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 to episode 26, Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Myself, Johnny B.
over there living in his warehouse.
He's probably been there all night long, but hey, you know, it's lifestyle he chooses.
Today's topic is going to be a fun one and we are going to cover all things
related to brand and category knowledge.
Is it something you need to have a reselling business?
I think there's an argument on both sides and I can personally say Johnny B.
has more knowledge on books than me and I'm perfectly fine with it.
I don't, I mean, I'm not a book knowledgeable kind of person.
So we're kind of just going to hop into it.
I'm going to let him take it away here where, you know, he thinks knowledge.
We'll start out with, you know, what's the most important thing when it comes to
knowledge, if you're going to be reselling in a certain category or a certain niche.
Well, if you're selling a certain category or selling a certain niche, you
need to know your audience, your customers, what do they buy in set category niche?
Cause even if you're niche into just books, well, okay, fine.
What kind of books do customers buy?
And do they buy the high dollar ones, the cheap ones, the series ones?
They buy book lots.
Do they buy books on average that are $30 or less?
These are all things to consider when deciding, okay, I'm a book seller now,
but what kind of book seller are you?
And reversing that onto Amazon.
Cause yeah, I'm the eBay guy.
Sure.
Fine.
But Amazon, you got to look at your Kipa charts as well, or know when to sell it.
When's the prime time to send in that book to have it for sale to maximize your dollars.
So even in Amazon land, it may not be book knowledge specific.
It may be market knowledge specific, which I consider critical, more critical in
Amazon eBay odds are if you did everything right, it will sell at some point.
Faster or slower, but it will sell.
So I think all of these things are very important on the market research end of things,
especially when you have niche to something very critical.
Cause if you're not an everything seller anymore, you're going to come across less
big ticket items because you're, you're buying certain things.
Now, let's just say it's just books.
Well, how many hundred dollar plus books are you going to come across?
And how many of those do you need to make ends meet?
Versus, okay, I'm in goodwill.
How many hundred dollars items can I find that I could flip in all of goodwill?
Now the latter sounds more appealing, but if you get into the volume game, I think you can.
Make leaps and bounds money over the, just buying the bigger ticket items.
Cause even though you can only go to so many stores a day, you can only
pick up so many of those a day.
So it's hard to do volume on a hundred dollar plus items every day.
You think it's like Amazon is supply and demand and I would say eBay is knowledge
and demand and that's just because they're softwares for Amazon, right?
Anybody out there, no matter what you're doing, you're using a software to find
items to sell on Amazon versus eBay.
It's just the eBay app.
It's just the Amazon app.
You understanding how to use the app, you know, understanding what the
sell through rate is because right, there's no sales rank on eBay.
You can't, you know, there's no, no, well, this is a top 1% of the category
when you're just out in the wild, like kind of hunting for items to resell.
And I think there's a heavy contrast between both platforms.
And if you're, if you're going to have a book business on eBay, sure.
You said if you're going to do crazy volume truckloads, then you really
don't have to know anything if you're just throwing everything up, but anything
besides that, you have to have a knowledge base.
And when I started just, you know, being book only focusing on books, I
I'll be the first to admit, I didn't know nothing about, you know, who to
be on the lookout for, you know, like I didn't even know Stephen King first
editions, like even were a thing when I first started, right?
I'm just like, I have no idea.
I'm not, I'm not like a book nerd or anything like that.
So like, I was already behind the eight ball when it came to trying to sell
media on eBay, because you have to understand what you're looking at
because there's no easy way to go in and scan, you know, bookcases full of
books and see what's worth it.
What's not, you have to, well, you got to research every single one.
Well, you can't sit there because you'll be there for 24 hours researching
every single item on the shelf.
You got to know like, Hey, all right, well, I'm gonna grab this one.
Cause I think this is going to be worth it.
This one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one,
this is going to be worth it, this one, this one, this will probably be worth it.
And then you can look them up from there, but you have to kind of build a
knowledge base and in comparison, Amazon, you just scan and an app tells you
whether or not it's profitable, right?
It shows you right away.
