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 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 does that everybody welcome into another episode?
Resellers Mindset Podcast, Mike next to Johnny.
Today's topic is a fun one.
It's going to be a little bit more.
I think Johnny's going to be able to give you more perspective on this.
Right?
So Johnny, you are going to go first and topic we're going to discuss today is why
we chose Amazon as our selling platform or our selling vessel to get to our end
life goals of reselling.
And for those that don't know, Johnny once upon a time had an eBay store.
How many listings did you get it up to?
11,500 that is insane because the most listings I had back when I started on eBay
was probably like maybe 300 and maybe a hundred of those were trading cards.
So like I sucked at eBay.
I talk about it all the time.
Like I struggled trying to be a successful eBay seller.
I sold things, but not in the scale that I sell things nowadays.
But Johnny, you know, I'm curious why you decided to kick eBay to the
curve and, you know, switch to Amazon.
Just to clarify, I keep eBay on life support.
It's still there floating around little beeps on the monitor every now and then.
Dude, you sound like me.
Like I got one listing.
I put on every one listing a day, man.
One listing a day.
It honestly has to do with the root of all evil.
And it was just some people's words for money.
And more specifically had to do for sell through rate.
Now, when I popped on the scene in the reselling community, I was like,
you know that website on eBay.
You know, reselling community.
It was right at the beginning.
We're a couple of months prior to when COVID was hitting the news.
It was still there, but it was outside the U S.
So nobody cares.
Just like the U S doesn't care.
If it's not happening in the U S.
But once I popped in the US, Oh my God, so my sell through rate was pretty
darn good on eBay during my cycle and eBay.
Ah.
And then when we came out of the COVID cycle, no more free money.
It went back to what it was.
of different features of eBay, like ads, different ads and promotionals, of course.
So I gave it a good year and my growth, I think I only went up about 11% for an entire
year and this is when I opted.
I got the warehouse, I got a stabling of employees, narrowed it down to one and we gave it a good
old college try.
But for all our efforts, it was only like 11% growth, which was not great.
So okay, and I also wanted to hold off on Amazon because I did it once upon a time,
but that was back with restock limits and then we had that six month, you can't ship
anything in.
I'm like, I can't run operations in six months cycles.
That's dumb.
So I pulled out of Amazon and then we fully embraced the eBay lifestyle and well, wasn't
worth our endeavors, so I decided to give Amazon a good try and I had success with it.
That employee, I've mentioned her before, she's now left and I'm able to maintain it
by myself at the moment and we're doing pretty darn good.
Or I'm going from we to I is always fun.
I'm still not used to saying I again and it was hard for me to do we when she was here
and now I don't know what I am a mess.
But to answer the questions all about sell through rate and sell through rate equates
to money.
That's my justification for rolling into Amazon and for books, I believe it has the highest
sell through rate out of all the platforms.
Do I have factual data to pop on the screen for you at Mike's expense because of his editor?
No, but I'm pretty sure based off my experiences of dealing in books on both platforms, Amazon
is king.
It's I'm curious because I know you used to eBay was what seven days a week for you,
seven hour days basically when you were when you said, OK, I'm doubling down.
I got an employee like what was the like the longest days or like time period for you like
hours you were putting in a week?
Probably seven days a week.
12 to probably around 12 hours a day of actually just crunching down with the photos, the listings,
the prep work for more photos to do more listings, do more listings.
If I finished early, it was just grind, grind, grind, grind, grind some more.
I think when I was doing it and we weren't using software, this was all manual.
We were doing about seventy four, seventy six a day between processing, making sure
the listings were right and me putting well descriptions and correct items specifics in
that that was hefty feet because you got to go book to book to book to book to book and
try to make it the best quality listing you can.
Do I need a book description?
No, but I consider that a pure separator for me and every other bookseller who doesn't
do one.
I took a long time and then training the employee at that time to also basically clone myself
for her to be able to do it as well because he was just doing photos and then she started
doing listings, which helped out, which decreased my work day from those 12 hours.
But yeah, it was about 12 hours a day of just listings and photographs.
Johnny gave you like the businessman answer and mine is going to be mine's furthest thing
from the business.
