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 episode 16, 10 for me, six from him.
However, he wants to look my ring fingers, like getting lost.
Wait, I'm missing fingers here because of my green screen.
Today's topic is going to be basically our outlook for this year.
What we think the reselling market is going to do here overall.
We're already almost a month in, so I feel like we kind of have a good
feel already for how things are going to play out for those who don't know.
Mike here, he's book guy over on YouTube, full-time media seller.
And we got Johnny B over here.
You know, listen, my background's fake, right?
I'm not actually in the library.
He's actually in his warehouse over there.
So that's the big difference here.
He's more, uh, full-time eBay, but he also is full-time Amazon.
So, I mean, there's a bunch of things we can cover right with outlook.
I think kind of the big one is going to be, what are the
platforms going to do this year?
Do we think, do we think we're going to see, uh, more competition?
You know, whatnot was like a huge explosion onto the scene last year.
It's another one of those going to pop up.
Um, is the eBay live auction thing going to, you know, gain some traction?
Right.
He, he left.
So that's where we're going to start.
All right.
eBay live auction going against whatnot.
Give me your opinion.
No, it's no competition.
I mean, they're too little too late.
What, what, whatnot is capitalized that market.
I think it's going to be one of those flash in the pan things for a period of time.
I'm, if I had to guess, I'd say four years max, but more along the lines of two.
Um, and then unless they make some significant changes, I think, um, was the
reason for my whole hypothesis on that.
Um, as far as how eBay live auctions will do in comparison or just on its own, I
think on its own, it'll people will try it out, see what it's about.
Um, I don't think it'll catch on like they're planning on it too, cause
eBay doesn't like to spend a lot of money on advertising.
Um, I'm not sure how much advertising and whatnot did, but they were everywhere.
Right.
They exploded on the scene, like you said.
So at least they got, I'm going to assume maybe they got even organic advertising,
even if they didn't pay any dollars for it.
I don't see eBay doing that.
Yeah.
I think you're right on that because I mean, how many bigger reselling
YouTubers, right?
This video is sponsored by whatnot.
Use my code and get $10 free to spend.
I mean, that was for three months period, every big video that I've ever
seen, every big reselling channel was pushing that every single video.
So I think you're right on the head.
Maybe we'll just talk about like market share to begin here.
Like there's so many platforms.
Um, do you think another one's going to pop up?
You think there's going to be another reselling platform pop up this year to
try to take another piece of the pie?
I don't know about this year, but again, I say within the next two years, we're
going to see one, it might be this year actually what it is.
I couldn't say, is it going to be an auction?
Is it going to be a buy it now thing?
Is it going to be something that maybe it's in the media?
It's just a whole media site that sells stuff.
Who knows?
Do you think any of the smaller platforms are going to either go away this year
or maybe by getting bought by larger, you know, maybe getting bought by eBay or
Amazon, like kind of like a Depop or Poshmark or Mercari, the smaller ones,
even though they're really not that small, but in comparison, they are.
Do you think, you know, they're going to be around or maybe they're going to
go away?
I think, I think everybody's on a freeze on spending money, the Baker guys,
because they're, they're trying to watch the dollars and watch the economy do
what it's going to do while keeping their stockholders happy.
Now that's not to say some wealthy individual or a small startup that has a
big bankroll may not buy, may buy some of these smaller ones you're talking about.
Cause they got a really cool idea.
They want to implement with something, somebody else's IP that they think they
can expand on.
I could see that happening.
Whether that's a success or not.
I can't really speak to it until I see it honestly, or what they're, what they're
planning on doing with it.
I don't see the big boys buying any of the small boys out save maybe Amazon.
Cause regardless of all the cuts and the warehouse closures and the personnel
fire firing, they're always looking to expand and buy even though they're
watching their wallets right now.
Yeah, I agree.
I definitely feel like I could see one of these smaller ones disappear in here
within, within the next year.
Um, it's just, you know, it's just how it is, right?
These, these bigger platforms take more of the share and the other ones go away.
And you could even argue some people only sell on some of these smaller
platforms because they can't sell on the larger platforms for whatever reason.
