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 is up everybody?
Welcome into another Resellers Mindset Podcast episode.
Mike sitting next to Johnny.
He don't know the topic.
I did kind of tell him the topic earlier today, but I told him I changed my mind.
Last weekend.
He lied to me, ladies and gentlemen, he lied.
I lied to him, but I came up with a better one for you all.
So we're going to talk about, I'm going to talk from the Amazon side.
Johnny's going to talk from the eBay side, 2025, how to start a media
selling business on Amazon and eBay.
Johnny, do you want to go first or do you want me to go first?
Since I knew the topic and I already kind of have a little bit of a plan.
No, I can go first if you want me to.
All right.
I'll go on eBay.
So eBay, you're starting an eBay business.
You have no knowledge.
You've been watching a bunch of YouTubers you may and probably have
been lied to by these YouTubers.
So let's just say, you know, nothing you think you do, but you know nothing.
So what you're going to do is you're going to go out to locations
that are offering books.
I don't care what it is.
And you're going to bring your technology, you know, before you buy
a device called your cell phone.
And let's hope you have reception.
It's different story if you don't, but let's say you have reception.
You're going to look at things you think are valuable.
You're going to look them up and find out again that you're wrong and know nothing.
And then you're going to put it back and then you're going to do it again and
again and again until you have a reasonable amount that you can buy or you
get tired and you're just done for the day.
Then you're going to go home and then you're going to do the hard work.
Well, let me roll back there.
You're going to check these items.
I don't care what media type it is for damage and, or this this at face value is
money, but I'm looking at it.
It's too damaged.
It's torn up.
It's water damaged.
It the CD looks like somebody's skateboarded across it.
Any kind of defects.
You put those back too.
So you go out with less than you thought you were going to go out with.
You thought you were going to have carloads of stuff.
You're not, you're going to have a basketball, maybe you go home.
You list this stuff.
What I mean by lists is you take your pictures and find out this sucks.
And yes, pictures suck.
Congratulations.
Welcome to the suck club.
And then you're going to list it and find out this sucks even more.
Welcome to the bonus suck club.
And then you're going to put it on your shelf and it doesn't sell overnight.
This sucks even more.
Welcome to the VIP black card edition suck club.
And then you're going to do it again.
And then eventually you do this enough times, you're going to get some sales and
you're going to put some money back in your pocket.
It's still not going to be as much as you spent, but over time, the money's
going to start to trickle in and it's going to be more than you're spending.
That's the name of the eBay game in 2025.
I've been talking for a minute, so I'm going to toss it to Mike and we'll come
back to me for eBay stuff.
There actually is pretty big differences, right?
Like the month one of Amazon, I'm going to start the same way Johnny did.
You probably watch some YouTubers and they're lying to you from a YouTuber
that literally sells books.
But I know of other channels that aren't, I would say, you know, above grade when
it comes to telling people exactly how it is, especially in the beginning.
So Amazon's completely different, right?
Johnny says you just need your actual cell phone for eBay and Amazon.
You need lots of other bells and whistles, right?
You're going to probably get a little bit of a better experience with
Amazon, you're going to probably get a little Bluetooth scanner.
And then you got your wonderful never-ending fee of applications
you need on your phone, right?
Because you're going to be out scanning barcodes.
You need to actually pay for software that can actually process things and
give you the data based on the make a decision.
So your first month, you're spending a lot of money, you're getting, you
know, some, some bells and whistles of a scanner and you're paying for software.
Usually they have free trials, but, but for the sake of this, you're going to
buy some sort of Write UI on the iPhone or the Amazon, like Apple, may
want, some kind of zugra unconscious to figure out if you can actually
buy the home or you can pay for that.
If you're, you're not your damage.
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and you realize, well, this is kind of monotonous and I don't even need to have, you know, any type of knowledge and there you just scan.
I'm literally, I'm literally a robot every week that just scans as many barcodes as I can.
And your little software says, hey, it's green, you should buy it. But you don't know nothing else about the software.
You just see that it says green. So you buy that item, regardless of the price, you don't understand anything.
So you get it all home. You got a packet, send it to Amazon in the beginning.
