Welcome back to another episode of the Reseller's
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 usebookguy 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 the Reseller's Mindset
Podcast. My name is Mike, next to Johnny. I am
laughing because I just had a big explosion before
I started this. Not on Johnny, just about recently.
selling in general, but today's topic is not
me exploding right here on video. It's about
my approach to 2026. And I think it should be
almost everybody's approach is to look for higher
quality items. And in the land of Amazon, you
actually can. Sell less items and make more money.
I know it sounds so scammy every time I say it,
but that is really my goal this year is to sell
less, but make more. Last year, I sold over 12
,000 items on Amazon and Amazon made more money
than me, right? So every step of the way, if
I sold an item. a book at 15 bucks, Amazon made
10, I made five. My plan this year is to reverse
that. I want to be the one making more money
than Amazon. So in Amazon, that basically sums
up to, you got to sell a book for $21 to make
more than Amazon and a CD or DVD, you got to
sell at $17. My ASP last year was like $14 .95,
give or take a few pennies here or there. This
year, I want to try to get around the $17 mark.
So the idea is I don't have to send, source,
buy, sell, take the risk of my dollars on 12
,000 items. Maybe I can do it with 8 ,000 items
and make more money. So I create less work for
myself. I have less capital invested in the items
that I'm actually purchasing. But the problem
with that, Johnny, is. If you're not buying everything
in the thrift store, dude, you're not motivated.
Let's face it, right? Dude, people go to the
thrift stores. If we leave a thrift store with
like, and we can easily carry our items out to
the car from the thrift store, it was a bust.
And we're like, we're struggling whether or not
we should continue on this journey. I think your
first mistake is going into a thrift store, but
that notwithstanding. No, you're absolutely right.
I mean, when I started even on eBay, my ASP was
ridiculously low. I was doing quality work, and
then I realized I could pay myself more by just
raising my price and having a higher ASP. Same
work, just asking for more money because my presentation's
better, and you kind of know what you're getting
when you buy a book from me. There's always three
business models. There's the buy and hold at
whatever ridiculously high price. There's the
high ASP model. And then there is the bulk model,
essentially. Buy as much as you can, process
as much as you can, send it in or list it in.
All three work technically. It's just how hard
do you want to work. That's essentially it. We'll
continue on with the thrift stores, which I disagree.
You can get a better deal if you offer to buy
it all. You can cherry pick and leave the run
-of -the -mill stuff behind, whatever the run
-of -the -mill numerically is to you. That's
what that is. Or you can get backroom access,
and that's kind of the best of both worlds. You
don't have to buy it all. They just want you
to kind of do a little bit of work for them by
buying from the backroom. Now, I don't – I think
people value their time, but their valuation
is wrong. They think if they buy it all and process
it all and send a – good percentage in, they're
going to do all right. I disagree with that.
You could buy it all, sure. But what you should
be sending in, if it's not at least $10 or more
profitable these days, I strongly urge you to
stay away. Unless you're doing like true bulk,
like you're getting the truckloads every week,
you're doing a truckload a week kind of person,
that's probably true. Even if you're doing a
merchant operation, whether that's FBM, eBay,
whatever. But if you're going to buy it all,
you're going to have the pain points of a bulk
seller. Like, what do you do with the stuff left
over? Well, you got your buyback companies. You've
got the trash can outside. You've got the Facebook
marketplace angle. But all these require time.
So in this higher ASP model, you're going to
go out. You're going to take home less. And you
may have to go out further. That's just a simple
reality to get enough accumulation in Amazon
land of a box worthy or a couple boxes worthy
to send in a week. You're going to have to leave
that $5 shit behind. Leave it behind. You're
literally chasing nickels when you should be
chasing dollars. I see this a lot. Because I
get recommended a lot of reselling stuff, right?
People showing what's sold on eBay. I mean, it
looks cool, right, Johnny? I got my whole table
laid out, like everything I sold on eBay. And
then like I pack it, I get to the post office,
I get home and I look, eBay's got a little thing
that says available funds. It's like 10 bucks
and you're like, wait a minute, I just wasted
how many hours? And it's, I can't say this enough.