Right?
Maybe you're banned on eBay or banned on Amazon or both.
So now you have to utilize some of these smaller platforms.
So I don't know what's weird because you never really hear like, at least in my
experience, I never hear of somebody that just as like a Depop seller, right?
They only sell on Depop or McCarrie or Poshmark.
Like I don't, I don't even know if these people exist.
Like do they exist?
Do you know of anybody like that specifically just sells on those platforms alone?
Yes, but they switched to eBay and they may dabble in what they came from, but
they do eBay primarily now.
And I know that from my other group.
Um, but they, they were, I remember Depop specifically, some guy mentioning that,
but he also owned a brick and mortar on top of that.
So I think everybody's looking to always diversify, get a little bit of extra
income in their stuff, but is planning your flag on one of these smaller guys.
That's really hard to do.
I'm not saying it's not doable, but I think you have to roll with some of the
bigger guys in addition to really, really produce.
All right.
So I'm going to blow it up right here for you.
Here goes, here comes the, the new, the nuclear bombs about the head.
Um, what, if there was no cross-listing software, would these smaller platforms exist?
I'm not sure.
Um, I don't think so.
I really don't cause there'd be no incentive to do it on their own with
the amount of foot traffic or virtual traffic they would have.
I think you would need cross-listing to capitalize on the smaller guys, a lot of
ponds, but there's only a couple of big oceans, right?
Yeah.
I think you're right.
I think if cross-listing doesn't exist, I mean, these guys would be probably,
you know, 2% of what, where they're at now when it comes to listing and activity
on these platforms, because everybody sees a smaller platforms as, uh, just
a, it's an afterthought, right?
It cross-lists there.
I don't care about it.
If I get a sale, so be it.
I'll go ship it, but it's not, it's never a priority.
It's always, you know, second or third or fourth down the list for resellers.
Now, if you're a part-time person, I could see beef.
I could see somebody being full-time part-time, if that makes sense at
some of these smaller platforms.
Yeah.
I definitely could see that making, making sense.
Um, I guess, I mean, if you think about it, maybe there is opportunity
on these smaller platforms.
If you specifically only sold, say, Hey, say, you know, I wanted, you
wanted to start doing Depop instead of eBay for your books, there's less
competition, which means you can kind of control the price on that platform.
Even if it's out of line with the actual, you know, how much is actually worth.
You could probably get more if you're the, you know, the only person over there
selling it, it's kind of like Amazon, right?
You get more on Amazon versus eBay.
In most cases, or maybe you could get more on Depop versus eBay.
If the competition is less.
I mean, if you're doing something, I mean, there's something to be said here
for, if you're doing something, everyone's not doing, and you're the only one
doing that thing, yeah, you can make some money for yourself because you're the
only one, um, like if I took my books, even Poshmark, for instance, I think
I could do fairly well, I would list differently and I would list
different kinds of books there, but I could see it.
Yeah.
And I guess then again, you would just run into, you know, people
that just cross list, right?
So, I mean, I guess you can't escape it.
Sorry, you can't go high to Depop and make a whole bunch of money.
Unfortunately, uh, the bigger players are going to be cross listing to every
single platform that we know of.
So, I mean, that's a good topic to start with is market share.
Now we're going to kind of get into the touchy feeling one of probably the one
that's on everybody's mind, because it always is, is do we see fee increases
this year, uh, for what platforms and, you know, how do you, how do you think
they're going to justify it, right?
So we'll, we'll just reference back to last year, you know, Amazon had their
inflation, fuel, gas surcharge, uh, nonsense eBay had the promotional
listing increased by a percent, um, little things like that.
I think, you know, from last year, just to kind of give perspective, I think
it's going to be another year.
The same, if not worse.
What do you think?
Oh yeah, I already felt it.
I mean, stamps went up on Monday from three 49 to three 65.
I mean, it hurts a little bit with my margins.
Uh, I like my margins being bigger, not smaller.
Uh, but yeah, I think all of, I think it's going to be more or less the same.