If you're using a software listing software, then of course that's going to cost you another $50 a month on top of your scouting software, which is $30 a month.
So in the Amazon land, it's a lot more cash intensive in the beginning because these are overhead costs that a lot of people have.
And then you need the fancy thermal printer because your normal standard printer isn't going to work in Amazon land.
And like Johnny says, you get home, you list things. We don't got to take photos.
But the caveat to Amazon land is, well, nobody ever told you month one, you're not going to be buy a box eligible.
So you're going to have basically 3% of sales that you normally would.
Nobody ever told you, you get all that stuff home, you're a brand new seller.
You're going to be restricted in 95% of the books, CDs and DVDs you buy. Books 95%, CDs and DVDs 100%, right?
Because you got to take steps to get ungated. But nobody talks about this.
So month one, you go out, gung ho, you buy all this stuff, you find out you're restricted in it.
This is the end. That fast. Most people don't make it past month one because of everything we kind of said, right?
With eBay, you got to take the photos. And Amazon, you're going to be restricted in 95% of it.
And in Amazon, sure, maybe I go out my first week, Johnny, and I send my first box off and it gets checked in and I get some sales.
Unlike eBay, you 100% are not getting paid within the first month of selling on Amazon, regardless of how many sales.
Even if you send in 100 books and all 100 sell that week they get checked in, Amazon is not giving you that money in that first month.
So here we are in Amazon land. We're operating big time in the red, Johnny.
Maybe you got some pennies trickling over in eBay land, but in Amazon land, we're broke. The line chart is going down.
It's not going up at all yet. So month two, eBay land back to you.
Okay, month two, you've made a few sales. Congratulations.
But you picked up a lot of 10, $12 items and you realize, huh, I'm only getting like a dollar, maybe $5 for each one of these.
I want more money for my time. So you make a decision. I want higher valued stuff.
So you go out and do the same thing you do and you bring home less.
You're like, damn, I did the same amount of work. I brought home less items and I'm going to do less work.
But I'm still I'm still in the position of I need to get more.
But I'm I've taken a step back on the lower end stuff to do some, I don't know, mid tier stuff.
Okay, maybe I need to put more time into sourcing. So now you're working harder to find higher valuable items.
And you're like, huh, this is how this game is played. Interesting.
So you do the same process again and again. And all of a sudden, you're getting paid more.
Okay, this gives you more what I'm going to call opportunity because you built up some capital to go out more because it's going to cost more gas.
It's going to cost more in your time. And then it's going to maybe cost more because you change it the way you're sourced.
That's another thing. Sticking to the same sourcing type.
And we'll just say thrift stores. You decide to branch out. Maybe I'll try an estate sale. Maybe I'll try a library sale.
Maybe I'll try a music shop or 10 other different things. Doesn't matter.
So you're branching out your source and things. You're starting to figure things out.
Okay, it costs more here, but I'm able to pull more higher end things.
So it is worth my time and investment in my capital to continue to source like this.
Maybe I'll drop a few of those thrift stores because I may be able to pull five items in a trip here.
I'm able to pull 15 or 25 over here, even though it's spending slightly more.
I'm going to go with option B versus option A every time. And then you do that for long enough.
You built up even more capital. So you find out how to network.
You may have built up one to two networking people because of you continuing to go in month two.
Maybe spilling over a little bit in a month three.
But I would assume you would have built up as long as you're friendly and outgoing.
That's the key thing. You got to be a little bit outgoing to get this where you're starting to get discounts because you're buying in bulk.
Or you're starting to get access to the back room before it even hits the floor.
Good job. Now you have to do this a million more times.
And that'll that'll go into future months. And back to Mike.
Month two, we're dead broken Amazon land. We got no paychecks coming in.
Maybe we got some sales. We're hoping that we can catch the buy box in month two.
So those don't know what the buy box is.
Every category has a used buy box that you need to become eligible for on Amazon land.
There's no unfortunately there's no set of rules that says, hey, if you do these five things, you automatically become buy box eligible.
So we're hoping by the end of month two, which usually is not the case.
Most people take three months, sometimes even longer, that we become buy box eligible because 90 over 90 percent of the sales on Amazon come through the buy box, which is the buy now button.