I started reselling because I wanted a better
quality of life. I never set out to be the million
-dollar reseller. I was at a job where I was
working 60 hours a week salary. Sure, money a
factor, 100%. We wanted to keep the lights on.
I thought to myself, if I can make the same amount
of money in a shorter amount of time, that allows
me to live my life and kind of do what I want.
Now, sure, it's kind of transpired into where
I was making a lot more money than I was working
my actual job. But I think you hit it on the
head. As you get more picky and selective, you
don't, you're not spending as much time, which
necessarily isn't, it's not a bad thing, right?
Like, I just started up eBay again this year.
It's amazing to me if you have a higher priced
item, how much more flexibility you have and
how like you feel better when you get a sale
or like you don't feel as bad like when you sell
an item because you know you just made like $20
after fees, right? It's going to take you two
minutes to pack and have the label on it and
then you can take it to the post office. But
I do think it's what you said. I think more people
are inclined to. Get everything because it sounds
cool and it feels good. You got a whole car full.
But then you got to deal with the back end of
this. And the back end is you got a lot of stuff
you have no right. Like, I mean, Johnny said
to throw out your books. All right. Not me. Usually
I'm the one telling you guys to, you know, do
whatever you got to do with the books. We just
don't want to see them again. Right. It's like
the mob. Hey, do whatever you got to do. We don't
want to see them again. Bury them in the cement,
whatever. We don't care. I think a lot of people
get caught up with that type of stuff. And it.
I think it destroys way more businesses than
it helps. Like I literally think that is a big
reason why a lot of people fail because they
wind up with all this junk listed and it just
sits there and sits there. And we were talking
about this before the call. You're like, well,
what are you doing with this stuff? Like if I
don't sell my items within a month. then I'm
going to go in and just end the listing and get
rid of it. Right. But it's different for people.
A month is super fast, full transparency. I have
a zero buy call. So like a month, I just don't,
I got one little, Deb got me one little bin down
here, Johnny. If it's overflowing, we got to
make some changes. I got one laundry bin. I got
a better solution. Whatever you're charging for
shipping, do a 10 day auction. And after the
10 days still doesn't sell, then yank it. At
least you'll maybe get a dollar out of it, and
you don't have to bother throwing it away. But
some of those auctions will surprise. Everything
will sell at the right price, and the right price
sometimes is free. 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.
With the fastest listing speeds out there and
built -in profit analytics, it's a no -brainer.
Easily and quickly have items available for sale
using 2D barcodes and get more for your items
with its built -in smart pricing. Make sure to
check out the 30 -day free trial at gotolister
.com backslash Mike or using the link in the
description below. It honestly is. Sometimes
the right price is free. Johnny wants us all
to give it all away. And honestly. a lot of time
you're better off giving it away i promise you
would free up space you don't have to look at
that same item dude i'll never forget them damn
dansko shoes i bought them they sat in my little
tubs that i had back when i was in everything
ebay seller and it was the last thing i got rid
of and i will always remember for the rest of
my life the pair of nine size or 32 eu dansko
shoes i cannot give away even though I looked
these up in the store, Johnny, like, oh, this
is going to go for like $35, right? Back then,
Dan's Go, like there wasn't that many out there.
It's like a doctor, nurse type wearing shoe.
And I couldn't give that thing away. I remember
it was down to like $10 plus like $4 shipping.
I still couldn't give them away. But here I am
stuck for the rest of my life wondering what
the hell was I doing? I should have just got
rid of those things. I had like four totes of
just random shit. Like I had no inventory system.
And when you have all this junk. It's hard. I
think like having a good inventory system, especially
when you have a lot, it's impossible. I can't
even think about how like you keep track of all
your stuff, right? Like you had to develop a
system over years and you had to refine the system,
then refine the system again and refine it again.
And these people just have like garages and warehouses
full of shit. I'm like, this is no quality of
life for you or your store. Yeah, I refine my
system probably five times now. And my first
system, I love my first system. It was so much
fun. It was color coding on the spines. So blacks
and blues and purples. They all look alike when
they're on camera, by the way. So is that blue?
Is that black? I don't know. I'm done, dude.