And I say it all the time.
Amazon when I was doing eBay and I was, you know, I wasn't precise with my time like Johnny
was right.
It was just me.
I didn't know much about the platform.
Kind of like I did some of the things Johnny did right.
I make sure the item specifics were right when I was on eBay.
But when I found Amazon, it sounded too good to be true.
Right.
Like you just got software on your phone.
You got a little scanner.
You scan the barcodes and it tells you whether or not you buy the item.
And like to anybody reselling, like if it was that easy, like it's a no brainer.
Why am I going to take, you know, my own photos when I can and the appeal of Amazon FBA, right,
where you send your stuff to Amazon, some guy like Johnny puts it up on a shelf somewhere
it sells, they pick it, send it to the customer.
And for me, when I was like, I'm making a hundred, maybe a few thousand dollars a month
on eBay, you know, when I was pushing my best numbers, which wasn't enough to cover the
bills.
So the Amazon appeal to me because the time investment, the big thing for me was this
sounds like I can do a lot less and at least make the same amount of money.
And I'm not one to be like, Oh, you know, people drive me nuts.
But when it comes to reselling platforms and customer service is a huge part of what you
do on eBay and Amazon land, there ain't no customer service.
You never, I've never answered a single customer question dealt with a single return.
Amazon takes care of all that on the backend.
So that was the big appeal to me.
And once I realized that it wasn't like a get rich quick scheme and that it was just
about repetition and scanning as many barcodes as you can.
And people be like, Oh, you know, you just scan barcodes.
Anybody can do that.
Well, the problem is most of you as well.
So that's a okay.
If anybody can do it, nobody's going to do it.
It don't matter how many people can possibly do something.
So for me, I'm like, all right, I got this box of books, put it in one, you know, I sent
it off.
It's one box of 50 books.
I never see the books again.
I never have to take a photo.
I never have customer service.
I never got to take them every single book to the post office to ship it.
I never have to deal with a return.
I was like, let me, let me find out that this is really this easy.
And honestly, that is the main reason I wound up, you know, kind of saying goodbye eBay.
I'm going to focus on a niche in Amazon because if it's this easy, why doesn't everybody do
it?
It's not me to the point where I'm at today where I'm like, it's just rinse and repeat.
It's nothing exciting.
And I think to myself, if I had the eBay business, I would be spending a whole lot more time,
right?
I'm 100% transparent.
I am not spending full time hours on this business.
I'm 20, 25 hours a week to do my little, you know, both 10k plus and sales a month.
I'm not spending crazy hours in this.
And there's really no upkeep that comes with it because software kind of runs everything.
So I do agree.
Sell through was one of the ones I was going to say, but Johnny kind of stole that from
me.
But you told me to go first.
You told me to go first.
I know, I know.
But at the end of the day, if another platform comes along and media sells better there than
Amazon, then like I'm ready to go.
I'm not tied to any single platform.
I think a lot of successful resellers, whether that's like a toy seller or like a car parts
seller, if there was another website besides eBay that was like specifically or like had
a higher sell through for their category, then they would switch and sell over there
because sell through is all that matters.
If you don't sell your stuff, Johnny, you got no money.
You got inventory that literally cost you money.
If it doesn't sell, then who cares?
Right.
And here's the thing.
I don't care if the items you get profited a quarter or you get profited a hundred dollars
per.
Obviously, you want more hundred dollar bills than quarters, but it's scalable either way
you slice it.
It is scalable.
Yeah, you may need to get more book quarters or DVD quarters or DVD or CD quarters, whatever
video games.
Just just keep on turning, just turning.
And I don't like the term feed the beast, but that's quoted a lot.
But it is a machine and it needs your raw processed goods to go into the refinery or
where the refinery, I guess, put in a box that goes there and they sell.
We have we literally have technology in our hands that tells us if it will sell.
It's almost foolproof.
And technically eBay has similar things with TeraPREK.
It's not as fast as what we have over here on Amazon, not by any stretch of the imagination,
but it's.
I'm sorry.
It's pretty foolproof, honestly.
As long as you yourself put in the work, that is the.
Secret sauce right there.
You got to work it.