So if you don't have the buy box, you're literally getting at most 10 percent of the sales you otherwise would.
So here we are. We're in this weird spot where maybe we've made a few sales.
We have no money coming in and we still want to continue to grow the business.
You're the person that's stubborn, which I like, because it takes time to grow any business.
It takes time to grow anything in life. So you just said, I'm going to keep at this.
All right. Maybe maybe you're in the group or you're in Johnny's here and we say, hey, it's going to it's going to take a few months.
It's going to take, you know, to get the plane off the ground here.
You just got to get down to the end of the runway and then we'll be good to go.
So you're like, all right, here I am. I'm going to continue sourcing.
I'm going to continue sending boxes maybe by the end of month two.
You could argue that you're still not going to get paid from Amazon in month two, because if you factor in the thirty nine ninety nine subscription fee,
hopefully you've made enough to kind of cover that at least. But Amazon holds your money as a new seller.
You're looking at six plus weeks of your money staying in reserves.
And even as a seasoned seller like myself, they still hold my money for a solid two to four weeks, depending on what type of mood they're in.
So we're chugging along in Amazon land.
Johnny hit on the hit on points that if we had this conversation five years ago, Johnny,
we never would talk about building relationships because you could walk into any thrift store and leave with a cart full.
But now we're talking month two of your brand new business.
You need to be having conversations. You need to start building relationships because that is the only way.
Not only are you going to scale the business, the only way it's going to exist. Period.
Dot end of sentence. You can't rely on the goodwill. You can't rely on the Salvation Army's, the savers.
You need more than that to have a tangible business, especially if you want to make.
What's up, Amazon sellers? We wanted to take a second to talk about GoToLister.
The software me and Johnny both use to list and manage our inventory and grow our businesses.
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You live in California, you need to make a whole lot of money and your third stores aren't going to give you that type of money.
So Munk2, I 100% agree with Johnny. We need to have conversations.
But here we are, Munk2, and you're still just scanning things. There's nothing exciting, Johnny.
There's no knowledge needed. I still know nothing about books.
I'm literally a robot that just scans barcodes and maybe hopefully you're understanding the screens in front of you, right?
You're understanding your scouting software, Scoutly, ScoutIQ, whatever that may be.
So you're making a little bit better buying decisions. But like Johnny said, you start out in the beginning, we all buy junk, right?
But the difference is in Amazon land, you get punished.
Johnny and his eBay business can just say, all right, I'm throwing this stuff in the trash can.
In the Amazon land, no, it doesn't exist. You're going to have to pay to have those items removed, liquidated, destroyed.
Sure, this doesn't happen in Munk2, but your mistakes you make in the beginning are going to, it's not a huge punishment.
Unless you go crazy in the beginning of your business. But most of those items you buy in the beginning, you're going to have to get rid of.
And in Amazon, you have to pay to get rid of them versus eBay. Yeah, you have your buy costs, but you're just out your buy costs.
You can just throw them out your garage, burn them, whatever you want to do with them.
Amazon, you have to physically pay somebody to get it off the shelf and dispose of it however Amazon wants to do it.
So Munk2, we're probably, maybe we got one paycheck. It's not big in Amazon land in the beginning.
You're talking 50 bucks, 30 bucks, 40 bucks. You're already, you're spending more in software than you are actually getting paid from Amazon in Munk2, 100% of the time.
So we're still dead broke over here, Johnny, Munk2 end of Amazon. Now we're into Munk3 and your eBay business is rocking and rolling.
You're actually getting paid, which is nice unlike us. So where are we going in Munk3?
Munk3, okay. So you made, you maybe made one to two connections. Great. You're going to need more because you've decided you want to get paid more for your time.
Because you've realized by now, photography and listing really, really sucks. Yeah, it does. No argument there. It does.
But it's just part of the process. You got to do that in order to get paid, get a bigger paycheck.
So in Munk3, okay, you've decided, okay, I need people to remember you, me, because I've had conversations where people want to talk to me more and do further business with me, but I've gotten no calls.
Nobody's called me. I gave them my number. They said they would and they didn't.
Or so what you do is you decide to do some business cards, maybe put up some flyers, maybe introduce yourself more to people you haven't really, like beyond the checkout person.
