Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset
podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube,
along with my friend and fellow full time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses
from the ground up.
We also have a weekly Zoom call and private Discord
for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash
used book guy to join the channel
and gain access to the full length podcast Zoom call
and private Discord today.
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up, everyone?
Welcome to episode four of the Reselling Mindset podcast.
I'm Mike here with Johnny B. Today's topic
is a very important one and kind of, you know,
it's like current events kind of deal right here.
So we're going to talk about plan B. You better have one.
I'm not talking about the contraceptive.
I'm talking about your business model
and being able to pivot if, you know, one platform
or for some reason, one front of your business
just ends today, ends tomorrow overnight
without any warning.
It's a near and dear topic.
So I'm going to kind of give my little two cents here
real quick.
Recently, restock limits have been a thing here
for the past few months.
And I went from 6,000 to 3,000.
And now I went outsourcing this whole past week.
I had about 200 items to send in,
which is right about where, how much I could ascend in
for the week anyway, because of the limits.
And I woke up Friday and they cut my restock limits
down another 200.
So now I'm kind of sitting here with all this merchandise
I scanned for FBA that I can't unfortunately send in
because of restock limits.
So you got to have a plan for those types of things,
but that's kind of my recent experience with it.
And Johnny B is going to tell you his,
and it's a lot more crazier than mine.
Yeah, I mean, currently I'm at 1,500 in active inventory
and my restock limits are about 1,080 something.
So I need to sell 500 something units
before I can even break even.
And then I need to sell like 40 to 50 more
to even send in a box.
So I don't expect to send in anything until January
when the restock limits just go away.
Cause I imagine then they're going to need to cut,
cut and cut until the holidays roll around.
So that's why I have my eBay store, cause they don't care.
There are no restock limits there.
And I can list as much, much as I want.
And I've recently also beginning into Merch Fulfilled
with some of my CDs and DVD inventory,
because I don't have the buy box there.
So either they could sit there in January
and I could send them in for a little bit more money on FBA
or I could sell them right now and kill two birds,
get a little bit of my money back versus no money
and potentially get the buy box for DVDs and CDs.
So that's what I'm currently working on is eBay
and Merch Fulfilled while I'm waiting for the Amazon gods
every Monday to tell me what I can and cannot do.
So let's flip it over here.
So say if we're mainly eBay sellers,
what situation could we get ourselves into
where we would wake up one day
and basically we would have an email saying,
hey, your eBay account is closed.
You can't, unfortunately you can't sell
on this website anymore.
These things do happen and they do exist out there
no matter what size you are.
You're more seasoned with eBay.
So just give me like a kind of a rundown
of how somebody could go about getting themselves
completely banned off of eBay.
How they can get banned, okay, you can get a Vero.
Basically you're selling something you're not supposed to.
They have a list of don't sell this on our platform things.
Usually they give you a warning,
but if you're a repeat offender, they can just go,
you're gone.
Other things you could sell something counterfeit
or a forgery thing.
Amazon does the same thing.
That's another way to get your account banned.
You can sell something in a higher grade
like a brand new item,
but you bought that thing from Goodwill and shrink wrap
and you're selling claiming it was new.
You're gonna get caught at the end of the day.
And the other ways is to customers interactions there,
like not giving refunds or eBay's constantly coming down on you.
You need to give the customer the refund.
You said you would.
I think these days they just take it if you don't act,
but that'll hit your account.
And you do that over and over again,
you get enough strikes, you're out of here.
Those are the probably the bigger ways to get banned
or the most prominent ways.
And people like breaking the rules all the time
because they think they can get away with it.
Well, you can't, they're gonna catch you.
They have a full team to catch you.
That's their job.
So now this is just randomness, right?
I'm gonna throw this at you.
So you've done nothing wrong.
You wake up your eBay or Amazon account is closed.
Is this something that could possibly happen?
I mean, you could just,
they decide they don't want you no more, right?
They just decide they don't need all these sellers no more
and they decide to ask any seller they want for any reason.
It's something they could do?
Absolutely.
It's their company and their business.
If they're like no more book sellers,
we're not selling books anymore on a platform, totally could.
Not a darn thing we could do about it.
Usually they'll give some reason as to why,
but at the end of the day,
you can't sell your books anymore.
So you have to move on elsewhere.
So either you sell products on that same platform
that you can sell or you move your big book inventory
and this subject matter to some other platform
that'll take your books.
That would be the segue in the play to make.
Well, option three is you quit, right?
Which is what a lot of people would do.
They'd stomp up and down.
Why, why, this is such blah, blah, blah.