I try to convince as many eBay media sellers to come to Amazon.
And I think another reason why.
Well, this was one when I started that I knew, but I know now the other reason why I'm going
to stick with Amazon is.
It's you can't sign up for an Amazon account today and start selling today.
They have hoops and hurdles.
You have to jump through and accomplish as a new seller.
Unlike eBay, where anybody can start today, anybody can open their store and start selling
items for new sellers.
I know there's a lot of you over in the YouTube membership.
I know it sucks.
You start out, you're gated and a lot of things, right?
If you don't know what gated means, it means you scan, you know, the Gatorade bottle and
you can't sell Gatorade because you need an invoice to sell Gatorade or you need some
kind of sales history for them to let you sell these things.
In the beginning, it's a hurdle, but you realize more hurdles.
You jump every time you jump one of those hurdles.
Ninety percent of the other people are hitting that hurdle smack face and they're not even
moving on to the next one.
So ease of access when it comes to how hard it is on Amazon.
I love it.
Like it sucks for new sellers, but I'm here to tell you if this is something you're going
to treat like a long term business and you have plans to grow this business, these little
kind of doors you got to pull open as hard as you possibly can or knock down, they're
only going to benefit you because everybody else behind you most likely isn't going to
do it.
Now here's a fun question for you.
If you started when you did, but it had today's requirements to jump on Amazon, would you
have done it?
Yeah, 100%.
But I think you're right because you hit on a lot of things when it comes to like human
nature, I guess, right?
Like you got to do the work with Amazon to get the results.
But that's it.
That's with anything.
But for me, I'm the type of person where I'll give something a shot.
If it doesn't work and I can sleep with myself at night saying, Hey, I put my best foot forward
and it didn't work.
Then sure.
I'll move on to it.
I had plenty of things, plenty of stupid business ideas.
I've tried and they didn't work, but I gave them a real shot.
So I don't lose sleep.
Like man, if I just would have stuck with the hot dog cart business another month, like
what I've been successful, no, because when I cut that cord, I knew I put everything in.
I said, I'm going to give it a real shot and I can move on.
Yeah, I would still do it.
I mean, they didn't have all the video verification and things like that.
I mean, wait two weeks to get your little thing in the mail.
Yeah.
So like, yeah, you got to give yourself a real chance.
You got to give yourself a fighting chance to kind of see the actual results you possibly
could get and sell through man, sell through.
I've realized because I used to be a greedy bugger.
I wanted to spend a dollar and make $10 back every single time.
But I'm here to tell you, sell through rate is how you are going to scale any reselling
business, whether that's Amazon or eBay.
If you could spend a dollar and get $2 back guaranteed within a week, within a day, within
two days, you should be buying every single one of those items.
And the problem with that is with eBay, it takes longer to list items.
With Amazon, we can send, if you're watching on YouTube land, the desk of CDs behind Johnny,
we can have that boxed up on its way to Amazon within an hour, right?
200 items, 200 different individual items off to Amazon.
And the eBay land is going to take you much longer than an hour.
And that doesn't even include when you get an order, going to pick the order, shipping
the order, customer service for the order.
And for me, that was just like, it's not even close.
So not only do you get the better sell through on Amazon, you get your time back.
You get your life back.
You're not taking photos of CDs.
You're not taking photos of DVDs.
You've got to value these things.
No, you're, I want to try.
Yes, I agree with everything you just said.
However, I want to expand on it slightly.
For you new people, just tune me out for a minute.
So it's not only about being able to process faster, you have to have the material from
a bulk perspective in order to do that.
Even if it's an estate buyout or come to the estate warehouse and pick up everything that
will enable or your spurt will help even the thrifters.
Okay, fine.
You got a 20 store thrift route, still bulk.
You have the capability to print money as long as you can find the dollar bills with
your phone.
So you collect your dollar bills, unconverted money, essentially to send in, to convert
actual dollar bills, to then redeploy, to do it again, put a little bit in your bank
account and other investments and or live on bill money and overhead expenses, whatever.
But you can compound this continuously.
At present, things may change in the far, far future in unknown crystal ball land.
But right now, you have the ability to print your own money.
You have the capability to make as much money as long as you can process the goods for it.