Like is your manager in? Can I maybe have a couple minutes with them? Kind of deal. So you're advertising yourself. You're selling yourself at this point.
And then sometime around Munk3, you're going to start getting responses back.
And like, this is great. Maybe the deals work out. Maybe they don't. And you're doing more, more groundwork on building a relationship, essentially, even if that first phone call, it doesn't work out.
Maybe on call two it does because they may call you the first time. You're like, okay, I got a room full of books here and I need you to pick it up. How does $800 sound?
Well, to me, that's I don't know. Can you send me photos? It's a question you should always do.
And if it's that price tag, you may want to go look at it and maybe ask how many units is it? Because we call them units. I don't care what you're selling CDs, books, video games, doesn't matter.
So maybe go down and look at it and you're like, this isn't worth $800. This is all Southern living taste of home microwave cookbook stuff. You don't want to get anywhere near $800.
And maybe you decide to buy it at a negotiated rate. But to me, I think the lesson you'll learn, you're probably going to do it, honestly, because you've worked it down.
So you bought it and you're like, this isn't worth it. So you know next time when you come across it, this is for a future month, you say no and you walk away and you drive off because you've done this long enough now to know a junk buy versus not.
But earlier on, you're going to make this mistake. Everybody makes it because you're trying to buy quantity at a good rate. And you've done that, but it's not quality.
Everybody makes this mistake. You buy a non-quality big buy and you're stuck with it and you got to get through the tremendous work.
And here's the lesson, the second lesson you're going to probably learn in month three, disposing of the junk. Where can I offload this and maybe monetize it a little bit?
So you're going to maybe make Facebook market ads to try to sell it off. You're going to try to go to some stores to get some store credits because you know these places because you've been to them.
But there's going to be a portion. Well, you're either going to have to trash, donate, or set it on fire because you're stuck with it because it's yours and you bought it.
So you're going to learn that very, very valuable lesson. And if you don't, you're going to do it enough times where you'll eventually come to the same conclusion that the savvier person learned the first time they did it.
That's pretty much what month three looks like. A couple of mistakes, but I'm going to call that educational cost and also more advertising by you by putting yourself out there with business cards, flyers, maybe a couple of emails.
It's, I feel like I got to give two different scenarios in Amazon month three because you have the scenario where you have the buy box and you have the scenario where you don't have the buy box and they look completely different than one another.
So you have the buy box. This is the good scenario, right? Like this is the, you have the evil path and the good path, right? The good path is you have the buy box. You'll know when you have the buy box. Everybody has advanced placement and remedial.
So, all right, you're rocking and rolling. All of a sudden your sales are ticking up, but I already told you all right, like you can have a thousand dollars in sales today. That money ain't coming anytime soon. I hate to be the bearer of bad news.
So month three, we still have expenses. We have all these expenses coming out, the software, our buy costs, our inventory fees. Now items are sitting there, our Amazon subscription fee, but we have the buy box. So sales are picking up.
So you're still not getting paid in month three. You'll have trickle in money from the previous two months from items you sold when you didn't have the buy box, but that money from that month is probably going to be pushed out to the next month.
So your real paychecks really probably aren't going to start happening until month four, 120 days, if you get the buy box in month three. That's best case scenario.
And then you have the buy box in books, your restrictions are coming down, right? So any new seller on Amazon is going to be restricted in 90% of the books, 95% of the books. As you send inventory to Amazon, as you sell a few pieces, you stay consistent.
Amazon automatically removes the gates with books, but it's one of those things where it's a hurdle you have to get over. So month three, you have the buy box, the restrictions are coming down.
So you finally feel like you're starting to get some ground, but you still don't have money coming in. And I'm going to be straight up. I mean, who's going to start a business where they're not going to get paid, Johnny, until month four, hopefully, like fingers crossed.
Crazy people.
Crazy people. That's why I try to tell everybody. Amazon is not a sprint. Start as slow as you can, as cheap as you possibly can. I know people start reselling and they want to just go with the speed of light.
It doesn't exist on Amazon. You are going to spend a whole lot of money and get nothing back for three plus months every single time. Every single person that starts on Amazon, just be wary. You got three months until you see any type of significant paycheck dependent on what you're sending.