I'm angry because I'm not selling books anymore.
I'm angry because I'm angry and they quit.
I think there's a good quit and a bad quit.
We'll get into that a little bit later,
but I think you hit it right on the head.
I already knew the answer.
It's like having a job.
They can fire you any day for any reason, right?
There's nothing you can do.
You have to understand life ain't fair.
These platforms you're selling on their platform,
they can get rid of you whenever they want.
They can, you see these social media platforms,
people being shadow banned or whatever.
They can do whatever they want to you
because you were on their platform.
Unfortunately, if you don't like that,
you can start your own eBay,
maybe call it Fleabay or you can start your own Amazon,
right?
And go that route.
You can start your own Shopify website.
There's different options,
but you have to realize at the end of the day,
you're playing in their house.
You're living under their roof.
You gotta play by their rules.
It's the same thing when you're growing up
and your parents tell you, you gotta do this,
you gotta do that.
They're house, they're rules until you move out.
And then you can do whatever the heck you want.
But until then, it's just,
that's just the business we've chosen, right?
This is the business path we've chosen.
We wanna resell.
And unfortunately, these things do happen
from time to time, but overall,
it's not going to happen, but you need to be ready.
And that's the importance of today's topic is a plan B.
You gotta have one, right?
You can either go to another platform,
change what you sell, if it's like category-based,
or you can quit.
And I mean, I guess we'll start with the first one.
And the biggest one in my opinion is another platform.
So you get it all the time, right?
Oh, Amazon's better than eBay.
eBay is better than Amazon.
I don't wanna do eBay.
Well, I don't wanna do Amazon.
Personally, in my opinion, I'll shoot this over to you.
It's not a competition.
You should use as many tools in your tool belt as you can.
If it's something out there
where you can make extra money in your business,
sure, it might not be the most funnest thing to do,
take pictures and list on eBay,
but it's a necessary part of your business.
And I think a lot of people get caught up on,
it's gotta be Amazon or it's gotta be eBay,
when in reality, you should have them both going.
It's not a competition.
What's your thoughts?
No, I think the more diversification you have,
diversification, if you're in the stocks,
that's totally a term there.
But if you're not familiar, I'll break it down.
Eggs in one basket.
Everybody knows about eggs in baskets.
If you want one egg, well, it may shatter
if you set that basket down wrong.
So you want as many eggs in that basket
to account for the shattering as you can.
I thought about even doing stuff on Etsy or A-Books
or this, that and the other.
I haven't justified it enough to pull the trigger
on any of those things,
but they are in the back of my mind all the time
to I need to be prepared for if eBay does something
or Amazon does something that drastically affects my business.
And I don't think people, I think people think differently
and they really need to change their mindset.
And I'm gonna roll it back
to what we were beginning to talk about.
eBay and Amazon can do whatever they want,
whenever they want.
And I see it on the forums
and I see it when they make a change.
Everybody stamps up and down, up and down, raging.
Why? It's a waste of time.
They've already made the decision for you,
adjust and move forward.
You're screaming and you're kicking around
and you stomping off and holding your breath
to go, blue is not gonna do a darn thing about it.
You need to have your plan B in preparation
for that day may come.
It may never come, but it may come.
And if you're not prepared for it,
well, you can get all angry,
but at the end of the day,
you gotta make a choice or move forward.
People take it for granted, I think,
especially resellers, right?
There never used to be 10 different platforms
you could sell on like there is today, right?
I mean, there's so many platforms out there
that you could resell your goods on.
Sure, they're all not the biggest sites,
but it's still somewhere you could have yourself.
I think I could sell books on Poshmark even.
You could Depop, Poshmark, Etsy, Macari, whatnot.
There's so many platforms out there.
And people like-
Goodwill.com these days, yeah.
Sign up for Goodwill and make 92 cents of every dollar
you make is not-
I can still do it if I have enough volume.
I'm gonna put my 92% of every dollar I make
goes into my pocket.
But I think resellers take it for granted
that there's so many platforms
and we get so close-minded on this one platform.
And if this has to be the only thing we do,
there's no other way.
When actuality, you gotta kind of be spread out
and be prepared for the comet to come
and crash into the earth.
And all of a sudden you don't have it, right?
So if-
I think everybody has this mental checklist
in their head of pros and cons.
And they wanna see the one with the most pros
and that's all they get laser focused on or tunnel vision.
And everything else, well, this has way more cons.
But the pros are at the end of the day,
more output for your inventory,
especially if you're doing this as a full-time reseller.
If you're doing it part-time,
may not matter to you as much.
