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 in episode 25, the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Mike here is always with Johnny B.
And now he officially calls himself the book shepherd.
Today's topic is going to be is reselling easy, right?
So we're going to kind of tackle eBay and Amazon.
Do we think it's easy?
How can you make it easier?
How can sometimes trying to make things easier, make it actually harder?
So I guess we're going to dive in.
We'll dive into eBay first, because I think eBay is a more time consuming platform.
So I think more people try to look for easier shortcuts on eBay, me being one of
those people, because, you know, I'm not knee deep in the trenches like yourself
when it comes to eBay, but I'll kind of just throw some of my ideas out there.
And you as a full-time eBay seller can be like, that's kind of stupid.
Right?
So we'll just, we'll just, we'll just get started here.
Right?
So eBay, what's going to make it easier on eBay for me, if I was going to do eBay
full-time, I would say, Hey, how am I going to get my time back?
What's an easy way to try to get a little bit of your time back, you think that
you would give somebody that was just starting out?
Your pre-sort at the very beginning.
So you're sorting through whatever you've bought in for the day or the week or
whatever, but the more like things you put together to set up your quote unquote
assembly line.
So you're batching at this point.
So since I'm primarily a bookseller, I'll use books.
So when I get a batch of books, I would take the batch of books and sort of into
piles first by publishing.
Cause I know on my listings, that's two fields I have to fill out.
So that would be the biggest thing.
And the next would be genre, which is only one field.
And then the third sort within that would be condition.
I normally list in only two conditions, good or acceptable, because I get a lot
of library books too.
So now I have, I don't know, let's say.
Ace books, Western, good and acceptable conditions.
So I made my piles, right?
So if I have enough for a days worth of listings, then I'll move it over to the
queue table, like, okay, here's a day.
And then I'll go do it again and again and again, until I have about a week's
work.
So I have a whole week lined up for me.
And then it's just taking that to the photo booth and then from the photo
booth to the listing station.
All right.
Well, too bad sucker.
I'm not saying that I'm not going to do that.
I'm not selling all the same stuff, right?
I show up at your warehouse.
It's my first day on eBay.
I got a trash bag and it's full of all kinds.
Listen, there ain't no rats in there, right?
This is just, this is very profitable merchandise in my black trash bag.
All right.
But there's all different kinds of stuff, right?
So I got, you know, I got toys, I got some shoes, I got a shirt.
So would you recommend like, at least for me, I kind of, and I'll admit to this,
right, when I had a bunch of different things and I was an everything seller, I
would list the things that were harder to list last.
So like if I had something that was real big or like real, real like obscure or
something, it's going to take a lot of pictures, a lot of description.
I kind of would throw that to the death pile and that would be, Hey, that'll be
last.
I can easily list, you know, this video game I found.
Is that like a smart approach or you think it should be the opposite way?
Do you think like you should work, knock out the harder item first and then onto
the easier items for, you know, kind of to motivate you more?
Uh, yes and no.
I'm going to say it's going to depend on from person to person.
For me, I do a better, faster quality job at the beginning of my day versus the
end.
However, some people don't work like that.
There's, there are slow starter more or less, but they have a strong finish.
So depending how you work, it may be better for you to have those things
toward the end of your day versus the beginning.
But for me, it would be the beginning.
I would need to get the harder thing out of the way first.
Cause when I'm at the end of my day, I'm on my last 10 or five listing.
I don't want to be doing something stupidly hard and complicated.
I'd rather do that at the beginning just to get it out of my way.
And then the rest of my day is the same old repetitive, easy stuff.
All right.
So now what do you think about, I list the item, right?
You know, I, uh, I got the game.
I list the game, right?
Uh, I boxed this up right away.
So there's going to be really no packing when it sells.
So everything I buy, I put in the box is going to ship in.
Maybe I write on the outside of the box, you know, PS five game,
you know, whatever the title is.
Do you think that's something feasible?
Because I'd really never have seen people that actually tried to inventory
things that way, like where it's already ready to ship, it's already in the box.
It's already in the polymeller.
All you're doing is grabbing it, slapping a label on it and you're done with it.