So you literally just get the stuff, send it in, collect money, invest, pay bills, do
overhead, do it again and again and again.
And I think it's untappable at present, right now, right this minute.
I agree.
It's crazy to me.
Like, Crocodile Dundee, I found two of the same triple packs.
It's like, Crocodile Dundee, one, two, three, right?
It's like, I paid $2 for it.
It's going to sell on Amazon within the week that it gets there for like $35.
And it's like, it sounds fake, dude.
It sounds like a get rich quick scheme, but it literally-
It has a better rate of return than the stock market.
It does.
And it's crazy.
I just want everybody to sell on Amazon.
We cry if we can't get more than 20%.
But on the stock market, 5% is considered great.
All right.
So I'll ask the question.
Well, it's not really a question.
It's a topic and you have to defend the topic here, right?
So Amazon is going to take 50% in fees, Johnny.
If I sell on eBay, it's only going to be like 15%, maybe 20% if I'm promoting crazy.
So why would I ever go to Amazon and pay 50% fees when I can just pay 15% fees on eBay?
Small correction.
I mean, the category of media is 15% itself.
So you got to do promoted.
So we'll say you're at 25%.
Okay.
It would be fair for our eBay audience to not scream in the comments at us.
So double the fees.
So yeah, we'll double fees.
We'll say we're at a flat 30%.
If you're doing free shipping, okay, it's 40%.
So they're pretty close, but eBay still wins out marginally by percentages is what I mean.
So the sell through rate is slower.
It takes longer to get your money back because books, I'm sorry, it's a slower sell through
rate.
It very much is.
DVDs is faster, but low margin.
CDs is that middle ground in between.
Worth more than DVDs, but a little less than books, item to item or unit to unit comparison.
So you're just going to wait longer to get your money.
However, you will yield more dollars.
But for me, I'd rather compound my money continuously over and over and over again, then wait for
the larger dollar.
eBay is great for the larger dollar, but you got to be willing to wait longer for it.
Amazon just has more of the market space of buyers.
We're competing for the buyers.
And then we have all these sellers competing for a lower buyer base.
And speaking on eBay now, you're going to have to wait longer to get your money.
Now, Amazon does have a lot of sellers in itself, but the buyer pool much outweighs
the seller pool, significantly so.
Much larger than eBay, and it gets even worse when you go to other platforms.
It's pretty much Amazon, eBay, Walmart, or it's the holy trinity right now.
I'm excluding your live auction sites.
I'm looking at you over there or whatnot.
But that has great sell through rate, but way lower margin.
And we're speaking on this.
So this is the reason I'm bringing it up.
Sure.
But you got to sit there and do these live auctions.
And I've talked to some people.
The workload is very similar to eBay.
So it is, in fact, slower, even though you may be viewing a two hour, three hour show.
Has great, great sell through rate, right?
That's fine.
If you're building your business model on doing live auctions and you're married to
your chair or have somebody you've hired to be married to their chair, that's their job
is to sit in the chair and sell items.
And I don't know how long that person can sit in the chair.
Can they do it seven days a week?
Because that's the way my mind would want to do it if I was to be a full time what not
seller.
Can I sit in the chair nine hours running my mouth for nine hours?
I talk a lot, so maybe I could.
Or can I spend the same nine hours just packing a box and not taking any photos, not doing
any live chat, not dealing with any returns and just send it to Amazon?
To me, Amazon's the play.
Like you said, today's where we're at today.
If you're selling in a saturated category, it doesn't even have to be media.
Clothing, I mean, you can't do used clothing on Amazon or sneakers.
You have to go to the platform that's going to get you results, right?
You just don't stick with the platform.
Like Johnny could have stuck with eBay just because, you know, he's the eBay guy.
He still does the monthly eBay calls.
He still has all the knowledge.
He could go back and be the eBay guy again if you wanted to.
But you have to realize, OK, so Johnny's sitting there and he's working seven days a week.
And then he has to deal with lazy ass Mike every week for a podcast who he knows working
two days a week and is pushing the same numbers as he is.
And he doesn't have to pack the items.
He doesn't have to deal with customer service, any hands on returns.