We might see something new pop up, a new kind of fee on our platforms, eBay and
Amazon, but I expect that to happen, what that comes in as far as percentage
or a dollar amount or a, um, sale amount where they're going to want more or
an international thing.
I don't know what it gets going to be, but it's going to be something.
Yeah, I agree.
I think, I think we're going to see almost across the board increases here.
And it's funny that to be talking about this because, uh, Deb has her, you
know, her Shopify website and they just raised their monthly subscription today.
So, um, she's already seen it already and we're already seeing it with Amazon,
right?
You know, the, the removal fees alone tripled, you know, a week ago.
So we're, we're already feeling it and everything's changing and everybody, I
think these platforms are trying to find not, they're not going to increase, right?
They're not going to say, Hey, your overall fee increase is going to go up
because they don't want to offend anybody, right?
They're not going to say, well, the flat, the final value fee is going to go up.
It's going to be something like you're talking about, right?
Where, well, if the items under $25, there's a 3% fee, but if it's over $25,
then it's only a two and a half percent fee, like something like that.
It's not going to be a blatant across the board thing.
It's going to be something they slide in under there.
So they don't take the hit of like, Oh my God, we're raising fees.
They want to kind of spin it so that it's not really a completely negative thing.
Well, yeah, they're always going to want to spin it.
They're going to, they're going to preach.
It's going to be better for personnel.
It's going to be better for workflow.
It's going to be better to the end user.
It's going to be better, which is the customers.
It's going to be better for the sellers.
They're always trying to spin it into some positive light.
Do I think they're justified in saying so and that it's an untrue statement?
Debatable.
I understand they need to make money too.
They are a business and they have to account for inflation, just like we have
to account for inflation or junk economy.
I don't know.
I would say they're fair to do so because it is their business.
They need to write how they see fit.
Do I think they're being extra greedy with it?
Not so much because usually they're really small and the fees are, and we, we
as the seller adjust for that on our end.
Can you agree that these platforms don't care if sellers leave their
platforms because of these fee increases?
Absolutely not.
Where else are they going to go?
Yeah.
So they don't care about your feelings or, you know, if you feel like closing up
shop because Amazon decided to raise their fees 5% for, you know, whatever crazy
reason they want to buy the employees ice cream every day or something, right?
I don't care if you say, all right, well then I'm not selling here no more.
They'll, they just figure, well, if you're not going to somebody else,
I'll come along and do it, and I think that's the hard truth that, you know,
a lot of resellers don't want to accept.
Like they really, you know, you're not valued on these platforms.
They don't care if you go away today.
It's equivalent of taking my ball and going home.
It's like, okay, the people that stay, they're just going to get
another ball, they don't care.
Yeah.
It's, uh, it's, it's tough to think about, right?
Because, you know, a lot of us, a lot of resellers, they're doing it full-time
kind of left jobs that didn't care about us, but here we are on platforms
that don't care about us, right?
And it's one of those things where one day you can show up and, you know,
your account's banned for some, some crazy reason, or, you know,
you're fired from your job or it's the same thing, just in a different kind
of, kind of mine, right?
You're, you're your own boss, but you're not really your own boss because if
you don't have your platforms, you got nothing.
Right.
It's like, uh, the thing that attaches to a shark and feeds off the little
parasite analogy, right?
That's what we are.
Shark don't care.
Yeah.
So it's weird to think about, but we both agree there's going to be increases
across the board here and you know, every time shipping goes up, it's a, it's a
fee increase because well, oh, well, I charge for shipping.
Well, you still got to pay fees out of your shipping total.
So, I mean, you're not, you're not escaping shipping increases by
charging for shipping.
I hate to break it to you.
Going up, if you're renting a storage unit or a warehouse or you're leasing
or, uh, the water bill going up, your electric bill going out, I mean, this
is just par for the course.
All right.
Well, that can roll us right into the next thing.
What kind of reselling expenses are we going to see go up?
We already said storage unit.
I already said mine, mine already went up 10 bucks.
So I went from $92 for a 10 by 10 to $102, which is still cheap for me.