I mean, if you're not doing a huge, a lot of volume and let's just say you're,
you're listing more higher end items.
Maybe you're only doing like five or 10 or day or something less than that.
Pre-packing it.
It's okay.
I know shoe sellers pre box their things, but all their boxes are the same, right?
All pairs of shoes fit in the same box.
They build these weird gigantic cubes and they just pull their cue or the.
Chinga block thing out.
But again, like chinga, it could all fall down if you don't stack it right.
So I'd say it's okay.
If you're not doing a huge amount of volume, I'd say it'd be a waste of your time.
If you're doing volume though, cause you're dealing so many, it's like pre-cleaning
CDs and DVDs, you know, what's going to sell when, so it's easier and saves you
time and money if you just clean what sells when it sells.
I boxed when I was, you know, I get both buys and, you know, say, say it's a lot
of like 20 CSI books, for example.
I boxed those up.
I wrote on the outside 20 books.
CSI tape the box closed.
Do you do that for any, like your book lots?
Do you pre like box them up and kind of have them ready to go, or do you kind
of just leave them out on your shelves?
Like you have sitting behind you.
I leave them out on my shelves.
Like I have them.
I have them.
I used to Saran wrap the lots and then put a little sticky on it and I could
just grab it and put it in a box, but I've stopped doing lots for the most part.
Actually, I took any lots I had down and then I just started doing singles.
Cause for me, I get more money on a single item versus I do in a lot and honestly
doing a lot listing, at least on eBay, it take, it's like the equivalent of five
listings, right?
So it takes a lot of time to do that.
So I took that out of my workflow.
I no longer do lots.
The thing, the good thing with lots is you can sell it quicker, but
you're going to get less money.
So speed versus more money in the long run.
So you got to decide what you want.
Awkward things.
I have pre boxed before back when I was doing everything, like it was big and
bulky and I didn't want to spend 15 minutes trying to find a proper size box
for it, cause I knew I would have that complication.
So I had pre boxed that kind of stuff.
But in today's book selling world that I live in, I do not pre box anything.
So that's like, you kind of think about ways that you can make your life a
little bit easier, but you also have to make sure like you're doing it correctly.
Right.
You know, you can't just throw stuff in a box and then just say, okay, I
remember that this box is this book set, right?
You got to have to actually have some kind of labeling system.
And like he was saying, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,
the box system and like he was saying, you know, the book sellers, a lot of them
just use those priority shoe boxes, same size for every single one.
So they literally can just have a whole wall stacked up them.
Now, if you're selling anything and everything, or even if you're
niche down, right?
Your lots are going to be different sizes.
So it's going to make it a little bit harder to, to kind of have
something that's uniform and makes sense.
But there is, you know, possible ways you can do this.
And like you said, you know, if you're doing 40 lots a day, it's not feasible.
510 a day, then sure, yeah, you could possibly get away with doing it and it'll save you
time packing.
But the trade off is, right?
You're packing those items right then versus listing another item, which would in turn
be the more cash flow positive thing you should do instead of boxing your stuff up.
Now, on the shipping front, what I have done is streamlined my packaging where most things
will fit in said packaging.
I have going down to three, I've had four and one of those is those boxes over there.
So you mentioned lots, right?
I no longer do lots, but people buy from my store equivalent lots.
I had several gentlemen this weekend about 16 or 20 books each.
Most of my books will fit in those boxes that I was pointing to behind.
Once the don't or one off boxes and for future orders, that's when I have to spend a little
bit of time.
I dig out my random box pile, what they could actually fit in here.
But even for that, I have a pile for that of, well, there's like four or five other
box types and those orders are few and far between.
So yeah, and I may even look into a certain box even for those larger orders when they
come up because as my store grows, I imagine that happening more and more and more.
So I'll have to get another box type because, but that's those boxes behind me or most of
my lot orders will fit in those.
I definitely think what you said is a huge kind of, to make your life a lot easier reselling
is streamlining your shipping.
And that's another benefit to selling the same thing or the same kind of category because
you can easily say, hey, I've been using this size box more than this, right?