But for a full-time person, it matters drastically.
So yeah, I get more money out of Amazon.
I know that, but there's only certain types of things
I can send into Amazon.
I can send everything into eBay, which is a big pros.
So more money on Amazon, but a lot more volume
can go on eBay and different product types even.
But also Amazon offers FBM and the warehouse of FBA.
I could send it in and get it out.
So the pros and cons of both platforms, even with Etsy,
you hear about Etsy is really, really high fees,
but you know what, that caters to a certain audience.
Like if I had decorative books, like I like to call those,
you see them all the time,
those reader digests with those ornate spines,
they don't sell very well on,
they definitely don't sell on Amazon.
They say sell okay on eBay,
but if I were to throw them up on Etsy,
that's the platform those things would need to go.
And that's why I've been considering Etsy,
because I find those stupid things all the time.
So just as a prime example of,
yes, every platform has its pros and cons,
but you need to look at the bigger picture and see,
instead of going, well, that has too many cons.
Okay, how can I use the pro list to my advantage
or know about the platform?
Like I was just mentioning about those decorative books,
figuring those things out as business owners,
I think it's huge.
Yeah, I think another thing too is like,
you don't have to put 100% energy into all these platforms.
So I'm primarily focused on Amazon, it's 95% of my focus.
eBay exists, I list one item every day,
just to say in the algorithm,
and I make a thousand bucks a month off eBay,
I'm perfectly fine with that.
I don't need eBay to carry my business,
but it's basically, I got an extra deployable life raft
in case the shark bites the one I'm sitting in right now,
I can literally just, all right, boom, here we go,
we're hopping over to this one,
and it won't be a seamless transition,
but I understand how the platform works,
and I understand the ins and outs of it.
That's what I'm saying, you don't have to,
your plan B doesn't have to be something
you're actively investing a lot of time or energy into.
It just needs to be there for when the worst happens,
if it does ever happen,
so you can easily continue your business
because you don't wanna quit, right?
You wanna avoid quitting at all costs,
if it's something you enjoy doing,
some people are just in it for the money,
it's not really enjoyment,
so maybe quitting isn't a bad thing,
but if you wanna continue,
you've gotta have another option,
and for most of us, it's eBay and Amazon,
or Amazon and eBay, whatever way you're swinging,
whether you're 95% eBay, 95% Amazon,
that other one has to be there, have an account open,
maybe have a few things listed,
just so you understand how it works,
and your account's in good standing,
so if one of them decides to kick you off the next day,
you're all in on the other one,
and then you would build from there, right?
So I can't sell on Amazon no more,
so I'm selling on eBay, and guess what?
I'm loading up, you know, McCarrie or Depop,
and then that's gonna be what eBay was,
my backup one, in case things go south on eBay,
so you always gotta have a plan ready,
and like we were talking about, even within Amazon,
even within the platforms, you gotta have a backup plan,
especially with Amazon, because they can say,
hey, you can only send in X amount of items,
so you gotta be ready to pivot right away
within the platform, which is crazy,
but you know, like you said, they can do what they want,
they decide they don't wanna sell books no more,
and they ain't got it.
And here's a perspective for me,
I started at eBay, right, I was doing no Amazon,
so I was, and then I found your channel,
and I was looking for another place to diversify it,
and I was like, okay, I'm gonna give Amazon a whirl,
but I was waiting for the buy box for six months,
so about 5% of my effort was going toward Amazon,
95% was going over eBay, I got the buy box,
I got to enjoy it for one week,
before the restock limit's hit by the way, one week,
so for that week, I was box, box, box, box, and then eBay,
because I gotta do eBay every day, right,
so my priority shifted from like 5% to like 45% for Amazon,
so you gotta account for that,
there's certain things you gotta do on a platform,
even on eBay, you start off with 10 listings,
you gotta prove to eBay to get more,
so when you make that shift,
those building months or weeks or whatever,
you gotta account for that,
so the sooner you get that open for you,
the more options you have available
for when that bad thing happens,
like everybody knows what happened this week on Amazon,
if you don't, hit the news cycle.
Yeah, so basically Amazon randomly selected certain accounts
that said, hey, you can't sell books no more,
and there was no rhyme or reason for it, right,
we had one member of the group that was affected by it,
and I kinda did some digging to try to figure it out,
and everybody that was affected was just,
it was randomness, right, there was no,
hey, it's because of this, it's because of that,
and unfortunately with Amazon, this happens pretty often,
for a platform that makes the money they do,
the backend is just terrible with the software
and the updates and the glitches and the nonsense,
so basically, probably thousands of booksellers
woke up with an email that said,
you can't sell books no more,
because it's fourth quarter,
so people are freaking out,
and all we could dig up was that there's no rhyme or reason,
so it must be a glitch.