It even tells you how much you're going to make, even if you just use the
Amazon seller app, scan something, it'll show you the profit you just put in your,
your buy calls.
It'll tell you exactly how much you're going to make.
eBay doesn't do that.
You might see that it sold for 15 bucks, but we talk about it all the time.
Who cares what something sold for?
I mean, if it says, you don't know how much you're getting from that, at least
Amazon kind of tells you like, Hey, after fees, you're probably going to get this
amount eBay is like, no, that's $15 in your pocket.
And I think a lot of people kind of get it mixed up.
Right.
I mean, there are tools.
I just want to clarify.
There are a couple of tools with eBay, not many.
Uh, one of those is an internal tool called Terrapix, but you have to have a
store subscription to even access that.
I was using that just the other day.
I don't use it for sold price research, that kind of thing, how much I
should list a book for.
I primarily use that tool for what I was talking about earlier, market research.
What is my niche to the bar, the book market doing?
Um, and it holds the last two years of data for all everything on eBay.
So I can look and analyze something.
If I want to know.
If I'm looking between a dollar range of 599, 899, how many people are chart?
What percentage of people sellers are doing free shipping?
It'll tell me that, which is neat to know.
Okay.
I need to charge free shipping because everybody in this price range is 75%
of them are offering free shipping.
But if you do the reverse, what if I go up to 3499 to 40 bucks?
Are those people charging for shipping or not?
Surprisingly, they charge majority of those people charge shipping.
I didn't know that unless I use this tool.
And you can even, you can even look at genres or authors to get a ballpark idea
of how much this author or this genre or this publisher selling for.
You can get, you can dig out information, right?
That's super cool.
Another tool that I don't really think specific to eBay, but I know a lot of eBay
sellers use it, especially the everything buyers, they use Google lens.
Um, basically if you're not familiar with Google lens, it's
basically a cover scan for anything.
If it's on the internet, it'll find it and you can, okay.
And you primarily use this when you can't find it on eBay.
For this oddball thing, this like, I don't know, little six inch figurine of an elephant.
You can't find it on eBay.
Well, you use Google lens, it'll, it's up for sale.
It'll access all of Google and find it.
Can you, can you access Terapeek on your phone?
Say I'm out at the thrift store.
All I got is my phone on me.
Maybe I've never tried.
Let me, let me dig around here.
We continue the conversation as I press buttons and stuff.
Even then it's like the Amazon software tells you right away.
Basically you're going to have a yes or no answer where eBay, you got to, you
know, you got to filter the sold, sold listings.
You got to kind of see, see what's going on and see how many are listed
versus how many sold, um, what did it sell for?
Was it a best offer accepted?
There's a lot more nuances that come with eBay just because the
software is completely different.
And I'm not sure why, like there really isn't like an eBay
scanning software, basically.
I mean, I, I don't know.
It's one of those things where it, when it does come along, I'm sure it'll
make a whole bunch of money, but who knows if it's even possible with.
You know what eBay lets the backend, you know, take an image on eBay itself,
but just like cover scanning with Amazon 50, 50 shot most of the time.
Um, and yes, you can access Terapeek on your phone, apparently, which is kind of cool.
Yeah.
So, I mean, if you're really out there into it, it'll, it's going to take more time.
Anyway, you look at it, the eBay way of life is going to take more time, but if
you have knowledge, you can capitalize here in different ways versus Amazon.
And that, you know, especially with books, you got book club edition books.
You're not going to find those on Amazon first edition books, pre-ISBM books.
There's so many different ways where you don't have to do Amazon.
You don't have to do eBay.
It's just the way it is, and you can be really good at one and not even care about
the other, it's not like what we do.
We're kind of the opposite.
You do eBay real well.
I do Amazon, right?
It's just the way it is, but there's a specific skill set, you know, it's like,
we're both trained assassins in different ways, right?
I go in and I scan all the stuff and you go in and say, Hey, that's a science
fiction from the eighties, I'm buying it regardless, no matter what it is.
Grab them all.
And you could probably argue once you have the knowledge set, you can
argue once you have the knowledge set.