I'm colorblind. But my shells were like Skittles.
Taste the rainbow. Everything was color coordinated.
It was awesome. It was very beautiful, but very
after a point. and things hadn't changed. Nowadays,
I just kind of use numerical system, one to a
bajillion. So it's pretty straightforward and
stupid proof. That's the other thing. If you're
scaling in the point of employees, they got to
be able to walk in the door and figure out how
to find things with like a one sentence or less
explanation. They're numerically numbered. They
are in order. That's pretty much all I got to
say. I think you hit it on the head when you
were talking about like higher priced items.
You can't rely on thrift stores, right? I'm sitting
here telling you in the perfect world, Johnny,
all resellers find higher quality items, right?
We all wish we could have a 30, 40, $50 average
selling price, right? So people are sitting here
saying. Well, yeah, Johnny and Mike, we know
where do we get the stuff? Well, Johnny said
it before I even said it. And I'm in the thrift
stores every day. He barely steps in these damn
places. The thrift store is the lowest hanging,
easiest route where all your competition is going
to be. You have to start thinking outside the
box. How do we get it before it gets to the thrift
store? How do we build relationships? I know,
right? We're all introverts. We don't want to
have conversations. We don't want to, you know,
just kind of, we just kind of want to do our
own thing, right? And make some money on the
side or, you know, I promise you, if you want
to scale this and have a nice, healthy business
that has money coming into the bank account,
relationships are the way. And a great thing
about relationships, unless you're an absolute
jerk head, once you get a relationship, it's
yours forever. Unless you are just a bad human
being and you don't treat people right, it's
yours forever. All the relationships I have,
I don't have to worry about another bookseller
coming and stealing my libraries from me, right?
Or my thrift stores. They know, hey, I'm a stand
-up guy. I've been doing this for a while. I
pay on time. I buy a lot of stuff. I bring them
Dunkin' Donuts, tell them I baked these myself
right at the library sales, right? That's it,
man. Like, I have these relationships forever,
and it's the best quality items. And believe
it or not, you pay less for them in the back
room than you do a lot of time if you actually
go to the damn Goodwills where they're charging
astronomical amounts. I wholeheartedly agree.
I mean, if you're a thrift store guy, if you're
a Ben's person, great. I'm not saying don't do
these things, but like Mike said, it should be...
way down on your list there are other angles
to get we'll include all media here cds dvds
even video games um you can source online you
go to your libraries and go to your pawn shop
you can go to an actual gosh darn bookstore use
bookstore but a bookstore nonetheless um you
got your estate sale companies you've got um
i mean yard sale life i i remember early on i
used to go up to yard sales hey you got any books
And they go in their house and bring me books.
They didn't have them out there. But if you ask
that stupid, dumb question, oftentimes they will
have at least a box worth of books for you to
look through, even if it's not on the lawn. There
are so many ways to get merchandise. And I don't
know. In the pursuit of ASP, initially you're
not going to have relationships until you build
them. So having a route is ideal. And how do
you get a route? Well, I don't know. Use the
internet. Use ChatGPT. I mean, if you're in Mike's
group, ask in Discord, like, hey, guys, do you
guys use routing software? Do you just focus
on a region? Do you focus on counties? If I want
to do the entire state, what would that look
like? These probing questions to people that
have been doing it for a minute, and they'll
be happy to answer you, or online will answer
you, or on chat will answer you. You can get
kind of a baseline idea of what you should be
doing to save yourself a whole lot of headache
and just... stabbing in the dark and seeing what
happens. Nothing wrong with stabbing in your
dark and rolling up your sleeves, mind you, but
let's just save yourself a little time and do
a little rework ahead of time. Now, on the ASP
game, if you're starting out, I would start with
estate sales, unless you're in one of those weird
states where seasonality is a thing. My state,
it's all the time. here in the northern states
it's very seasonal because i guess weather conditions
which makes sense so i would start there and
then i would look into your specialty if you're
doing books bookstores if you're doing cds and
dvds probably your pawn stores um and once you've
hit them all then you can develop okay this thing
had something this person didn't this time they're
going on the maybe next time list and just whittle
it down until you have a gonna hit every time
you go there kind of route yeah it's uh it's
so true like did i'd rather somebody buy rather
somebody spend five dollars on an item that's
going to make them thirty dollars instead of
you know spending one dollar on five items that's
going to make you thirty dollars right it's just
like it's hard to to put it into words and kind
of like spell it out for people but the less
items you're selling at a higher price point
you will make more money than selling all the
little dollar trinkets now like johnny said is
there a business model for that 100 but i guarantee
you 99 of people listening to this it ain't for
us I'm going to speak for you and for me. It
is not for us. I've tried the bulk life. I tried
to focus in solely on bulk. I've pinned down
that road. Can it be profitable? Yes. The processes,
systems, overhead costs, upfront costs that come
with being a true bulk seller can be pretty hefty
in the beginning. And if you're brand new or
somebody that's newer, for some reason, it's
like, that's the last thing you want to get into.