Took Amazon basically 48 hours to respond and say,
hey, we're looking into it.
Not bad.
That's crazy, right, so I can't imagine
if I would've got that email, what you do,
but that's why, that's the whole point of this podcast here
is you gotta have a plan B,
so if that happens to me, guess what?
Yeah, it's a glitch, but all my focus for those 48 hours
that I can't sell books on Amazon,
because that's what it says, right?
Sure, you can put in a ticket,
but you shouldn't be banking on that,
you should be thinking, okay,
well, if this is how it's gonna be,
then this is what I need to do,
and that's what you need to start doing immediately.
If it comes back, if it's a glitch, anything like that,
so be it, and an example of the group,
he could still sell CDs and DVDs,
so he knew the account wasn't banned,
it was just some kind of thing with the books
that we weren't sure of,
and the thought process would've been,
hey, I'm gonna go out,
and I'm gonna hustle harder for some CDs and DVDs,
and flood them with CDs and DVDs, and you just pivot,
so you could still stay within Amazon,
and then your books, they just go on eBay, right?
It's just, you gotta be thinking of that.
That was exactly my plan.
I was mad for about 60 seconds,
because, hey, that affects my business, right? I'm mad.
Cool, you can be mad, but not for very long.
And exactly what I was gonna do,
I was gonna wait about a week or a month
to see if it was final, and if it was final,
all that's gonna happen is I have a division
of books going to eBay and books going to Amazon.
All that happened is that Amazon pile
would be shifted to the right.
That's all that happened,
and exactly like you were saying,
more DVDs and more CDs for Amazon.
So I guess, I mean, think about it.
Let's try to think about it,
and it's kind of tough for us, because we have backup plans.
So if you don't have a backup plan,
I mean, if I'm only selling on Amazon,
and I get told I can't sell on Amazon anymore,
and I don't even have an eBay account,
I don't even have another reselling platform account,
I mean, you're looking at, just for the volume's sake,
it's gonna take you at least a month
to be able to list as many items
that you had on these other platforms.
I can't even imagine, it's a huge headache.
Johnny B's got a customer in his warehouse.
He's doing this from his warehouse.
That's my landlord, actually, so.
Uh-oh, it's the landlord.
The rent doesn't do, I've already paid, I promise.
The warehouse landlord, he's got a bat to happen on the floor.
All you're gonna see is a bat swing across the screen.
Yup, yup, this is about to get real crazy here.
But yeah, you need to have a plan,
and I seriously can't think of,
if I didn't have a plan, maybe it's just like,
I don't know, maybe it's life experiences
when you've been through some crazy stuff.
You kinda always expect the worst or expect the unexpected,
and things can just go south real quick,
and it's not your fault.
What did the guy in the group do
to deserve to get that email, Al, any of us?
He started his account.
He deserved it.
Exactly, you've given up your account
the moment you sign up for it.
Just noodle on that for a little bit.
It's like some random, some RNG number,
just the lottery pick random numbers for account IDs
and send them out to that, right?
There's no rhyme or reason for it, and it sucks, right?
And your initial thought is to just quit, right?
Quitting's the easy way, but I think there's a good quitting
and a bad quitting, as silly as that sounds.
The bad quitting is like, you just quit
because you're pissed off that you got done wrong, right?
That's like the biggest slap in the face
like you were saying, right?
You only stay pissed for 60 seconds,
but some people just shut down, right?
That's just, some people get so frustrated.
They're like, hey, I'm done with this.
There's no other way I give up.
I know, maybe we call that rage quitting, right?
Yeah, yeah, rage quitting, right?
And there's no seeing the next step.
The possibilities are there.
Sure, it sucks you gotta move your inventory
from Amazon to eBay, but there's still,
you can still make it, have a profitable business
doing that.
There's no point in just giving up.
Here's an exercise I want everybody listening
or watching, whichever the case may be.
If you're just a single platform seller,
let's say you're an all Amazon person
or all eBay or whatever, it doesn't matter.
I want you to take a piece of paper
or you can type it up on Word if you want,
you anti-pinning paper people.
Come up with 10 ways to, okay, I'm out of business here.
Where can I be in business in 10 different places?
How, you know, and work out how that would work.
And then with that list, prioritize again,
with that pros and cons,
because they all have the pros and cons
of how can I adjust my business?