I have the bubble mailers for the Amazon orders.
It makes everything so much easier.
There's no thinking to it, right?
You know, if it's a DVD or a CD, it's this box.
If it's a book, it's this box.
Everything is kind of, you already have a plan, right?
You see an order comes in for 10 books.
You know, the exact box you're going to use.
If it's one book, you know, the exact box you're going to use.
There's no really a huge style of, you know, pile of different sized boxes.
And you're trying to figure out, well, should I put it in this one?
Take the guessing game out of it.
And that's going to make it a little bit easier.
But overall, like, what are some other ways you think where, you know, somebody is reselling
easy, right?
On eBay, just, just like what's something else somebody could do to kind of make their
life a little bit easier on eBay?
You know, there's a lot of people out there that don't.
I think with eBay, it's, it's going to take time.
It's a time investment.
I don't really think you can take too many shortcuts on eBay.
Unfortunately, if you want to have a successful store, I don't think it's nowhere near the
same as Amazon.
And unfortunately, like, if you're trying to shortcut a full time eBay store, I just,
I'm not seeing a path there.
Like I don't even know where you would start.
Well, I got one more thing on the shipping and then I'll move on to the next thing, which
will be inventory.
Shipping, the less steps you take, the less time it will take.
I have rollable tables.
I have a, I have a whole shipping station with the computers on it.
And then a side rollable table will put the orders for the day.
But that rollable table, whether it's my employee or me, we'll, we'll move that table right
to our hip.
So it connects like an L here.
L. So the computer station would be my thumb here.
And then my index finger would be the listings.
Let me just grab it.
Grab, there's zero steps taken.
Because even walking around to grab it, pack it, bring it over to the shipping station to
print out the label, that takes time.
And it seems small, but 20 seconds times 30 or 40 packages adds up.
I'm sorry, but it does.
And when you're paying an hourly person to do that, you look at saving seconds any way
you can.
In personal time, we think about our time a little less than somebody were paying, but
think about your own time.
If you could save time, you could be doing another listing.
You can go out and another sourcing run for the day.
All kinds of things you could reallocate that time to.
So less steps, the better.
Now on inventory management.
Right now I'm running two.
My old one, which is what you see behind me, it's very color coded and very pretty.
However, it takes a lot of time to go down the line to find the exact book versus my
new one, which is what a lot of bigger sellers use, except theirs is a lot fancier.
Mine's a lot lower tech.
I just use simple numbers, six digits in this case.
So it's sequential and finding a number is a lot faster than looking for a particular
book title.
It needs to stick out of the front of the, well, I'll just demonstrate.
Like so, and we can just figure it out and just stack them straight up like that.
Or do you stack them on their side?
They're like that behind me, but they're facing out like this.
So this is not the show.
So you can see it fairly quickly.
And where did you get those things from?
How did you make those things?
This is just Excel and the paper, I use regular printing paper at first, but it was too flimsy
and they would tear and they'd fall out too easily even when you're stacking them.
But this is called card stock is what this is.
And again, you could just put it in your printer.
And then we have anything, one of those chopper things and we just chop it.
But I'm looking into ways to make that even faster because I or my employee has to take
time doing that, right?
But there's probably a better way for me to do it.
Maybe it's a machine.
I'm still looking into that.
Just to, again, always refining systems, right?
But this is probably the best way to do it.
Outside of, there's an additional thing that I've disagreed with so far, but it's putting
them not only in columns like that, they're just like this instead of this.
They want me to put them in, some people have been pushing me to put them in boxes.
And not only that, but it's a sign of a particular box within that shell.
And I'm like, I see the point, but they're already box like.
I don't think I need boxes.
What's the argument for that more space you can fit more in the, on the shelf?
No, I would actually lose some space out of that.
The argument for that is instead of me trying to find the row and column, I build that into
my skew system in addition, and I know the exact column and casing that it's in.
I see the point, but I'm still resistant to it and I'm not doing it right now.
But it may come a point where I may have to.
Because even my bookcases, they have the starting number and the ending number of, okay, this
bookcase, because my shelves are double sided now, my big bad boys, of 00001 to 1200.