So Johnny said, well, wait a minute here.
Like this works, but do I want to put in the 10X versus what he's doing to make it work?
It's a lot of self-realization.
And we all start with eBay and that's AOK.
And if you have desirable items, right, like if you're doing, you know, like we talked
about car parts, there's really good niches, collectibles.
Even if you're just the guy that just I've seen it before, somebody will come in and
I'll just look for signed books like you're going to get premium on eBay versus Amazon,
right?
No one no one reads the condition to see if a book is signed.
So like eBay exists for certain categories, but the days of just, you know, just list
anything and it's going to sell, you don't have to worry about it.
They're long gone.
On my best day of listing on eBay, I can't compare with my worst day on Amazon.
So we're not listings units, units listed as Amazon.
Like my just dog in it, not really caring to do my work day on Amazon kind of day is
double, triple what I could do on my best A game on eBay as far as the time goes.
Just can't compare.
It's a volume thing.
But for the people like, what about ASP?
Yeah, you're right.
Great.
If you have access to fast selling ASP items, more power to you.
But we're dealing in common books, we're dealing in common DVDs and CDs, and I'm a volume bulk
guy.
So I'm not you ASP people over there.
Good for you.
Great.
But I got to work with what I have in my area.
And what I have is a lot of mediocre, a lot of commons.
But if they can sell for sure, Amazon is the play for me, honestly.
Even the ASP arguments kind of garbage though, because how many people have to eBay to Amazon
businesses where they buy on eBay to sell on Amazon because you're going to get two,
three X what you pay for it on eBay.
So like, there's full blown businesses that do millions of dollars a year that literally
their source is eBay to sell it on Amazon because Amazon is going to get you a premium
because they have a bigger customer base.
Everybody has prime.
They want it in two days.
So as much as the fees sound scary, right, 50, maybe 60% if your ASP is low on Amazon
in the media world, the trade off is tenfold.
I mean, it's I would be happily willing to give away 50% if you don't have to pack an
item.
It's not even like you got to provide the box for them to pack in it, right?
It is the most hands off, crazy reselling opportunity out there still.
You don't have to pack boxes if you don't want to.
You don't have to sticker your units if you don't want to.
There are options to even make that automated.
I mean, you'll you'll you'll you'll shrink your margin.
But if you want your job just to make purchases, it exists within Amazon.
Yeah, it's and I still think the opportunity is there and don't let the high fees scare
you away.
I want I want the time back to motivate you more than the fees scaring you away.
So the time you're going to get back in your life that you can maybe focus on other business
opportunities, focus on your mental health, focus on your physical health, whatever that
may be.
You're going to get that back when you start to scale Amazon because I'm still scaling
and it's not like I'm putting in any crazy extra hours.
And it's just it's all it's all there, dude.
You just said it.
Common DVDs and CDs, right?
Like unsellable on eBay for much money, much sellable on Amazon for decent money.
I'm going to take the decent money over the little money and have a lot more time.
It's it's crazy because we can I should have just written down comparisons on some of these
things, like especially the popular items.
Right.
So like the one I recently got was like Inside Out, the DVD.
Right.
It's like a real popular kids movie.
Me and Deb actually watched it the other night.
And this DVD on eBay is like a five or six dollar DVD because all the mega sellers cross
list all the platforms.
Yeah.
And Amazon, it sells every single day, there's only five people that got it in stock.
They're going to go out of stock.
You're going to be able to sell for twenty dollars guaranteed every single time.
It's crazy to me.
It's literally just supplying demand and understanding the data in front of you and all the common
stuff.
The super high demand at Taylor Swift, the Toby Keith, the Jimmy Buffett.
It ain't a five dollar bill no more.
It's now a twenty dollar bill and it's going to sell the second it gets there.
And if you have a box of these things, then you've got 80 of these twenty dollar bills
that all of a sudden are flowing into the bank account.
Right.
And you could do the same thing on eBay.
Technically, you can raise it above market.
I do this on my eBay store, but you're going to wait a longer, much longer time than you
will doing that same thing on Amazon.
It's insane.
It literally blows my mind every time I sell something for 30 bucks or 20 bucks.