So that's a good case.
Bad case, no buy box. Here you still are 10% of sales. I mean, it's grim at this point. You've gone 90 days, you're getting 10% of this.
You're leading money. You're making no money. You're spending money nonstop.
You are literally spending money and you have nothing coming in. And it's like people that quit at this point, I can't blame them. I can because I know the upside of sticking with it. But in actuality, how long can people go without getting paid doing something, right?
You're putting in a significant amount of time. And I think that is a good reason why you should have the combo attack of eBay and Amazon when you start out in media because there are some items that aren't good for Amazon that are good for eBay, right?
Sign books, things like that, antique books. And eBay is going to give you the money a lot faster than Amazon ever will. So it is good to have the combo attack. But if you don't have the buy box in month three, you're still there.
You're still, you don't see the light at the end of the tunnel that I'm talking about. You're just like, this sucks. This doesn't work. Why did I listen to whatever YouTuber I listened to that said nothing about becoming buy box eligible, that said nothing about these hurdles you have to deal with in Amazon land, the software overhead, the fees of having your items there.
There's a lot that goes into it that really isn't talked about. So month three is pivotal. If you make it past month one, okay. You're not out of the woods yet. You get past month one, cool, you're still here. After month three, that's going to be the true test because 90 days without getting paid, dude, is a long, long time.
To my benefit, when I started, I was still working a full time job. So being part time in the Amazon land, I kind of was just winging it right like I just didn't want to be what Johnny said you realize as an eBay seller, you got to take photos, you got to deal with customers, you got to pack and ship orders.
I just started Amazon because I don't want to deal with any of that. I'm like, wait a minute, I don't gotta take photos. I don't get to ever answer a customer message. I don't got to pack individual orders. So it benefited me.
It's hard to imagine starting an Amazon full time with nothing else today like from scratch like 90 days without getting paid. I mean, the majority of people, there's no way they're less than that long like without getting a single paycheck from Amazon, especially if you're out active sourcing.
I mean, even when I did it, I still had the eBay money coming in. So it wasn't I'm burning through my savings. So it was like, okay, it's going to be a minute. So let's just send, send, send, send. Maybe maybe I got to cut back on some splurges here and there. But it's still since since then.
And I would say another, I know, I know it's not my turn because I'm the eBay. It don't matter chime in. But I would say the stuff you're gated in, and I've given this advice rather recently.
You're making no money. So put it on eBay. If you're an Amazon seller, learn eBay, unfortunately, you'll hate it. But price it at the Amazon price. Don't ignore the salts. If you're an Amazon seller ignore the soul cops because basically it's a holding ground. But it has a chance to sell and you recruit some capital, especially if you've got the in your the no buy a box.
You need some capital. If you get a lucky sale, great. Or you decide, you know what, it's worth $35 Amazon, somebody sent me an offer for 20. I can't send it to Amazon. I need the money now I'm going to take the $20 offer, because it's still more than I paid for it. Welcome to media. It usually is more than you paid for.
Now you've got a few bucks in your pocket, and it's going to make you feel better, honestly versus that pile of stuff you bought that you can't do anything with. So I'm going to say to you Amazon sellers, especially month one through four here, your gated pile until you're ungated, put them on eBay. And once you're ungated, rip them off of eBay and send them to Amazon. So you need the capital that you do.
You got to be scrappy in the beginning, you got to be like, you got to be that person like they make movies about right like the pursuit of happiness right like you got to be so scrappy in the beginning. And I have people that start this business and there's like, hey, I got $5,000 $10,000 set aside, right. And they start in their Amazon business.
I tell everybody the same exact thing where they have $0 or $10,000 is you need to be as cheap as you possibly can in Amazon for the first three months, while still starting and growing your business. So what does that mean? That means you're doing free pickups.
That means you're going to the cheapest sources out in the universe like whatever you possibly can get for dirt cheap, you're trading your time for money in the beginning because there is no return on your money in Amazon for the first three months, no matter how much you go and spend, you can go spend $10,000 your first week sourcing, it ain't coming back no time soon.