And I think, I think you probably would be correct.
You're probably going to be faster than me going in, scanning the whole store.
If you're going in, scanning the shelves with your eyes and you know exactly
what you're looking for, because you have the knowledge, you know what sells.
You're just going to grab it and go versus me.
I'm just scanning everything.
I built it myself.
Yeah.
You're like, you're like the Terminator where he's scanning, scanning for John
Connor.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
So the software edge is exact.
Now I mentioned appointed to my head and stuff, but human error does come into play.
So I bought something I was sure I was right on before.
But occasionally, well, I'm wrong.
Not so much these days, but yeah, occasionally you can be wrong.
And we always have the tools and technology and sometimes I get cocky
because I'm a professional bookseller.
Yes.
If I should and I'll buy something without looking it up when I was, I think it's
worth money.
But if I took the time to whip out my cell phone, I could have proven if it was worth
money or not.
I don't think.
I mean, maybe you could counteract this, but I think you're going to agree with me.
I don't think there's any shortcuts to gaining knowledge.
No, no.
The knowledge comes with with time.
There's no shortcut, short cutting your time there.
I mean, we have tools, eBay has tools, Amazon has tools.
But even then there's some things that aren't on either database and you got to figure
it out and make a judgment call.
And how you make that judgment call comes with the time and knowledge of being in the
game that we are in as resellers.
That's just how it is.
I gained most of my knowledge from YouTube.
Yeah.
But this is a this is, you know, that the YouTube road can lead you down many deep,
dark, shadowy alleyways where you shouldn't belong.
So, I mean, the amount of resellers I watched when I first started doing this was
probably, you know, 100 plus.
I've narrowed that list down to probably well under 20 now.
And there are people that, you know, you learn from, right?
I mean, I really don't care like what somebody on YouTube, oh, my God, I sold this
one item for a thousand dollars.
Like those are you look at me videos.
Those aren't the videos you should be seeking out if you're looking to gain
knowledge, right?
You want probably, you know, it's probably a smaller channel because they don't do
click bait stuff, but everything you're talking about when it comes to the
specific niche you're selling in, you know, if you're doing sneakers, find a
sneaker, somebody that resells sneakers, you know, when vintage shirts, vintage
shirts and you kind of can just, you know, kind of I don't even know what you
call like osmosis, right? You know, like, for me, I have a few of them, right?
Curator of the lost, small time, small town bookseller.
Those guys are like their knowledge they have inside their heads.
I said all the time, I wish like, you know, can I lend you for a day, right?
I just take you with me and you can just walk in the store and pick out things
that are going to sell on eBay, you know, for 30, 40 plus dollars.
And just, I'm sorry, interrupt just like watching their stuff because it's, it's,
it's items, you know, it's, it's, it's in my niche.
I'm not watching, you know, I'm not watching resellers selling sneaks
because I'm not selling sneaks.
I sit within my niche.
Those are the videos I'm going to watch.
And you learn a lot just by kind of leveraging off other people that have
been in the business longer than you.
And maybe, maybe it is somebody that has a huge library, loves collecting books.
So their knowledge base is just, I mean, it's a million times what mine is.
Right.
And just to plug a few more, I mean, for those who don't know, we have these
particular channels, the ones he mentioned, the one I'm about to mention,
fed into our discord.
So we see videos pop up from these folks all the time.
There is Caleb from Antique Book Collective.
He mentioned Shane from Curator of the Lost.
Joji Davenport's a new one we've added.
We did a podcast with him not too long ago.
And Daily Refinement.
Now I plug these guys all the time.
I think they are the best at what they do for reselling on eBay as a whole.
Not necessarily in clothes, not necessarily in books, but just
an overall encompassing thing.
So if I had to plug one of them, it would be Daily Refinement.
For eBay and stuff, definitely Joji, Mike here, of course.
I'm forgetting, oh, Andrew from 510 Books, what I would say would be a split
person between eBay and Amazon.
He's a good guy.
I think with Daily Refinement, it's like the business practices you get from
him in tech are invaluable.
And I mean, it's one of those things, right?