It's really only worth five dollars or less.
It just it's like magic.
It's like, how much money do I want to make today, Mike?
I want to make more money.
I can lower the price I want.
I guess I can do the same thing on eBay.
But here's another thing.
I don't want this to come off as we hate eBay.
We don't.
We very much like eBay.
And if you hadn't asked me off, I'll like and enjoy preference.
And I'm going to be the odd man out here.
I'm going to say I enjoy eBay more than I do Amazon.
But Amazon just pays me better, honestly.
So I got to go where the money is.
But I enjoy the workflow of eBay.
It feels like I'm creating something.
It's not just me copying somebody's listing.
I have the store owner mentality when I do eBay, when I do Amazon.
I'm an employee of Amazon, but damn, do they pay well.
That's the reality.
I can just print more money with Amazon than I can eBay.
Personally, if you're able to print more money with eBay than you can Amazon, great.
If you're the antiquarian bookseller, that ain't going to work so well on Amazon.
It'll work on some things, but they don't have everything that's in the antiquarian
catalog.
It doesn't exist.
eBay, you create your own damn catalog.
You could be a full blown antiquarian seller and make great money on eBay.
But you're working with what you've got in your area.
I come across very few antiquarian books out in my neck of the woods.
So if you have access to mountains and mountains of antiquarian books, eBay is the place for
you, my friend, because you're working with what you got.
Yeah.
And with the category we sell in media, these eBay sellers are crazy, man.
We're creating an eBay listing for a book that we're going to sell for $5, $6.
Come on.
Let's get real here, folks.
Are we here to make money?
Are we just here to say we have an eBay store?
I'm with Johnny.
I think eBay is great for people that are like, they kind of want to have that mentality
of, you know, take pride in your business, right?
Amazon's the big greedy corporation.
You know, like, I don't even care, dude.
I'll share it up with everybody.
I'll take Amazon every single time.
I understand some of you enjoy the books, you enjoy the category you sell in, you enjoy
the vintage t-shirts.
And eBay is the place for it.
But if you're going to be selling common stuff and stuff you can find on Amazon, like, you
need to just list it on Amazon before eBay because you're going to get more for your
money, you're going to spend less time than you're going to on eBay.
I'm going to ask you a fun question.
And I'm sorry if I'm putting you on the spot, Mike.
It's all right.
So I want you to tell me what type of seller this is.
Are they an eBay seller or they're an Amazon seller?
I collect books.
That's it.
Okay, fine.
I collect books.
The stuff I buy, I will cherry pick to put in my collection and the rest I will sell.
That's eBay, dude.
Guaranteed.
Okay.
So that's an eBay seller.
I like making as much money with little effort as I can.
It's Amazon.
Okay.
Now, put the two together.
Where should they go?
They collect books.
They cherry pick books for themselves, but they want to be as lazy as possible.
You got to limit yourself, man.
It depends what you talk about collecting.
Because I got like eight books over there.
So I've collected eight books over the five plus years I've been selling on Amazon.
I think you can have both.
I think both can exist, but you have to focus on what makes you more money.
You even said it right.
You got a little bit more of a half-ass store than I do.
Mine is like half, half, half of a half of an ass.
Yours is just half-ass.
Quarter-ass, quarter-ass store.
I got a quarter-ass store.
You got a half-ass eBay store.
I think they both can exist.
The hurdle I have with people when I do like coaching calls and everything, a lot of them
are just coming from eBay and they want to do Amazon.
And you can't even hit that point where we talked about at what point do you dial back
eBay because the bang for your buck now on Amazon is surpassing eBay.
And that's what happens.
And you have to be okay with saying, well, I'm doing $5,000 a month on Amazon now and
I'm doing $2,000 a month on eBay.
I know you've been doing eBay since you were 12 years old, but do you want a business?
The whole point of having a business is to make money through root of all evil.
We already covered that.
We know we're greedy little buggers here on the podcast.
So you have to say, okay, eBay, you slowly have to dial it back.
It can still exist for those.
Maybe you're real into like cameras, vintage cameras or something.
Sure.
You come across them, you know everything about them.