And then the other side is 1201 to 2400 kind of deal.
So somebody starts brand new and they want an easy way to manage their inventory.
I got one four foot wide shelf.
It's got five different shelves on it.
How should they approach that without a whole inventory system?
They're just getting into this, but they want to be able to say, Hey, I know it's on shelf
one shelf too.
What would be the easiest way for them to go about having a kind of foolproof starter
inventory system?
So the plan, there would be two approaches in my pain to that.
If you're just planning because you have finite space to never outgrow that space, just make
it simple.
S1, S2, S3, S4, S5.
And then maybe have, if you do columns, S1, C1, S1, C2.
But if you plan to grow, like, Hey, I want to get a lot of bookshelves filled up.
So you would have to have a different kind of inventory system.
And that's when I would switch over to what I'm using, a sequential system.
But you may want to have, in addition to that, you may want to have bookcase B1 and then
a sequential number 00001 through B1 through 1200.
That would be my two approaches.
If you're stuck in finite space, you cannot grow, just make it simple.
I got the burning question that millions of people around the world are going to be looking
forward to this answer I'm about to throw at you.
Johnny B, the new crazy trend is hiring a virtual assistant.
All right.
So Johnny B has to hire a virtual assistant today.
But part of the business, do you think hiring a virtual assistant would work for you?
And you can't say you're not hiring one.
All right.
That's not even on the table.
I'm forcing you to hire somebody.
Where could you fit them into an eBay business that's going to make your life easier, but
it also has to make sense.
I don't want you just saying something just to say, I need something where it's like,
Hey, I'm going to give them this job because it's going to make my life easier.
And it's going to be, it makes sense in my business.
I would, if I had to use one in this case, I do.
I would have them scrape my scrape, scrape websites from Facebook marketplace, Craigslist,
even eBay to find deals for me to purchase.
And they just give me the list in the morning.
And then I decide if I want to buy it from there.
That'd probably be the sort of sourcing, what would I allocate them to?
Now if I had to be a trusted and I would never do this because I wouldn't trust them.
I might have one do my bookkeeping, but I'm not letting them see my numbers and knowing
where my money goes and where it comes in from.
So I would never do that, but that would save me some time.
Another one I might do.
Well, the question people are going to ask is, can I, can I, you know, send them the
photos and they list the items?
Cause that's going to be, you know, that's like everybody's time sync, right?
Cause if 99% of people that are new to selling on eBay are like, they're going to hire a
VA today, it's going to be to take care of the listing because nobody likes listing.
If it was CDs and DVDs, maybe if it was books, hell no.
The reason with that is there's so many flaws with books, knowing all those conditions and
when to use them and how to use them takes so much time.
And I would constantly be having to correct their listings.
And eventually they would be at the point where they could list, but I guarantee you
it's a six to nine month journey to get there.
And meanwhile, you paid this person to save you time, but you're actually spending more
time because for me, correcting even my employees listings takes me longer than doing the listing
from scratch myself.
Cause I'm double checking and triple checking because I'm the one that has to press the
button.
I would not allow them to launch their own listings.
They would go in the draft bank and I would have to review it and double and triple check
that they listed it the way I want it done from my store.
Now people watching this may be like, oh, you care too much.
And you're damn right.
I do.
Cause it's my store and my business.
And I don't trust anyone beyond myself pressing the launch button and making sure they listed
it properly.
So I'm reporting you to Cheryl for saying you're going to hire out your bookkeeping
into a VA and she's going to be in your messages yelling at you.
I'm sure it's like a VA.
I'll hire you Cheryl.
I don't know if you'll take $4 an hour, but yeah.
So like, I think, I think when we boil it down to like VAs for eBay, I don't think they
work unless it's, unless you're doing like an eBay to Amazon kind of thing where they're
just out there.
Like you said, sourcing, I think sourcing is the only play for VAs on eBay.
And it's weird because right, you're not even doing eBay to Amazon.
You're just looking for them to be out there on marketplaces, trying to find you a crazy
good bulk deal where you can buy it and have it shipped to you.
It's completely different with eBay.