You know, it's just us running a business.
So it's completely different when you have to start implementing new things
and changing the way you're working.
And then maybe if you have an employee changing the way, you know, how you're
going to hire somebody, how you're going to handle that situation.
So 100% like Daily Refinement, anytime his videos pop up, their podcast,
it's like every episode, you're going to learn something from it.
How to grow your business, how to, you know, maybe maneuver your business.
If you want to change what you're doing, there's just so much information out there.
But that's a double-edged sword, right?
I mean, that's the crux of that group.
There's too much information.
Well, it's a crux of YouTube.
It's a crux of people out here that are looking to start and maybe
they want to, you know, learn something.
It's like, I mean, you could sit there all day every day and watch YouTube videos.
Right.
Another good one, just in case he's watching would be Golden State Picker.
I like him a lot.
Oh yeah.
He's a nice guy.
He knows everything there is to know.
It's pretty crazy.
Like, I don't know, like I need to find like some young book flipper, right?
I need somebody that's like 16 years old on YouTube that I know.
He's only 19 years old and his knowledge kicks my ass.
There's no way he's 19.
That's ridiculous.
He drives across the country buying antique books, man.
I mean, if he's listening to this.
He's the new roamer, except he keeps his shirt on.
If he's listening to this, I apologize because I thought he was definitely
at least in his mid 20s, so that's news to me.
He might've aged up.
I'm maybe thinking of an early video when he said how old he was.
I was like, no way.
No, he's 19.
No way. No.
That's still crazy, but you can't get caught up with just watching videos.
You can learn just as much going out on your own and doing the research as you
can sitting in front of the screen.
And you probably could argue that you're going to learn more just going out there
and looking up books, but it's going to take a lot more time, right?
Kind of YouTube and courses and things like that are like shortcuts almost, but
you know, it works both ways.
Just because you watch something doesn't mean, you know, you're watching
a video and they say, hey, you know, be on the lookout for this author.
And then you never find that author out in your stores.
You know, it just happens.
So you kind of, it could be a time waster.
It has a lot to do with that too.
What the region buys and if they don't buy it, you're not going to find it in a
thrift or a mom and pop or out in the wild.
Yeah.
And so, so like trying to gain knowledge, it's, it's going to take time.
I don't think you can shortcut it.
You kind of can be like me.
You start out, you don't know nothing.
I still don't know nothing, right?
But over time you're putting in the reps, you're out there.
You're looking at books every single day.
You're watching a few YouTubers you can relate with that, you know, are personable
to you and you kind of like the way they have their channel set up and the videos
they do, and you can learn over time.
This isn't something like, Oh, I'm going to start selling sneakers tomorrow.
Well, guess what?
If I decided to start selling sneakers tomorrow, good luck, right?
I have no idea what I'm doing.
Sure.
Yeah.
I know that Nike sells sneakers and Adidas and all these other companies, but you
don't know what, what type of Nike sell, you know, what, what size Nike sell
better than other sizes.
And it's the same with books, right?
You got hardbacks, you got softbacks, first edition, second editions, book
club additions, all kinds of additions, book sets, non book sets.
There is literally so much junk out there that goes hand in hand with the good stuff.
And you have to know how to kind of sift through it to be efficient with your time.
And I'm glad you mentioned shoes because it applies very much to books,
especially in textbooks and the shoe people have this very same problem.
Counterfeits, how to identify one.
So you don't sell one accidentally or attempt to, and Amazon and eBay come
down on you hard when you sell a fake shoe or a fake book.
Well, at least the good thing about books is right.
If you make a mistake, you make a bad buy.
What does it cost you a buck?
Who cares? Right.
Shoes, especially if you're playing that Nike game, 30 bucks, 50 bucks.
Yeah.
So, I mean, that's why a lot of people start with media because it's cheap.
You can learn cheaply, you can make mistakes and they're not
going to bankrupt your business.
You know, it is what it is.
And it's kind of a building block of reselling, especially on Amazon,
because it is cheap and mistakes are going to happen.
Nobody's perfect.
You know, we're, everybody's going to make mistakes.