So the time invested when it does come to listing those items on eBay is really not
that much, but you still take pride in having your little eBay mud hut shop on the side
of the road somewhere.
And that makes you feel good on the inside.
So you can have both, but you have to focus on where the money is.
Nobody in their right mind would just sell on a platform that made no money or like you
would never get sales.
Like you would not stay on eBay, but people do.
I guess I'm wrong because people still stay on eBay and never sell items.
And if they just sold their items on Amazon, they would sell within the month.
Well, no, I think the people that have dug their foot in the ground on eBay and aren't
making any money.
Well, one, they're trying to will their business to work.
And sorry, it's not going to work.
It either works or it doesn't.
So you need to readjust your eBay business in my opinion here.
Sell desirable items that actually sell if you're going to sell on eBay.
You're not in the storage game.
And that's a quote by, I don't want to misquote them.
So I'm going to say this is my interpretation of something Mr. Tech and Sports might have
said at one point.
That was for you, Tech, if you're listening.
I don't want to misquote you.
So unless you want to be in the storage game, like you have reserve money, you're still
doing your full time job and being in the storage games, A-OK with you, fine, do that.
But if you're wanting to make this your full time income, don't do that.
You got to sell your items.
Now I think Mike said something when he was talking there about you have to focus on getting
the money now.
I agree with that.
What pays you the most?
It's going to be Amazon.
Now I'm a big proponent of having multiple streams of income, and I think eBay is a very
key component to that because you're going to pick up items, whether you like it or not,
that are just better for eBay.
So they have to go on eBay.
Now here's where we get in trouble as Amazon sellers because we're like, I have to, and
even I make the statement sometime, I have to focus on the money.
What gets me the most money?
Amazon.
I'll put this into the to do it later eBay pile.
We'll call it a death pile, whatever.
But you still got to do that death pile at some point.
So you have to have a process in place in order to do the eBay or wherever else you're
selling on.
I don't care if it's Etsy, Aves, Biblio, whatever.
Doesn't matter.
You have to make, you have to legitimately make it part of your business.
Don't put it as an afterthought.
If otherwise just get rid of the stuff or sell it to another reseller.
Don't put it in the pile of I'll get to it eventually when I'm done with my Amazon work.
End of the day comes, I'm tired and hungry.
I want to go home.
eBay can wait.
I don't care much about eBay.
Amazon pays me.
Why are you fooling with it?
Get rid of it.
Either you knuckle down and do it, make it part of your workflow or you offload it to
somebody or donate that stuff.
Get rid of it.
If it's not part of your business, stop trying to pretend it's part of your business.
I guess is what I'm trying to say.
I agree.
I'm going to give the perfect final example here to wrap up this episode.
So for me, we're talking about focusing on where the money is.
So being a YouTube personality guru, Johnny, that I am, I realized after about a year to
put now three videos, at least three videos a week, that the time to money translation
ain't there and it's still ain't there today.
It's still not where it should be for how much time I spend in the group and everything
I do for the YouTube channel.
So I got to a point where I said, okay, well, I need to reevaluate this.
What does this look like for me?
How can I possibly grow my YouTube channel to make more money?
It's still basically a charity.
I don't make nowhere near the dollar amount that I feel like I should.
You've done over a thousand videos, Mike, over 1000.
You and I are coming up on our 100th podcast.
Yeah, it's pretty insane to think about it.
So I had to say, okay, well, I can't keep just dumping all this time into YouTube because
if I'm dumping that time into my Amazon business, I'm making 50 plus dollars an hour versus
the YouTube world where I'm making a dollar 50 per hour.
It's probably somewhere.
You're in Happy Meal territory.
It's under $10 an hour.
It's probably less than five.
If I look at all the time I spend on YouTube related activities throughout the month versus
how much I get paid.
So I said, okay, I need to focus on where the money is.
Johnny said it.
It's not, you're not greedy.
I can't pay the bills with YouTube videos and thumbs ups, right?
Like I can't pay the bills with YouTube views, right?
Like sorry, landlord.
I got a thousand YouTube views this month.
Can I do a list translate to, you know, it doesn't work like that.
So we have businesses, we're all small business owners.
The point of your business is to make money.