You know, if you're just doing eBay, a VA, I just don't see it working.
I mean, you need a physical person, right?
If you want to take photos off your plate, you know, you need somebody there next to
you doing the photos.
You can't have somebody, you know, anywhere else.
Not even the next town over.
They got to be there in person because it's a process.
eBay is all an in-person process.
There's really no kind of outsourcing this, outsourcing that.
And especially, you know, it's such an item specific driven, you know, platform and optimized
listings.
Sure.
If you go on eBay, you're going to see 98% of just junk listings, but being the 2% of
the good listings, that's why you're successful.
That's why your business is successful.
That's why you can get more money for the same items.
You know, if me and you sell the same item, the same book, you can get a lot more than
me.
You're taking double my photos.
You're doing 10 times better descriptions, item specifics, all of that.
So I don't think a VA really fits in kind of an eBay only business.
Well, the other main crux of it, honestly, is the photos only go so far.
Having the item in your hand as you're listing, like I have piles of books.
Here's one.
I can only get so much off the photos, even doing all this.
And there may be something I missed that I didn't take a photo of, but when I have it
in hand, oh, it has this.
But I can mention the condition note.
It's not like I have to run my photo booth and take a new photo.
I could just mention the condition note and be done with it.
A VA is going to miss that because they don't have the item.
They're off in, I don't know, Singapore.
And they're just running off the photos because you sent them the photos.
Even if they get everything right, there may be a couple things they miss because of not
having the item in front of them.
All right.
So we're going to end this eBay reselling is easy topic with one last question.
I'll let you answer first and then I will answer.
In your current business, reselling on eBay, is it easy?
Yes or no?
No.
All right.
And I'm going to ask myself the same question.
And the way I run my eBay, I would say yes.
So two different completely perspectives.
We all know I do one listing a day.
Just that, depending on the week, depending on how I feel, if the sun's out, if it's a
full moon, I might not list.
I heard if you list on eBay and there's a full moon, those listings disappear.
But yeah, so right there are two different perspectives.
He's full-time eBay.
He'll tell you, no, eBay is not easy.
There's things you can do to make your life a little bit easier, but it's still going
to take a lot of work, a lot of details if you want to be successful and actually get
sales.
You're not just listing stuff to list stuff.
At the end of the day, you want to get sales.
I list my one item.
It's not a big deal for me.
I'm not doing all the descriptions he does.
It is easy for me, in my opinion.
But I do also adopt his inventory systems, his training me up on how to make shipping
easier.
So it's kind of hassle-free when it comes to that.
I'm not running around for different boxes or things like that.
So now we're going to jump into the Amazon side of things.
And this will be a little bit different kind of perspective here because Amazon, every
time, I mean, most people go from eBay to Amazon because you hear Amazon, it's less
time intensive, right?
You could just send your stuff to Amazon and wash your hands of it.
You really don't have to deal with anything.
And to an extent, I think we both would say that's true.
It's a lot less complicated.
The listing, there's software is where you can list.
You can leverage software as an Amazon to make it pretty simple and foolproof and kind
of easy.
And that same question we asked about eBay is selling on Amazon easy.
I would say yes, yes again.
I'm two yeses, right?
I'm not out here saying anything is hard.
Maybe that's just my mindset because I've worked crappy jobs.
I've worked in warehouses.
Funny story, I worked in a South Philly seafood warehouse.
I lasted two nights and I quit.
Dude, I couldn't.
I couldn't.
It's 20 degrees in the seafood warehouse.
I'm carrying like 50 pound bags of clams all night long.
There's life in back there.
I smelled so bad.
I literally, I had to throw the clothes out that I wore.
I quit after two nights.
So my definition of easy and hard might be a little skewed here, but I think Amazon is
definitely a lot easier than eBay.
What do you think?
I say yes, it's a lot easier.
I would say it has a harder start though because you got to figure it all out and then it dawns
on you.
There's all these other programs you need to add on.
It's not an all in one tool kind of like eBay is.
Now don't get me wrong.
There's some third party tools for eBay too, but I think they're a necessary thing in Amazon
where they're an optional thing in eBay.