Maybe I need to open three or four,
if that day weren't to ever come.
And then start implementing it.
Because like we said, building up eBay takes a little bit.
Building up Amazon takes a little bit.
If you start now, when that hit comes,
if it does, you're prepared.
It will not affect your business.
You'll be mad for those 60 seconds,
but it will not affect your business.
Yeah, I think the good quitting is like,
maybe you weren't getting the results you wanted to get,
or you're really not happy with what you're doing.
Maybe something like if your account gets shut down,
maybe it's a blessing in disguise.
I don't always wanna look at it in a negative mindset.
Like, some people aren't happy with what they're doing,
and some people aren't making any money.
We see it all the time when we're listing items,
people are selling things at a loss,
and they probably don't even realize
they're selling it at a loss.
And so maybe it's a blessing in disguise.
So I wouldn't say quitting is always a bad thing.
You just have to be comfortable with doing it,
and you'd be comfortable with the decision a month from now
when you're sitting there and you're not reselling,
and you're perfectly fine with that, right?
You don't have no regrets.
You don't wanna have any regrets when you make a decision
about giving up on something.
Right, and here's something else to think about.
Think of how the platform, I hate to say it, can screw you.
And here's a perfect example, both Amazon and eBay,
they're no longer offering media mail,
or the post office is no longer offering media mail.
What's the adjustment that needs to be made?
Because you need to make an adjustment,
you're a media seller, how does that work?
Well, it probably means you start selling things
for listing a lot higher, first of all,
where you try to find what's as close to media mail
now that media mail is gone.
Because if you're just banking on media mail
and it goes away one day, and it could, it could.
Uncle Sam could be like, nah, they don't exist anymore.
It's expensive too, media mail's going up a lot
just this past year, rates are going up.
I think it was like, what was it, like 60 cents?
Yeah, it went up 60 cents, we're like 349 base now.
And then first class right now,
I was getting away like 370, 380,
it's at least four and a quarter now,
minimum because of the holiday uptick.
And every holiday, if you're unaware,
the prices do go up, both media and first class,
all the mail classes actually go up.
I think it's, I think that's a good way to look at it
because I'm a firm believer that some people out there
rely on the media mail rates too heavily
with their business, especially with eBay,
just looking at some of the listings I see out there.
And you can't control that, right?
And there's no other media mail,
there's no other way you can ship something
that cheap, so it's like, you know,
if you need to have a plan B for even minor things
like that, you know, what happens when Amazon changes
its listing process, right?
Through Amazon Seller Central,
it's a whole new thing you gotta figure out.
You can get a listing software,
that's probably the smartest way to do it,
or you're gonna have to completely figure out the new one.
And you better believe the new one's not gonna be
as good as the old one because nothing ever is,
no matter what you're talking about in life,
the old ones are usually better, right?
So, and that's happened this year with on Amazon,
the whole workflow changed and the new one sucks.
I got hit on eBay, they changed the whole way
you do listings now, it's like meant for cell phone people,
I hate you people, not really, but anyway.
So I was doing 40 listings a day,
I had to cut back to 30,
because I was doing an additional three hours,
I do a lot of detail with my old books on eBay,
but because I was having to confirm everything
I was typing in versus me just typing in
and moving on to the next line on the item specifics,
it affected me, I had to adjust for it.
And unfortunately, the adjustment was me taking a step back.
But now I figured I had to take a step forward,
and so I'm probably gonna go back up to my 40,
but it took me a little bit of time,
and I was unprepared for it, completely caught me off guard.
Yeah, I think you just hit it on the head too.
It's all right if your pivot
maybe slows you down for a while, right?
It's perfectly fine,
because you're basically rebuilding your business,
or you're rebuilding a process in your business,
not from nothing, because that's the whole point, right?
You wanna have a plan written down,
or maybe some groundwork laid out
so that you're not building from nothing,
but you're building from the ground up.
So it's gonna take a little bit of time to get into it.
So it's all right, you can't expect if you get
kicked off a platform that you're gonna be making
the same amount of money on a completely different platform
right away, it takes time.
The important part is to have that plan
so the transition is as smooth as it can be,
and it just kind of flows, right?
I guess the big thing is your mental health
and your frustration when that happens, right?
Because you're gonna be, like Amazon banned me,
I'd be so pissed off.
Deb would have to talk me down every day for like-
I'm sure I'd be getting a phone call.
Yeah, so you're gonna be pissed off,
but take the anger and the stupidity of being banned
for no reason or whatever reason it is,
and roll that into the other part of your business
that you've been saving as a backup.
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 $2.99 a month.