Nobody's going to keep doing something if you're not making the money.
So what happens here?
We see it all the time.
You find a new reseller YouTuber that you enjoy.
They create content for three to nine months and then they go away because you quickly
realize, wait a minute, I'm not making no damn money on this, but we still hang on to
these platforms where if we just switch the platform, we'd actually sell our items.
And even if, even if you got less money on Amazon or eBay, right, we'll flip it.
Even if you could sell your item faster on eBay for less money than Amazon, eBay is still
the better option because if your item don't sell your potential earnings mean Jack squats
me.
I mean, who cares about what you, what this item potentially could sell for?
Like, well, sure.
Anything could potentially sell for any amount of dollars.
Get that out of your mind when it sells and what it sells for, that is what matters.
And hopefully it sells today because you're not getting paid otherwise.
So have the sell through is what matters.
We still love eBay, but for media land and where we're at in our business, Amazon is
the way to go.
It's just, I can't spin it any other way, man.
Give me your final thoughts before we roll out of here.
My final thoughts.
I just wanted to point out most of our guests have been eBay sellers and they figure out
a way how to make what they list sell fast.
They poisoned us, they poisoned us, they poison our minds because everywhere else we hear
eBay sucks, but then every guest we bring on is doing over six figures a year on eBay.
So like our minds are polluted with the success of these eBay sellers.
And I think that's why we take the stance we take because we know it's possible.
We see the success stories.
We've had tens of these people on that are doing well over six figures a year, but they
figured out the eBay machine and they understand that the eBay machine is best for the cash
category they sell in.
Yes.
They're working with what they got, which I mentioned earlier in the car, call rather.
They figured out, okay, if I put this item, it sells really, really fast and I'm going
to do this again and again and again, and it sells for really good money and they're
going to do it again and again and again.
I don't care which platform you choose.
You figure that out, you're going to make a lot of money.
I don't care if it's on eBay.
I don't care if it's on Amazon.
I don't care if it's on silly bonanza.
If you figure it out, where what you list actually sells within a short timeframe, you've
won.
You've won the game of reselling.
If Bonanza overnight became the biggest media selling platform, guess where me and Johnny
are headed tomorrow.
We're going down to Bonanza land.
It's just common sense.
You go where the stuff sells because if it doesn't sell, you've got nothing.
You've got a house full of junk or you even got an Amazon warehouse full of junk.
I'll put on my cowboy hat and Mike can call me little Joe.
Bonanza land, dude, where eBay land, Amazon land, wherever your items sell the best, that's
where you need to be because if it doesn't sell, who cares what the potential profit
might be.
If I'm going to list it for an extra $20 on Poshmark, then eBay.
Well, you know that item's never going to sell on Poshmark, so why even bother?
It's just pointless to me.
We've got to get more precise about the platforms we choose, and a lot of that is based off
the category you choose to sell in.
As crazy as that sounds, it's not just platform based anymore.
It's category based.
The eBay media seller, barcode eBay media seller, the eBay DVD seller, got to be nuts.
You're never going to make it.
You're working on margins that are so slim and you're spending so much day and time.
Right.
You're also gate weighted, like you said, by the category.
I don't think a used clothing seller or shoe seller can actually sell used clothes or shoes
on Amazon, so they got no choice but to eBay.
Now, if they had a choice, I bet you they would do Amazon, but Amazon says, no, we don't
want that stuff here.
Fine.
This stuff is in my area.
I can get in abundance.
I'm going to eBay.
Amazon, give me a call when you decide to sell what I have accessible.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
If you're the person, like Johnny said, what do you have?
If you have all antique books, you got all signed books, then 100% eBay is the play.
If that was me or Johnny and all we did was sell signed books and antique books, then
we both would be eBay guys sitting here.
If there was any distance outside my door, sure, I'd be on eBay still, but they're not.
I think you just have to sit down and realize the business you want to have and where's
the best place to sell that.
Some people, you know, you got local guys that do only flea markets because that's the
best bang for their buck.
Facebook marketplace is the best bang for the buck.
Go where it's going to sell and it's actually going to make you money because it actually
sells.
That's going to do it for this week's episode.
We'll talk to you all next week.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
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