It's not coming back in the first three months. So we have to be so cheap and tactical and growing the business on Amazon, where eBay land, at least even if you're buying some bad stuff, you're still buying some good stuff, hopefully, so you do get a little bit of change back in your pocket in case you need it.
And you can fire sell items and things like that. It is so tough today to start an Amazon business if it's going to be the only thing you do in the beginning, because you got a 90 day runway, hopefully, you get the buy box by then, and then you kind of can take off so I don't know.
Alright, so we'll just do a magical one after three months, maybe we'll do like four to six months, what should we be doing in eBay land at this point?
eBay land, you've now figured out, man, it's taking me a long time to get through this stuff. And I mentioned it sucks. So how do I get through the suck faster. So this is the beautiful part of the business, and it's going to take you to forever to the end of your reselling career.
How do I refine processes to streamline my business? Do I need to move a piece of furniture? Do I need to get uniform packaging? Do I need to figure out how I do less hand movements of picking up the cell phone and dropping the cell phone and positioning the items, where I get the same amount of quality with less steps?
And even on the computer, you're how you operate on your thing, you have the same seven tabs open, leave them open all the time. And you're just hitting the refresh page instead of having one tab open and then going to something else that you need, and then refreshing going back to Google typing in what you need.
No, you got to figure out how do I eliminate steps, how to make myself more efficient, because your time becomes more and more precious the longer you do this. So month four through six, you're going to try to figure out how do I do less work to take or how do I do more work in less time to eliminate steps, improve my processes to streamline my business.
Because all that time saved gives you more time to do the important part, the money making part, because the money's in the buy, you need more time to buy. Whether that gives you an extra hour of drive time to go sourcing, so maybe you can expand your bubble, especially if you're still, you're probably still part time or full time job at this point.
And every minute is precious, especially for you.
And I would say another thing that's going to go into this is, yeah, you may have to go to the hardware store to to jerry rig something up. It ain't going to look pretty, but I promise you it's better than ordering off Amazon. Sorry, Amazon sellers for $500 when it's going to cost you $50 at Lowe's or Home Depot to build the same thing.
You're going to save a little bit of time, but you're going to save some capital, which you still need at this point. Now, I'm going to say, here's what's also going to happen in month four to six, especially if you're in a relationship and or have children.
You don't spend any time with us. You're just spending money. We need you to do less of that. But no, look, look, I'm making money. It's not enough money. It's not enough. You're just you're ignoring us and you're making like $50 a day.
You make way more at your day job. Why are you even doing this? Or your shit's taken over the house. It's everywhere. I don't want it in my living room anymore. I've had enough. I've lasted three months of this bullshit and I don't want any more. That's what's going to happen in month four to six.
If you're in a relationship is you're going to stick stuff in the hallway. You're going to stick stuff in the wrong closet. You're going to put something and it's going to edge at them, edge at them. They've had enough. Yep.
And you're going to have to have those conversations with your family and significant others. It's just going to have to happen.
You got to have these conversations up front. And we had a full episode saying, hey, there's there needs to be sacrifices if you want to grow this business, especially like if you're somebody's Johnny's talking about where you have obligations, full time job and you're trying to grow this on the side.
There's only so much time in the day. Right. So you got to plan your time accordingly and have open conversations of saying, hey, here's what I want to do in the next six months. I want to start this business. You give me six months. We'll see where we can get it. If it's not working, we can step back from them.
But it is going to take a little bit of extra time from my days. This is how you do things the right way. The wrong way is you pile up the tubs in your bedroom and you just got tubs full of random junk.
I know we're talking about media. Maybe you got random bookcases full of books that are not in order. It's just an absolute mess. The books stink. You can't blame the other person for being upset at what you've done because you weren't clear about your what you're going to do.
You should always have a conversation about these things, but most people don't. That's kind of what we're hitting at here. And in Amazon land, it might seem hunky dory. But like Johnny said, where's the money at? Where's the money at, Johnny?
You've been doing this for three months and maybe, you know, unfortunately, a lot of people do start with credit cards, right? Like you spend $1,000 on their credit card and like we have nothing coming back.
So now you're at this four to six month mark in Amazon land. And I'm just going to assume you have the buy box now. If you don't have the buy box, you've probably already given up. But if you do, all right, maybe you start getting some payouts.