I agree.
I think there's still a lot of opportunity.
I'm not sure like maybe if it's how much like eBay limits their backend like to softwares,
but I feel like there's a lot of opportunity for growth in the software space for eBay.
Instead of going into the eBay app and having to search sold comps, why isn't there an app
where you just scan the barcode and it shows you what the item sold for you kind of like
the Amazon apps, the seller amps, the scout leads, the scout IQs.
You can see all that information in real time and that doesn't exist for eBay.
I'm not sure why, but I think it could literally bust eBay wide open for a lot more people
because it makes it the barrier to entry a lot easier and it makes it kind of foolproof.
The argument is eBay, you got to have knowledge to sell things on eBay versus Amazon where
you can just scan something and it's all analytical.
You're looking at how much did I pay?
How much are the fees?
How much am I going to make?
eBay, you got to be like, you walk in, you're like, hey, what am I looking at here?
You got all these different listings.
Sure, you can sort it to sold, but that's really not going to give you a clear picture
if there's 20 people listed and only one sold.
You got to kind of be more analytical and knowledgeable.
Right.
Now you can scan things that have a barcode to an extent or EPC into eBay, but it's going
to pull from eBay's internal catalog, very similar to Amazon.
I'm not going to lie there.
However, it's going to pull off somebody else's listing and a lot of the time it's either
wrong or missing the highlights of that item and the title structure.
You got to redo it a lot of the times because the one it's pulling is complete garbage and
breaks all the eBay rules of this isn't how you should do a listing, but yet it's the
one it gave you and it's like, okay, I guess I'll fix this crappy junk listing and go from
there.
Do you hate me that I actually sold something by selling another listing that had a little
fire emoji in the title?
A little bit.
See?
Yeah, see?
So like he's right with that, but I've done it because, A, I'm not good at eBay.
I don't claim to be an eBay expert.
So I see this one sold, right?
It's the only one that's sold.
I'm just going to hit sell similar.
I'm going to keep Bozo the Clown's fire emoji in the title.
I mean, the item did sell, so maybe it was the fire emoji that got me to sell, but that's
not the correct way that listing should be optimized when somebody's searching on eBay
because that's never going to show up.
And you kind of take that back to Amazon where when you scan something, you're usually only
going to get one listing for the most part.
And that listing is usually filled out with all the correct information in it, right?
There's only one title.
The titles, what Amazon approves in their catalog, the photos are all stock photos.
So it's kind of foolproof when you compare them.
There's really no knowledge.
Like I joke all the time, right?
If I could train a bunch of chimpanzees to go to the stores and scan stuff, I'd be good
to go because there's really no knowledge base.
And it's that easy if you just understand the numbers and what you're looking at compared
to eBay.
At Amazon, it's just about consistency and finding items.
Now we did a deep dive a few weeks back in my media call group and refinement, title
structure stuff.
We use Terapeak.
So if you don't know, that's a product research tool that's built into eBay.
And we were looking at Stephen King's did, and we're looking at all the sales for this,
right?
We found one that had sold.
The only thing in the title was the words I and T. And that is the lowest effort I've
ever seen for a listing ever.
But yet it did sell.
That's kind of the thing with eBay.
There are things that'll make you sell faster and quicker if you do like a proper title
structure.
But in my opinion, and the whole result of that discussion was the end of the day, it
all sells.
It's just when will it sell?
And then there's some stuff that has been, I sold a book just yesterday.
It had been on my shelf for 15 months.
I didn't think this thing would ever sell.
But you know what?
15 months later, it did sell.
It was garbage.
It was all chewed up, gnawed up, written in all throughout the book.
And the book was Heidi for those that were interested.
And I was a jerk, McJerkface.
I put in my condition notes just blasting this book to smithereens.
Probably why it didn't sell 15 months, because I think it was one of my last listings 15
months ago.
I'm like, you know what?
Screw it.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It was really funny in my opinion.
But it did sell.
It did sell.
It just took 15 months.
In comparison, you're kind of like 90-10.
I don't know what your percentage is in your mind of eBay to Amazon.