So I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm not worried about that.
It's still way under what the market price was when I was looking, but like
you said, you know, it's going to keep going up here.
So that's one thing if you have to, to worry about if you have an outside or,
you know, if you have somewhere beside your home that you're working from.
Those, those costs are always going to go up.
I'm trying to think of like, oh, well, you know, your supplies, right?
Your supplies, everything goes up.
If you, you can't tell you how many times you go back to order something
on Amazon and you're like, wait a minute, I didn't pay this much last time I
ordered this and it goes up five bucks.
You know, that could be every two weeks.
Every month, everything keeps going.
You have anything that like kind of jumps out at you that you bought.
And the next time you went to buy it, you were like, wait a minute, this is way
out of line from what I paid.
Yeah.
I mean, um, what hack news you materials, I had to give you line a phone call.
I'll use you line.
I'm sorry, people who don't use you line.
I know I'm spending in premium, uh, but I had to call them like, okay, look guys,
how much volume do I have to buy before I get started getting a discount that
isn't displayed on you because you only go up so much now and they took me
seriously and they phoned me upstairs and guy gave me a quote over the phone.
Um, and it's a lot of units, but they will do deeper discounts.
Um, because I saw their prices go up marginally.
So, but you compound that by a lot of purchases or a lot of units.
It adds up fairly quickly.
And even if you're talking like a dollar off or $2,000, you're
$2 off or $5.
It really adds up.
My stickers that I put on my envelopes, those went up.
I think it went from two to three cents, uh, each, but when you're buying,
I mean, units of 5,000, it adds up.
It's a 30% increase, right?
I mean, we're talking pennies here, but still.
Yeah.
I mean, I mean, that was the same way when she's buying business cards and
everything, you know, you, she's sitting there in Vista print and she's like,
well, if I buy two, if I buy 2000, it's six cents a piece.
If I buy 5,000, it's three cents a piece.
And yeah.
Okay.
People out there listening are probably like, who cares about three cents,
Johnny B. You're worried about three cents.
I'm always worried about three cents.
Three cents compounded.
It's going to equal a nice, it's going to equal a nice little chunk of money
that you wish you had.
And if you compound that to all the different, you know, supplies you need
as a reseller, you know, you're talking hundreds, thousands of dollars here,
especially if you're doing this full-time.
And just because you're doing it part-time doesn't mean you have to,
you know, you shouldn't be worried about your expense costs.
I think it's, you know, it's just as important as anything else.
Why am I going to pay more for poly bags or something like that?
If you don't got it, you're just being lazy and clicking on the first thing
you see on the website.
Right.
I mean, let's put it a different way.
If I went into your bank account at the end of year and took out a thousand
dollars, you'd be upset.
Anybody.
Yeah.
I mean, if thousand dollars doesn't mean anything to you, I don't know
why you're watching this podcast, but most of us would be upset if thousand
dollars was just stolen from you.
Software.
That's another thing.
Reselling, a huge reselling expense, especially in the Amazon world.
The eBay world, not so much.
I mean, there are different things you can have.
There's description to the store subscription.
Oh, yeah, that is true.
Yeah.
So I mean, Amazon is not going to move their professional plan.
$39.99.
I don't see that.
I think that stays there because they're raising it in other inconspicuous ways.
They're not worried about that.
I don't need to raise that.
They can raise the other ones.
I think we could almost say the same for eBay, right?
They're not going to touch that subscription fee for the store levels.
Yeah.
I don't see either one touching the store fee itself because they want
more users to come and they'll pocket a hundred dollar store subscription
versus a $40 subscription.
Like you said, they'll make up for it in other ways.
It's little small fees.
They don't think people will notice, but they add up.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So I think those will stay the same, but software for Amazon, the software.
Listen, if you're selling on Amazon or you're thinking about selling on Amazon,
do not get caught up in this software chaos.
I mean, if we had a list of how many, like how many different
softwares do you think there are for Amazon sellers?
If you had a list of every single one, it's got to be at least a thousand.
Reprice it or the entire list of overall everything that's out there.