But you have to realize you just spent 90 days. You can't just go spend every penny you get coming in on more inventory. You have to scale the Amazon business slow and steady.
Trade your time instead of money in the beginning for the first six months in Amazon. Your time is what you have to trade instead of your money because you're not going to see the money for that time frame.
So now you're rocking and rolling. You're actually getting some payouts. Maybe you're sending more inventory in. You're kind of making a progress. You got to get a repricing software, which is another added expense.
There's lots of added expenses in the Amazon land that people don't talk about, unfortunately, right? So by the end of it, you're going to have a listing software, scouting software, a repricing software, and hopefully by month four, you found my YouTube channel and you're paying $2.99.
So you can come hang out with me and Johnny every single week, right? Because if I don't have a live call, Johnny does a live call and you say, okay, now I realize what goes into this business. I can get all my questions answered.
And I do think a lot of that is people start Johnny and they don't have the right community. They just have that YouTuber that has the flashy videos that kind of got them into this.
So four to six months, we both agree. You should be getting some type of payments coming back to you at this point. You should have some type of at least one to three solid relationships.
Maybe you don't get stuff every single time, but you're the first person on their list. If they come into the inventory, you're looking for. So you have the quality inventory. Maybe you're getting it for cheap.
That's all about balancing your time and your money in the beginning and realizing it's not all. I mean, did I remember the eBay days you used to work like he used to?
I even felt tired, man. I mean, you used to look like you just work 24 hours straight and people don't see that.
16 hour days, seven days a week, no days off. Yeah, you don't see that and it's unexpected. But there in the beginning, if you're so gung ho about starting something, right?
Because that's usually when you're most excited, right? Like I want to go, go, go and you go, go, go buy and then you don't do nothing else. You just buy it and then it sits there. Right. And then you have nothing.
So you got to balance it all with time and and the money that comes in. Johnny, give me your final thoughts on somebody that's going to start eBay selling media in 2025. The money will come.
You will learn along the way. You will make mistakes along the way. But eventually the money will come. Now.
It's a grind. I promise you that you're going to get up one day. You don't want to do photos. You don't want to do listings, but you got it because that's the only way you make it in this business consistency and time.
And then eventually the money comes in. Now you make adjustments because you want more money. So you figure out those little nuances along the way.
But if you're consistent, determined and willing to change that last one there, most people are not willing to change. Unfortunately, to make the adjustments necessary for your business, you will be successful. No questions asked.
I agree. My only caveat to that in the Amazon land is accept the fact you're not getting paid for 90 days. There's no there's no way around that. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it's it's the honest truth.
There's it is so hard to start Amazon and keep your head down and just do your time. All right. Do your time. Get the buy box. Then you see what the power of Amazon really can do.
Then you can see, okay, wow, I'm actually making money. Wow. Things are selling when they get scanned at UPS when I drop them off.
That is how you survive and you thrive in this business is getting over those first initial three months on Amazon is arguably the hardest business ever because you have nothing coming back.
Every dollar you send away, it ain't coming back for at least 90 days. And in some cases, maybe you don't get the buy box, right? Maybe it's that worst case scenario where you don't get the buy box for four or five, six, seven months.
Like then all of a sudden, I mean, listen, at the end of the day, sometimes you just got to move on and there's nothing wrong with moving on. And you don't know till you know, you don't know till you jump in and you do your first hundred eBay listings that it sucks. Right.
Johnny says it sucks. Maybe you enjoy listing. Maybe you're the person that loves photography and not sourcing. So you don't know until you're actually in these businesses what you like, what you don't like.
Is this something you want to continue on and never be afraid to step away and pivot and do a whole new business, a whole new category. But we're here to tell you, you can still make lots of money selling eBay and Amazon books.
But these are kind of where you need to be in the beginning. Your expectations of first three months, your first six months, kind of where it's going to take you, what you can expect. And just know the sky's the limit.
There's people doing seven figure selling media every single year on Amazon and eBay. So 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. Today's full episode and all previous episodes are available to all YouTube members along with the weekly zoom call and private discord. Head on over to youtube.com backslash to use book guy and consider joining for as little as two ninety nine a month.