I still make them all the time.
Johnny still makes them all the time.
It happens.
It's never going to stop.
And that's how you can, can you continuously learn and maybe someday
we'll get to a point where we're 100% mistake free, but I highly doubt it.
And even if you're using software, the software is, you know, software
is, you know, not reliable.
I mean, sure you get, you get an instant answer on your phone, but that
doesn't mean that's going to be correct when you go, go to list the item later
that day, or even later in the week, things change, maybe the software
pulled the wrong item, maybe you scan the barcode and it pulled up, you know,
a pair of sneakers that was, you know, a different color or, you know,
something like that.
And you really don't pay attention because a lot of times you get caught
up in the moment, you scan something, you're like, Whoa, $30 profit.
And you just throw it in the car.
You don't double check till you're already at home.
You go to list the item and you look, wait a minute, this isn't even the right item.
Like it's pulling something completely different.
Right.
Another, a couple of good resources that I've used in the past or Biblio,
if I can't find any information on a book, Biblio is good for short for bibliography,
finding out the original publication date or the list of publishers that
this book's come from.
So that's good for that.
Another one I like to use is A-Books.
They have a lot of articles on just general book knowledge.
Not, they also, for those don't know, they also have more Antiquarian
books up for sale there, but I go there primarily for, for the
information they have, because they release articles from time to time.
Like I didn't know parts of books.
And as an eBay seller, I needed to know the names of parts of books.
And I got those from AID and a lot of historical things for older books.
Yes, it's reading.
It's not watching.
I'm sorry, but there isn't a great information over there.
I can't plug those guys enough.
It would count me out.
If you, if you quiz me right now on the 25 parts of a book, I would get the
cover, but I'm not sure if I'm going to get the cover.
I would get the cover and a table of contents.
And I would look to the left and see if the person next to me was smarter
and I would copy their answers down and there you go, teacher.
And hopefully I pass.
Fair enough.
I gave my employee a packet of book part names.
She loved it.
Oh, it was just, it was literally arrows pointing part of the book.
So come work for Johnny B where we will quiz you every week.
And if you don't pass the quiz, you are eliminated.
Give me your torch.
But if you pass, you get a lollipop.
Give me your torch, put out your torch.
You're off the island.
It is good to know though, right?
100%.
You know, the knowledge you have is far superior than mine and you need
it for the type of business you run.
Yeah.
Sure.
I do sell a little bit on eBay, but nothing in comparison.
So yeah, I know like, I know the common ones that everybody knows.
Stephen King, first editions, you know, certain authors, certain book sets,
right, Warhammer 40K, old school D&D stuff, things like that.
The stuff everybody knows.
Now that you have this knowledge, whenever you're out, when you see them again,
you know, that's an instant pickup for you.
You don't even need to look it up.
Yeah.
I mean, and believe it or not, a good D&D book story I had is I went to my local
library sale and they had a stack of like the old D&D like set up books.
And I didn't know nothing about it, but I said for a dollar, I can't go wrong with
this is cool.
Like I just keep it for myself or give it to one of my friends.
And, and while I'm being, I ran into an auction and sold for like 150 bucks, but
like, that was because I knew what, what like Warhammer was worth.
So I was like, D&D is like Warhammer kind of before Warhammer.
So I was like, all right, I'm rolling with this and it worked out, but you got to
have a knowledge base and you can't expect to know everything and you shouldn't expect
to know, I don't get beat up if I don't know something.
I'm like, Hey, that's another, you know, tool I have on the belt.
And I think a lot of people like, they want to know everything.
And I think in the reselling world, it's, it's next to impossible unless you are
super niche down, unless you were just like selling a certain author, certain,
you know, genre, it's going to be next to impossible to know every author, every
profitable item, just by walking in and looking at something.
Right.
Like a prime instance of these, like I was, when I first started getting in
paperbacks, I came across these, I had no idea what they were.
Cause it has the cover here and a cover here.
Whoa.
It's this right.
Basically ACE and a couple other publishers in the fifties and sixties
made double novels, basically two books in one, it was a marketing scheme.