I think a thousand is a fair number.
Maybe even more.
I think it might be more, but I don't want to sound too much like a lunatic.
There's so many like third party guys.
My tool could do one thing, be better.
My tool has a better AI than this guy's AI.
Okay.
It's a lot.
I feel like you can easily get lost in all this software.
I was trying to look up like specifically the AI stuff.
It's nonsense.
All of it's nonsense.
There's so much of it, right?
It's like, I mean, and they even have almost like the same names.
It's like one letter is different or something.
It's like, I mean, look at Scout IQ and Scout Lee.
They sound the same even.
And they look the same.
If you use both of these, they look the same.
It's literally carbon copies of each other, basically with a little bit of different features.
But yeah, software on Amazon is brutal and there's so much of it.
And I mean, inventory labs increased late last year to, you know,
a much higher price.
I feel like, you know, I use ScanLister and that's the cheapest listing software at 24 bucks a month.
But I feel like they could easily raise that to $30 a month because all the list.
Yeah.
All the listing software is much more expensive than that.
So I think if you keep your subs under $50 starting out, you're fine.
It's fine to have higher tiers, but if you're under 50 or under, I think people will pay it.
I do.
I agree.
They'll pay it because a lot of resellers don't know their numbers and they really don't look at a P&L overall.
They just look at their sales.
They don't see the backend, you know, PayPal coming out every month for your repricer and everything else.
But I think a lot of it's just, you don't need it.
Honestly, I think you don't need, especially what we do with media.
I don't think you need 99.
You can even take it old school like when I started or when you started.
I mean, we didn't have, you were going down the thing.
If you're a part-time guy, you can go down the thing and reprice your stuff.
If you're under 500 units, I think you can manually do it still.
It's a little time-sink, but I think you're better off financially, not spending for
software upgrades unnecessarily until you're past a certain number where it's unmanageable.
Yeah.
I mean, reprice it, you know, at 10 bucks a month to start out as a steal.
Like I could see them raising that for sure.
And it should be at least 20 bucks in my opinion, but shhh.
We're just talking, we're just gassing all these companies to raise all their fees and
subscription costs.
But I do think the Amazon world, you have to be wary of your subscription cost overall.
Be smart about it.
You don't need all the bells and whistles.
You just need something that works.
I can't caught up with all the nonsense because, you know, the used book guy is using the most
expensive software.
So I have to use it too, or I am nobody.
That's not the case at all.
Be smarter than everybody out there should be trying to be smarter than me and cheaper
than me.
Although good luck because I'm a cheapo.
I mean, even look at, no offense, Mike, but your subscription and I'm not, I only not
only pay you, I pay the daily refining group and that's just me calling the breaks there.
I could join a whole bunch of other groups and pay me paying.
I don't know, a boatload of educational material, IRS.
If you join every YouTube reselling channel that had like a discord that you had to pay
for something like you'd probably have like a thousand dollar bill every month.
I mean, between you and them, I'm close to 40 bucks a month and just the group fees.
And that's just another subscription, right?
I mean, I can write it off.
It was educational, but yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it all adds up, but if you, if you raised yours or refinement raised theirs to
$50 a month, I still pay it.
More people would still pay it.
All right.
The fees going up.
You heard it here, folks.
59.99 to be part of the use book guy group.
Yeah.
I think, I mean, I'm not going to sit here and say a higher cost is necessarily a bad
thing, right?
If you have a better program, right?
If you've got a better program than me, then you should be charged in double the membership
costs that I have because yours is better in different ways, but it has to be something
that's measurable, right?
You just can't sit here and say, Oh, I'm better than him.
Right?
Who cares?
Mike adds one new emoji to discord a month.
That's what you're paying for.
Like, it's gotta be something that's measurable to your business just because, you know,
someone says it's better than, you know, that nobody cares about that.
Right.
It's a, but people do and people, you know, they, they jump right in, but I do think there
is a premium, right?
We'll kind of use inventory labs.
I mean, I'll say, you know, it's the best listing software out there.