But that's the thing they're attracted to most
because they think just having more stuff. Equals
more money. And it's actually, it's usually the
complete opposite. The more stuff you got means
we should sell everything. In a perfect world,
our eBay stores, our Amazon stores have zero
listings. Me and Johnny list 20 items today.
They sell all today. In the perfect world, we
probably won't be doing this because we'd be
retired. That is what we should be shooting for,
to sell our items as soon as possible. Now, there
are different business models where you take
advantage of doing something different, like
a differentiator, kind of like you do with your
eBay store, with your listings, right? They're
just better than everybody else. So, of course,
you're not going to compete with the scraping
of the $6 .99 free shipping nonsense junk books
they say are like new that you get, and they're
not like new at all. Those are exceptions to
the rule, but most of us don't have that exception.
So we have to just get... better quality items.
But the fear of that is usually you have to pay
more. If you want to sell the iPhone, you got
to buy the iPhone for $150, but it's going to
sell the same day for $200, right? But you feel
like that's more risk because you're spending
more money out of your pocket. I'm here to tell
you that's basically a guaranteed sale. Let's
do it. You're protected. You take pictures of
the serial number, video of it. We recently sold
an electronic and eBay lets you upload the video,
so you got the video of the whole thing, the
box, the serial number. You're covered. I think
people are so scared to get ripped off, but there's
things in place to stop you from getting ripped
off. I'm sure we'll have people in the comments
saying, I got scammed out of a trillion dollars.
You can't base your whole business on one person
scamming you. Sure, there's scammers out there,
but you can't let that decide who you're going
to be as a business owner. Right. I'm going to
give you a... More than likely, you're going
to have great success doing this business model.
Focus on $20 profit, $20 back to you profit items.
Anything else you get that's Amazon worthy, that's
below that profit threshold, send it elsewhere.
We got Max that does FBA consignment. There are
other buyback programs. There are other things.
You shouldn't even be bringing home those less
than $20 items unless you do a bulk pickup. Okay,
now you need to get rid of it. So I've offered
you a solution to get rid of it. There are tons
of ways to get rid of that. But even if you were
to send in a box every two weeks with $20 profit
plus items in that one box, that's more worth
your time than sending in, I don't know, six
to eight, $10 less item profitable per item in.
Now, unless you're doing bulk. If you're doing
bulk, different game. I'm not talking about bulk
sellers. Like Vita and Max, they run a great
operation, but they got employees. They're in
the bulk game. That's what they do. And they
produce big numbers, but they also got a little
bit of a thing called overhead. You don't want
huge overhead starting out. You don't want huge
overhead as a one -person operation. You don't
want that. Yeah, dude, you're right. I mean,
and what you said, right? One box compared to
five boxes. I'm telling you, we're telling you,
you can make the same amount of money from that
one box, if not more money than the five boxes.
And you're doing 20 % of the works. There's only
one box instead of five. Listen, I'll be straight
up with you. Last year, I'm out there grinding.
I'm sending in fast moving $3, $4 type stuff.
It can be a grind. I had a week where I was like,
holy crap, I'm working way too hard to make this
money. And there's other business models out
there in the Amazon space where they have a higher
ASP, right? eBay to Amazon, Amazon to Amazon.