But I had to learn how to list these.
Cause like, which one do I use?
Right.
But now that I have this knowledge and I took the time to learn all that,
there's some of my easiest listings, to be honest, they go super quick.
I don't have to change a couple of things.
But I thought I knew everything and I came across this.
I don't know anything about these things.
What are these?
No, I'm the same way.
I'd be like, what is this book fake?
Somebody make this at home.
Why ain't there, you know, no backpages to front cover.
Why does it have two covers?
Is this a misprint?
What is this?
Okay.
I'm curious.
So, so it's two stories.
One starts from the back.
One starts from the front.
Yeah.
Are the, is the text like the same way or is one?
No, that's also flip.
So, I'm curious.
It would be backwards here.
It's upside down here.
Okay.
You have to, they built it pretty smart in my opinion.
Yeah.
That's a, that's pretty, that's pretty neat.
I'm surprised they don't make them like that anymore.
I think they're cool.
I don't know why.
I have loads of them.
I did a bunch of sci-fi last month.
These are Westerns, obviously, and I'm going to finish those probably tomorrow.
But yeah.
And they did them for fantasy and they did it for all the things,
but they're from the fifties and sixties.
I want to talk about that.
Knowledge when it comes to pricing your items.
I'll run away with Amazon here for a little bit.
Then you can kind of hop into the eBay one.
When it comes to pricing on Amazon, we all know that the buy box is all that
matters if you're doing FBA and lowest prices, all that matters to immersion
fulfilled, but there are times where you go to list something and you know,
the market value of this book is we'll say $20.
Well, Johnny B doesn't know what he's doing and prices, has it
$5, so you have to be wary of situations like this because you don't want to,
you know, yet again, software can take over a reprice or something along those
lines and reprice your item down to his $5 because he doesn't know what he's doing.
So there's kind of tools you can put in place.
So you would avoid doing that.
And like he was saying earlier a little bit, some things are seasonal, right?
Textbooks.
There's people that'll buy textbooks, you know, people like Joji and all
hang out with each other and they'll be like, Oh, I'm going to buy a
textbook and I'm going to hang onto them until textbook season rolls around
where you're going to make an extra 20, 30, 40 bucks on that textbook versus
if you send it in today.
So there are some like kind of quirks when it comes to pricing and you have
to be aware that not everybody that has their item listed knows what the value
of it is and just because somebody has it listed super high or super low
doesn't mean anything.
It's what has it, what has it sold for in the past?
What is the proven track record of this item?
And I think because Johnny has a listed at a thousand dollars that you're going
to get a thousand dollars for your Danielle Steel book, even if Johnny's
the only one, right?
So we'll say Danielle Steel, I got a Daniels so book, there's one listing
on eBay for a thousand dollars.
Well, am I going to come on and list that book for $900?
No, that is 100% the wrong move.
It's never going to sell, right?
Just because you're the cheapest, you're the cheapest dude.
So you're the cheapest price out there, but that is just on that platform, right?
If you go to Google and type in that same Danielle Steel book, you probably
can find it for like five bucks on books a million anywhere else in the world.
So you can get carried away.
It's still in the Walmart for two bucks, still in the shrink.
That's what I'm saying.
You can't, you can't get carried away with the pricing.
You got to watch the, watch the low ballers and you got to watch the high
ballers because especially on Amazon, it's mostly software based.
Usually the people that are priced real low, don't know how to set up their software.
Same with the people that are priced real high.
So you got to be, you got to understand what the market value is of something.
Just because somebody has it listed at a hundred bucks doesn't mean you're
going to get a hundred bucks for that CD, right?
Listed out what it sold for in the past.
If you can't find it, Google it and you'll see what other
websites have it listed for.
So you kind of have a gauge, right?
I'm not saying you have to price off what anybody on the internet has, but
you'll understand what the market value is.
Hey, you know, people are selling it for 25 bucks, 20 bucks.
Then you say, well, aren't, well, I listed at, you know, 25, 30 bucks.
See if I can get the sale, come back and lower the price in a little bit, but
don't go crazy either way.