It's the cleanest, most functional that at least I've used three different ones and that
was the best one to me, but I'm not willing to pay three times what I pay just to have
their fancy, nice software when it works the same as the one I have.
I think I'm going to stick with them.
But I agree with everything you just said.
I don't need to, but I like the way it looks and uses and it's slick.
Yeah.
I prefer it.
So I'll pay up for it.
That's, that's my splurge on myself and splurging on my software a little bit.
And that's what you think until I run the numbers for the year.
And then I'm going to sit down and show you how to use scanlister and you're going to
say, wait, this can save me $600.
All right.
I'm in.
But it takes me 600 hours more time.
It's not that bad.
All right.
I mean, come on.
I'm not saying it's that bad, but that would be my counter argument to your financial argument.
So software, there's a high probability software costs are going to go up this year as well.
Right.
And it's just, it's one of another one of those things.
I mean, can we sit here and say anything is going to go down across the board?
Do you have anything in mind that might go down?
Financially, good question.
Financially going down.
What can I see there?
Excluding sales.
Not going to count those or limited time offers.
Not going to count those.
I think our sourcing might go down the buy cost, but not for the first six months.
I'm going to say the last half of the year, we're going to see it go down,
but we're going to see it go up before it goes down.
And when I mean goes down, it goes back to what it is today.
Because they're going to get, like I said, they're going to raise it
and then they're going to go down.
I kind of agree with this.
And I kind of been hitting at it here and there the past month or two is that cash is king.
Right.
Especially now because cash is, it's not worth as much, but people need it more than they ever had.
So you can leverage your cash to get a lower price.
In my opinion, especially with media.
If you say, hey, I pay 10 cents per DVD and I have plenty of people reach out and it's not junk.
It's their collections that they want to get rid of.
So that right there just goes to show that people sometimes just need money.
And if you have it, you can get a better bargain than going to a thrift store or something like that.
So I do think buy costs, I really think there's no floor to buy costs until it's zero,
because that's the end game where you get inventory for nothing.
And if you're paying thrift store prices, then you got to start thinking outside the box
because thrift store prices, I don't see them coming back down ever.
Goodwill is never going to have books again at 99 cents.
I think poor old mom and pops will.
And I think the estate sales will and I think the auctions will.
But as far as thrifts, nah, if anything, I still say they would go up minus their deals they do.
They may dip a little bit for Q4, but on average, they're always going to go up.
Yeah, I agree.
So, I mean, buy cost is definitely something where you can leverage your cash or quantity, right?
If you're willing to buy a whole bunch, then you should be getting a steep bargain.
That's just the way business works and has worked since the beginning of time.
So if somebody says, yeah, I have a bunch and they're a dollar a piece,
well, you say, well, if I'm taking all 5,000 of them, then I'm paying a quarter a piece
and take it or leave it, right?
You got to kind of stand firm with some of these things you run into as a reseller,
especially when it comes to buying in bulk.
Don't let yourself get pushed around.
So I'll give you a perfect point of being not necessarily pushed around,
just good deals striking.
I did a garage sale a couple of years ago.
I had something that I had a $200 ticket on, I think, with some antique furniture thing.
Anyway, guy walks up to me, offers me $100, pulls out his wallet,
and it's not a $100 bill.
It's like fives, ones, tens, et cetera.
He says, pay attention, folks.
Pay attention to what's about to happen if you already know what's about to happen.
He's like, I'll give you all the cash in my hand right now.
I'll give you $100 right now.
This is all I have.
You've emptied my wallet.
I'm like, or I walk away.
I'm like, I'll take your $100.
Sure.
He played me.
I didn't think about it until after the fact.
And this is before I was really, really a seller.
But retroactively thinking about it, he totally played me.
And to Mike's point, cash is king.
So I mean, maybe that's what I got to do.
I go in with a wad of ones.
And I'm like, this is what I got.
Take it or leave it.
And I really got a back pocket full of 20s.
Right?
You got two pockets, right, Mike?
You got your real money, and then you got your bargaining money.
Yeah.
That's just, you know, you got swashbuckled, buddy.
You're going to do it.
