBay being their main platform and I say it all the
time openly. eBay is a lot harder than Amazon. It's not
even close. I mean, it's not it's you're talking like
college calculus to like kindergarten, you know, Matt,
right? That's the difference. I just want some somebody out
there. Listen to this that sells media on eBay to just give
Amazon a shot because in the states, Amazon is the biggest
platform. It's never going to be touched. They started selling
books. You can make lots and lots of money selling used
media on Amazon, selling new media on Amazon. The only thing
that's stopping you is yourself and that comes to not being
scared of the platform and just betting on yourself and saying,
hey, I'm going to get my time back and understanding that
there are benefits to selling on Amazon besides the high fees,
which aren't even that high when you really think about the
packaging, the picking, the return handling, everything
that goes into Amazon's overall business. Then all of a sudden
you start seeing the next level and the next level. You don't
get stuck in this mindset of eBay's all I got and hey, eBay
you know, does whatever, whatever. I just got to take all
these photos. I mean, just the appeal of me telling somebody
that sells on eBay today, like you never got to respond to a
customer message. You never have to take another photo of
anything in your life. I mean, everybody should be like, I'm
signing up for Amazon today, right? Because it's crazy to me
looking as an eBay seller that I used to be and hey, today comes
and I get canned on Amazon. Unfortunately, Johnny, I'm going
to be the guy that's got to cross list everything on eBay and
everywhere else in the universe. But even that process
you could refine so you're not spending endless amounts of
hours. Any final thoughts on our whole tangent about
book selling today?
No, I'm just going to back you up. I believe me working how
I did on eBay helped me make Amazon more easy. So when I hear
people complain about Amazon, I think of myself like I came from
a third world country and moved to the US. It's so much easier
here than living in that third world country. So I'm going to
call eBay the third world country here and Amazon the
United States and I've moved and it could be worse. I know it
could be worse. The grind could be much worse.
I'm not going to shit on eBay. It gave me a work ethic. I
didn't know I was really capable of. I always had a good work
ethic, but I really worked that monster. I'm going to call it
a monster really hard and then transitioning to Amazon and the
difference is just so astronomically different and the
reward is astronomically different as well. But rounding
this out here, I'm not saying work long hours, but I'm saying
work hard in the hours you're able to commit.
Yeah, I mean that's what I do, right? If I'm going to put it,
you could argue that I work harder in the 20 hours than some
people that just fiddle around for 60 hours a week in their
business and yeah, you're right. It does give you an eye open
experience when you sell on eBay and then you move to a
platform like Amazon. I just wish more people would take
advantage. This is a crazy opportunity that we have. Think
about it. We should both be still working at the same time
we should both be still working at the jobs we hated and we
had this opportunity of reselling and something as
stupid as media where you can find it on every single corner
for a quarter a piece. We all should be getting involved in
this. We all should be thinking about hey, how can we get our
time back in this business? So that's going to do it for this
week's episode and yeah, man, I don't know. It's just selling
books. It's still there. It's still possible and I see so many
people that get defeated about it. You just got to give
yourself a real shot. If you have a question, reach out,
ask, you know, ask somebody that's been doing this for
years, whether it's everybody's an open book nowadays.
Everybody's got social media. It's not easy and just bet on
yourself. So we'll talk to you all in next week's episode.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the resellers
mindset podcast. Today's full episode and all previous
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