Just kind of in your experience with Amazon over the past year, in comparison to eBay,
what was the biggest benefit?
What did you see?
Was it the time you spent listing?
Was it the research needed?
Was it the finding a price to put your items out?
What was the biggest relief when you started doing Amazon in comparison to eBay?
The biggest relief was the time saved.
One listing to one listing on Amazon.
It's night and day difference.
Yes, I go overboard.
Even if I weren't to go overboard, I would still say doing an Amazon listing is 10 times
faster than an eBay listing with minimal effort.
It just is, because it's literally price done.
Scan price done.
If it's eBay versus eBay, I've got to type something in the title, upload the photos,
and let's just say I skipped all the item specifics and just did a condition now.
Just those three things took me 10 times as much time versus scan price next.
There is a speed volume thing you can do with Amazon.
I'm hiding a little bit of the Amazon word because you have to scan the item to even
get it to be able to list, and then you have to maybe interpret the data on Scatly or
Scout IQ depending on what you use, and then make a judgment call on some things.
Then maybe if you're cleaning books or putting stickers on, there's that workload onto it.
I'm not going to hide it from you guys.
You guys listening to this probably already know this, but if anybody knew people, there
is a little bit of work involved on Amazon.
The listing part, just the listing part on both platforms, Amazon's king.
It's crazy to see the difference and the contrast in the platforms and how it's easier some
ways, but how it's not easier.
I think the big headache with Amazon is understanding the fee structure.
A lot of people don't really understand how it is to be profitable on Amazon.
I guess you could say the same on eBay, but it's a lot more prevalent on Amazon because
the fees are a lot higher.
When it comes to numbers, I think that's the biggest hurdle for Amazon sellers.
There's really no way to make that easy besides just having the knowledge of understanding
profitability in a business, not sales in a business, because all you see on Amazon
is, hey, I did this much in sales.
Really not, hey, I made this much.
It's one of those things where it's just like, hey, look, I did $100 in sales today.
Well, Johnny, good for you.
How much of that money did you actually make?
It's a dark side that nobody really wants to put out there.
Now I think you made a great point, and I'm going to mention Amazon's flaw.
What a many.
Interpreting that stupid chart, the little tornado wavy looking chart of how much you're
getting, when you're getting it, and the little subsequent tabs in there, hot garbage.
I hate it.
Understanding what you sold and how much you got out of that, figuring out how to even
navigate to that.
This is where Amazon drops the ball.
It's not intuitive.
eBay, super easy.
I can understand it instantly.
Now, first time I saw this underwater radar chart, I'm like, what in the hell is this?
It's got different numbers.
I was like, okay, I had to go to YouTube to figure it out because I need somebody to explain
it to me.
I may have asked you a question.
I don't remember if I did or not.
I try not to waste your time too much.
But it took me 20 minutes to figure out, okay, here's what they're saying, matching it up
to what the hell I'm looking at.
Amazon has a lot of great things going for it, but it reflecting its data to its sellers,
unless you... There's no way you can understand it off the get go.
I'm sorry, you can't.
No, I agree with you there.
I think we're going to wrap this up with one last question here.
Do you think people make reselling a lot harder than it needs to be?
Yes, I think people way overthink it, way overanalyze it, and they try to make it perfect.
The other way they do it, the reverse is true.
They try to make it the quickest way, maybe even the laziest way, just to get their time.
They only want to spend an hour a week on it and try to figure out how they can do it
at a big scale doing that.
I'm sorry, that's just not possible.
Or your account's going to get banned or broken because you didn't put forth the effort.
You just summed it all up right there.
A lot of people make it a lot harder than it needs to be.
Reselling can be easy, but it's never going to be sit back, kick your feet up.
Everything works for you and you have to do nothing.
There is going to be work, even if you get it to that place with the VAs.
That's going to take months and months, if not years and years of building your business,
building processes, building procedures, kind of like we had Jared on last week.
He's all processes, right?
Processes before profits.
I feel like that should be somebody's YouTube reselling slogan, so feel free to steal it.
We appreciate you guys listening to this episode and we will talk to you next week.