I did.
Paul did it.
He took me.
I still got $100, but whatever.
Learning experience.
So yeah, I mean, buy cost is going to go up when it comes to thrift stores.
But you should always be looking for a way to get your buy cost down, whether that's,
you know, backroom access, buying everything at once.
There's a million different ways.
I get tired of, you know, seeing people complain, oh, thrift store prices are going up.
Well, what are you doing besides thrift stores, right?
I mean, if I had to rely on this business between Salvation Army and Goodwill,
my business wouldn't exist.
It'd be too hard and too expensive.
I mean, we all know the Benz campers, they still get marginally good deals
because they pay by weight, essentially, right?
But how often do you see the Benz shopper go into the actual thrift part of the store
or to a thrift in general?
They're at the Benz because that's where the better deals are.
Do you?
Go ahead.
Do you think like those people though, right?
We kind of came to the conclusion.
A lot of them are just like middlemen kind of, right?
They just grab stuff that they know somebody else wants and kind of
five extra money and give it to somebody else.
Or do you think those people actually sit there all day, go home and enlist it all night?
I think there's both.
I think it's a mixed bag at the moment, but there's definitely some of those people
are employees to a bigger seller.
They're paid to go there and get the stuff and they've been trained to know what to get
or the other type where they're trying to do the solo op kind of thing.
And they got to compete with all the armies of all the other little people
who are paid hourly to be there, not take it home and enlist it and make some money.
All right.
Now we're going to jump into another one.
That's probably like a lot of people were thinking about.
Do you think sales are going to be up overall across the board on, you know,
resale platforms, you know?
You think eBay is going to make more money this year than they did last year,
sell more items than they this year than they did last year.
The platform itself, not individual sellers is what platform itself overall platform.
No, I think sales are going to be down across the board for all platforms.
How much?
I would say this year is probably going to be 15 to 25% if it's really bad,
depending what happens this year, because what happens in the world affects people's buying habits.
So if a catastrophe strikes, I see it going more to the 25%.
If it's just more or less the same people adjusting to the new norm of higher pricing,
I see it maybe in that 15% range.
I agree, but I will preface this.
I plan on making more money on the platforms I sell on.
So just because the platform is down doesn't mean your business has to be down.
I think that's kind of something that gets misconstrued because,
well, eBay is going to do less business, Amazon is going to do less business.
So in turn, that means I'm going to do less business.
I think that's 100% the wrong way to look at it and think about it.
Now, if you know that people are going to be buying less, it just means you put up more.
And if you know that, and if you're going to make that play, you got to factor in,
okay, I'm going to have to spend more to make more, so I need to get my buy costs down.
So I'm spending the same.
So it all plays in each other and that's how you grow.
Yeah, because right at the end of the day, nobody has their reselling business,
at least most of us don't to a point where we're not growing.
It's not like you're going to list the same amount of items on eBay this year
that you did last year.
Everything's changing.
Your sources are changing.
You're probably getting better quality stuff because you're learning more about what you're selling.
So there's so many things that go into it.
And honestly, who cares if there's less sales on these platforms?
Just focus on you having more sales.
Just because it's down across the board, you don't have to be part of the 20% decrease in sales.
You can be a huge increase in sales and who cares if eBay is down?
Well, you did 300% over what you did last year, even though eBay was down 15% on the year.
Right.
I mean, my business is different now than it was, but totally different than it was a year ago.
I didn't start off with a warehouse.
I didn't start off with employees last year.
Granted, these things cost money, sure.
But to that end, I'm spending my money on my growth and reinvesting back in my business.
You got to make those kind of plays too.
If an employee, I'm not excluding you part-time people, not your turn yet.
To you full-timers though, if you get out employees, how do you best utilize their time?
Are you giving them tasks that don't make you money?
Are they picking up your trash?
No.
You need to make them list or you need to make them go out and get your inventory.
You need to have them help you scan, pack boxes.
What makes you money?
That's what you need to be spending your employees' time on.
And that's a hard lesson to learn.
And the same for your warehouse.
Have you used your space efficiently?