They buy something for 40, but they sell for
130. Well, you sell something for 130 on Amazon,
you're making like 90 of those dollars versus
Amazon only making 40. So the higher you go in
sales price, you get more money than Amazon gets.
It's not like an even split, right? On eBay,
they take their fees across the board. So you
sell something. Well, I mean, you're still going
to get paid more if you sell it for more at the
end of the day. Right. So but still, like, I
guess they have set fees. It doesn't move up
and down on kind of like a scale like the Amazon
fees do. Right. So, I mean, it still works both
ways. Now I think about it because you make more
from eBay because you're selling an item at a
higher price on Amazon. You actually make more
just because of the way the fee structure is
on Amazon. I think everybody needs to take a
step back and. uh focus a little bit more on
on quality now yeah the face moving low dollar
stuff if it's something that you can just sell
endlessly and it's the same size and you have
the box ready to go and you can go back and get
more of these things and you're just selling
a million pocket watches a year and they all
come in a perfectly square box that you have
a little shipping box for all you do is slap
a label on it, get it out the door. That's fine.
But when we're selling, I don't know, a pair
of shoes, and then we're selling a TV remote,
and then we're selling printer ink, all of a
sudden, our whole day is gone, dude. I got to
find three different size boxes. I got to weigh
three different items. It's just like, it's complete
chaos. And before you know it, you're like, wow,
I sold three things today. And it's now four
o 'clock in the afternoon. What the heck? Where
did my day go? And that's the problem. Okay,
I'm going to give you scenario A and scenario
B. Scenario A, guy goes out to the state sale.
It's a room full of books. He decides to buy
it all, plops down 200 bucks and haul them all
back. He's in and out in probably two hours.
Now, the cherry picker person, which I'm going
to call the higher ASP person, they're gone all
day. They're gone all day, but they come home
with five books. But each one of those books
is 100 bucks. And I guarantee you, bulk guy who
spent a couple hours. He's probably going to
work harder in the end, just checking them and
whatever, than having a whole lot of crap to
throw away. He may get that $500 too, maybe,
depending on the quality of the goods. Maybe
he gets nothing. Maybe they were all doodled
in by the previous owner, highlighted every single
page, and he gets nothing. I'm going to say both.
Both scenarios work. I'm just telling you scenario
A is going to be a lot more work in the end versus
the guy who stayed out a little longer and brought
home a lot less. Yeah, dude, it's funny you say
that. We've always said it. You'll never lose
doing free book pickups. You'll never lose financially,
right? Even if you pay by the pound, you pay
by the piece, you won't lose financially. It
just might take you a while to get there. And
also the extra time you're spending when you
are buying a book. But I will say this, right?
I don't see a lot of it. I think when you're
trying to be the person who's trying to go upstream
and build these connections, it's hard, I guess,
when you sell anything, right? Like anything
and everything. So I'm trying to think about
that conversation I have when I walk into a place
and I'm like, hey, you know, I got an online
store and they're like, oh, what do you sell?
And you're like, well, anything, right? I feel
like if you're kind of niche down, like I got
a guy across the street from me, he sells like
lawnmowers and snowblowers on Facebook marketplace.
Like that's all he sticks to and air conditioners,
right? That's his thing. Also a guy that does
strictly lawnmowers. He's got to sign out on
the street here. It's been there for years. I
sell lawnmowers, buy lawnmowers, fix lawnmowers.
I think it's easier when you're more niche down
to have that conversation and get access. And
then instead of you just walking in and saying,
well, I sell anything. I think that just. I don't
want to say discredit you, but I feel like it
just has the conversation like it just loses
validity. Right. Like, oh, cool. You sell anything
and everything. Right. Like I go in like, yeah,
I sell books, CDs, DVDs online. Right. It's kind
of more niche down. I have exact. knowledge in
that space so they're like oh yeah oh that's
cool you ever come across this book or this movie
well you say you sell anything right where the
hell is the conversation going after that i mean
it's so much harder i feel like to have to get
the access if you don't have like even if you
sell everything i would still go in and be like
oh i specialize in vcrs or like whatever you
you really want to sell i think that's the route
you would have to go is maybe you still you still
sell everything But the conversation is, well,
I specialize in selling electronics or toys or
video games. Okay, I'm going to be a DVD seller,
DVD and Blu -ray seller for a minute. If I was
this kind of seller, I would just target the
boutique labels. I want your Criterion. I want
your Arrow. I want your Scream and Shout Factory.