You can't go all the way down and you can't go all the way up.
It'll just sit there and never sell.
And then you'd be like, well, what's going on here?
Why am I not selling anything?
But that's my take with knowledge when it comes to pricing on Amazon.
It's mostly software based.
Most people that do Amazon have software that run the pricing.
So you got to understand the software when it comes to knowledge.
But yet again, there's content tutorials for every single piece
of software out there on Amazon.
Now eBay is a little, a little bit more tricky.
So I'm going to let you take this one away.
Oh, you're not lying.
It is very tricky.
Okay.
So most people watching this know to at least look at the solds on eBay
and, or the active listings.
That'll, that'll get you started at least, but then we get into our fun things.
Okay.
The ones that did sold and, or the ones that listed, what kind of listing job,
the quality job did they do?
Did they do one or not?
If you think you can do a better job, I don't care what the sold say.
You can probably charge a little bit more.
How much is too much?
And as Mike was saying, overpricing and underpricing kind of deal.
If you're doing a bang up job, you're going to be able to do
your kick and butt and you price your thing for at market value.
Well, I think you would have lost money just cause everybody
else did a worse job than you.
So how much above that can you go?
That's the trick.
That's probably the most tricky part to learn on eBay is again, knowing
your market and using the tools or knowing you're selling a lot of things
at this price, can I sell this similar thing?
It's not exactly this thing, but similar enough at that same price.
So there's a little bit of experimentation.
You got to find with listing it and seeing if it sells a little bit.
If you're going above the market value on most of your items, I do this all the time.
My listings are better than most listings out there and I can charge.
Well, honestly, 70, 80% more of what they sell for in most cases.
I would say 20% is a good number.
If you're still getting used to listings, you could, if you're doing just the
tiniest bit better job on listing.
Now our other podcasts go into deep dives about these things, but I'll
just cover some of the basics, more photos than everybody else, a proper title
structure, the better than everybody else and condition note, both in the
description and condition filled bare minimum.
Now, if you want to hear about the other things, go listen to our other
podcasts, cause I'm not going to take up the whole time on that.
All right.
So we're going to run out here, this, the knowledge episode here, um, with
my last little piece of advice, then I'll let you drop in your last little, uh,
tidbits of advice when it comes to knowledge, it's a process.
You're not going to know everything right away.
And I know for some people that can be aggravating.
That's just the reality of it, right?
There's so much information out there.
You got to kind of narrow down what you want to focus on and you got to get out
there, you got to put the reps in, you got to look up items, you got to sell
some items, you got to understand the market, understand the platforms.
It's not just knowledge of the items you're selling.
It's knowledge of the platforms, how the platforms work, you know,
Terapeak, things like that.
Like Johnny B like it's not just knowledge of books.
It's eBay knowledge, right?
That's why he's the eBay guy.
And we all know eBay is a lot more complicated than Amazon is that we're
just looking at it from platform versus platform when it comes to, you know,
usability, understanding how everything works, sell through basically market analytics.
So when it comes to knowledge, it's going to take time with anything.
And over months, years, you're going to be able to sit back and say, Hey,
I don't have to scan every book anymore.
I can go in a store.
I know I'm not scanning this title.
I'm not scanning this genre.
I'm not scanning this author.
And you're going to get more efficient with time comes, but just understand
that knowledge, it's going to grow over time and it's not something you're
going to have right away.
So Johnny B take us away.
Yay.
So we're going to read our last final thoughts.
My last final thoughts are it takes time.
And you'll pick this up.
You're not going to know anything at the get go.
You're going to buy a bunch of things, even if you've niche down, you're
going to list them all on whatever platform and you will just build this
internal Rolodex over time of what you sell and you'll pick it up naturally
over time, the longer you stick with it.
And the more you list or the more you box up to send in to Amazon or list on
FBM, it just takes time and just be patient that you don't know everything
and don't over research, um, beyond what you're having that you brought.
You don't have to watch a million hours on YouTube to know everything
there is about books.
You don't have to do that.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
Today's full episode and all previous episodes are available to all YouTube
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