Even Mike with his storage unit.
I tell him some tips here and there.
I had a...
Because I did storage unit game once upon a time.
Sucked.
Didn't like it.
I loved it actually.
But I dealt with the storage unit for quite a while and I figured out these little tricks
that I don't mind passing on to Mike and some of the others here.
Because I could just throw the books in and one giant pile in the middle, right?
But that's not the best use of my space.
It's just when you open it up, these books just spill out, right?
I'm sure there's people that do that.
Clothes, shoes, whatever.
Everything.
Do you think that the decrease...
So say eBay has a decrease 15% across the board from last year to this year.
Do you think that the decrease is going to come from part-timers or full-timers?
Who's going to get the biggest hit?
Yeah.
I think the part-timers are going to get the biggest hit because they're not going to make
the adjustments that the full-timers would need to.
That's not to say...
I'm not saying that across the board.
I know some part-time people that hustle like crazy and I see some full-timers that,
okay, you made no adjustments this year and this is why we did this.
Yeah.
It's tough when you think about it, right?
Because like you said, just because you're doing this full-time doesn't mean you're making money.
We already come to that conclusion, right?
And there's a lot of part-timers that do it really, really part-time and make a lot of money doing it.
It's tough to say.
I would honestly say that I'm going to go opposite of you.
I'm going to say the full-timers would lose a larger chunk because I feel like people are so scared
to change their business model, especially if they're full-time, right?
Yeah.
I can see that.
I think you kind of get into a habit of, well, this worked on eBay, so it's going to work.
It's just because we're in a depression or whatever you want, a recession, whatever you want to call it.
It's almost as if a lot of full-timers justify that as to their decrease in sales when really it
should be them not changing their business model is the reason the decrease in sales,
not because of the recession, depression, whatever you want to call it we're in.
It's easier to blame your environment than blame yourself.
And then once you're done blaming yourself, adjust. It's way easier to blame everything
else going on around you.
Yeah. I guess that sums it up.
And the common sense terms is a lot of people can't look in the mirror.
And I even seen it when I was at CBS, right?
Managers can't take criticism.
I come into your warehouse tomorrow and I'm like, dude, what are you doing?
Why are you doing it this way?
This doesn't make sense.
Most people react to that and they're not going to be like you and say,
hey, well, what are you doing?
That's better than what I'm doing.
They're going to say, well, get out of my warehouse.
You don't even know what you're talking about.
So just shut up.
I've been doing this for 10 years.
What you say means nothing to me instead of thinking, whoa, let me see.
Maybe this person has a better, more efficient way to do something.
And honestly, I can say my business is basically bits and pieces just from everybody else that
I learned from and watched on YouTube and people that are in the group and everything.
I kind of pick and choose things that I can try to plug in that are going to save me time
and it's pretty crazy.
It's almost like a hybrid of everything built into one.
But even though I have this set up the way I do, you still like, you got to make a change
every once in a while.
I did it with my Amazon business this year, like more merchant fulfilling and looking for
higher profit items.
But most people are going to be like, no, because it worked last year or the year before.
But do you really know that it worked?
Did you really do a full line breakdown of every single sale, every single dollar that
came in and went out?
I don't think so.
But that's my reason behind why I think full timers are going to take the bigger hit compared
to part timers because people are so afraid to change anything with their businesses.
No, and I'm very open to change.
I do think I'm an intelligent human being, but usually if it's a major change,
I'm going to give a secret.
I call Mike and I like Mike, here's my idea.
Tell me how I'm wrong or if I'm right.
But if I'm wrong, tell me I'm wrong and how I can make it more correct or just scrap it
all together because I think it's important to have someone or a group of people in your
life that can be a voice of reason because I can be so certain of a thing and I miss
something so small that makes it all worthless.
So I think it helps to share what you're thinking with others if it's a group or an individual
that understands what you're doing.
That's the hardest part because not everybody you talk to understands what we do in our
business and things apply differently.
So it has to be somebody within the community or some people in the community.
I think it's important that you as resellers have that business acquaintance connection.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
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