I want your Mill Creek. I want this, that, and
the other high premium end. And most of the time
they're going to come in some kind of weird box
set. So they're pretty identifiable. I might
not even say anything. I could just run down
the shelves with my eyes. If I'm familiar and
I'm specialized like Mike's referring to. And
that's just DVDs. I'm not a good enough person
to tell you about CDs. But I could tell you I
probably wouldn't go wrong. getting the bigger
sets every time, and or the things in boxes and
leaving the singles behind, I'm going to miss
stuff because I don't know much about CDs. But
if I were a CD person starting out, that's exactly
what I would do. I think it can go with any type
of business model, right? Even if you're a guy
that sells toasters, right? Or blenders, like
I know that I want the Cuisinart toasters or
whatever, like whatever the high -end toasters
are, the shoes, right? We're not taking, you
know. Not taking the Bobos, the beaters, right?
We want the Adidas. We want the Nikes, right?
You got to understand who you want to be as a
reseller. That'll allow you to be able to target
the higher ASP stuff better. And I'm not a big
person for like doing deep dives and knowledge
on your stuff because I'm spoiled. I got a software,
Johnny. I literally is like, you know, my brain
is the software that I have. You don't want to
sell dictionaries from the 70s for $30 each,
Mike? No, dude. Even that though, right? You
can be like, I'm sure there's probably a limited
print dictionary from that time period. I think
a lot of it is you have to know who you want
to be as a reseller before you can really start
to ramp up your ASP and just be better at targeting
and sourcing the items you need to find. I love
the idea. of just selling one item every day
that makes me $150 instead of having to sell
15 items on Amazon to make the same $150. Like
that to me is the end all be all of reselling
is when you can sell a lot less and make a lot
more, which means you spend a lot less time actually
in the business. And sure, you're going to spend
time. Getting these relationships. You can't
just walk in your local place and be like, hey,
I want to buy all your Gucci. They're going to
be like, yeah, cool story, bro. Get the hell
out of here. It's going to take time to build
the relationships. But once you have those, I
mean, the sky's the limit at that point. Once
you have these ongoing relationships, like Johnny's
talking about state sales. Only state sales I
go to is when my guy calls me and says, hey,
I got a bunch of media. You want to come get
it before the sales open? That's literally it.
But he's 100 % right. All those state sale people,
they got a warehouse full of crap. stuff that
didn't sell and if you get access to their warehouse
you slot machines man um now a lot of it's going
to be crap but the stuff you mine out don't buy
it all please don't buy it all you cherry pick
inside their warehouse ma 'am or sir Um, but
getting in there and you got to go to their crappy
estate sales, a live one, they got to know you
first. And normally they offer it to you because
they see they're, they're in business too. They
make mental notes. This guy buys this crap every
single time. And they know they got a whole bunch
of that same crap in their fancy dancy bajillion
square foot warehouse. They're going to talk
to you to make a deal to free up space. Um, because
they're just like media sellers. Their, their
biggest crux is space too. Very rarely do they
want to buy a new building. I'm not going to...
If you've chosen your life path to do both, you
like the Flash, big numbers, and you're going
to make a lot of money, but you're going to work
extremely, extremely hard in the early years.
At least a year. The quickest person I've seen
doing it is Max. honestly he did it in probably
a little year maybe maybe a little over but he
worked extremely hard in developing systems and
processes and made it such a way where he himself
was very hands -off very smart guy um everybody
else it takes two three years to make it actually
workable yeah and uh i just remember too right
everybody he hires on his money out of his pocket
at the end of the road right so every every step
you take when it comes to these things, is less
margin for you on the back end. Now, that's not
necessarily a bad thing, right? Max doesn't have
to be doing all of his own listing and things
like that. I think you can have a nice, beautiful
business if you just have 100 high super quality
items, $30 to $50 ASP with a nice sell through
every single month. I think you could have a
nice business that would be much more relaxing
and enjoying for you as a reseller than the person
that has, a 2 % sell through and, you know, a
thousand listings in their store. It's just so
much more work. And it's not that it doesn't
work. It's just, what, what do you prefer at
the end of the rainbow? I like that. That's all
there is to this. I just prefer, I want to make
as much money as possible with as little effort
as possible. Like I want to be, I want to be
like, you can sell me any scam course. It's like,
Hey Johnny, you do nothing and get paid. Just
give me your money today. Right? Like I'm just
signing up. I'm signing on the dotted line instantly.
That is the life I want to lead. I do respect
the fact that sometimes you got to sell things
at a loss or break even to get out of it. Sometimes
you just got to get rid of it. That's just part
of the business. Any business in life, any, you
know, when I worked at CVS, we had a line item
called shrink. This was just a number that. Every
retail company accounts is going to be stolen,
lost or damaged throughout the year. It should
be the same thing in reselling. I mean, we should
we just have these line items that are just burn
money items. Right. But you can even factor that
in once you've been doing this for a while. If
you know your numbers, this is all it's all business
talk. Right. This is like not just you go to
the thrift store and get home and, you know,
or. The best thing is I love when people are
in the thrift stores and they're like popping
up comps on eBay, right? That's like best offer
accepted on like 90 % of them. And these people
think it's actually selling for that. And it's
like, comps don't mean, what is your comp on
the thing? Why don't you show me when you sold
that item you got in the thrift store? Then I'll
be excited. I could care less about the comps
or whatever people got them listed for currently.
That means absolutely nothing to me. It's like,
but that's the idea behind reselling. That is
the forefront of reselling. is the flash and
what you potentially could make from these items
it's not the actual business side of it and what
it actually takes to be successful it takes to
find those items that are actually going to sell
and not just the comps you see because let's
face it a lot of people complain when they go
to yard sales johnny that people have things
well i've seen it on ebay for x amount of dollars
I got bad news for you. A lot of resellers out
there do the same thing when they listed on eBay.
They put it at an unreasonable price that will
never sell. All right. We're going to do a little
rabbit hole into antiquarian sellers because
I see these guys making a lot of mistakes early
on. And it's the same mistakes most resellers
go through anyway. They decide they want to sell
antiquarian books, which is $100 or $200, depending
on if you're going by eBay's definition or the
real definition. Anyway, that notwithstanding,
so they target old books, right? But they'll
target all old books, and they'll pick up the
$12 old book. Yeah, it's old. It doesn't mean
it's valuable. And they run into the same issue.
Their ASP is kind of garbage. Yeah, they'll sell
a $500 book. That same day, they'll sell a $10
book. I would like them to stop picking up the
$10 books, please, and just focus on the $500
books. If you're going to be an antiquarian seller,
embrace it. In my opinion, if you're going to
be that kind of book person, you need to be in
the $100 book club or higher if you're going
to be an antiquarian seller. And I see them a
lot. They struggle. They try to do the $30 ASP
model. The problem with antiquarian is it sells
slow. So when it sells slow, you need to sell
big. That's why you need to do $100 plus books.
It's okay to have a slow sell -through rate if
you're an antiquarian guy or gal, but at least
make it a $100 bill each and every time you do
get a sale. That makes your time worth it. Yeah,
I agree. I mean, you hit it on the head. So we
just want you guys to make a little bit more
money and do a little less work when it comes
to raising your ASP, eBay, Amazon, books, shoes,
watches, underwear, flip -flops, bikinis, whatever
the hell you're selling out there in the universe.
A higher ASP will kind of, and we all know, you
all get that feeling when you sell an item that,
you know, is one of your higher priced items.
It feels good. You know, you made a lot of damn
money on that. You don't feel that good when
you sell an item for under 10 bucks and you got
to go pack it and ship it. It's almost like a
dreadful thing that you feel. It's like, I don't
want to go do this because I know I'm only going
to make a few bucks. Well then, like Johnny said,
don't do it. You got an option. Just leave it
behind. 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 Reseller's
Mindset Podcast. Today's full episode and all
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