Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset
podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube,
along with my friend and fellow full time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses
from the ground up.
We also have a weekly Zoom call and private Discord
for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash
used book guy to join the channel
and gain access to the full length podcast Zoom call
and private Discord today.
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up, everybody?
Welcome to episode 27, Resellers Mindset podcast,
JB and Mike as always.
Today's topic is going to be a fun one.
Is reselling oversaturated?
Is it possible to start a reselling business today
from nothing?
We're going to cover everything that's out there related to just
the idea that, hey, there's no more space in the reselling
world.
I can't start a new reselling business today
because the used book guy's already got all the books
and whatever he doesn't have, Johnny B's got the other half.
So there's no room for me to get involved.
He's already shaking his head no.
So we're going to throw it over to him
and let him just run away with his thoughts here.
Sure.
Is the market oversaturated?
Absolutely.
Can you still start a reselling business in media today?
Absolutely, yes.
I hear it all the time with new book sellers, especially
on eBay, how do I compete with a place like Declutter?
And the answer is you don't compete with them.
If they're not doing.
For me, I took that very well when I got told this
because it's the same question.
It's the same answer every time.
I do more photos than those guys do.
I put a book description in there than they do.
I have better packaging than they do.
I do a lot of things better than they do.
And I also have my condition, actually,
because I don't know if you've ever ordered from them,
listeners, but if you do, their condition may not
be what you actually get.
And that could go either way.
It could go good or bad.
It'd be a way better condition than it's rated or a way
worse condition than what it's rated.
It kind of licks back with those guys because they're so large.
The mistakes are going to happen when
you have something that large.
There's just human error all in there.
But as far as is it oversaturated?
Yeah, it kind of is.
I mean, there's more than one DVD seller
because you're not a book seller or a CD seller,
whatever you're into.
You're competing with grandma who
can use eBay versus grandma who can't use eBay on Amazon.
And then you've got the younger, more technical savvy people
on Amazon.
And then the other platforms, there's competition
of variety there.
And the different market spaces, that's
interesting to talk about too.
I say your more collector older books are on eBay
and your more newer barcody books are on Amazon.
So again, different spaces.
And I think all markets are, quote, unquote, oversaturated
because, like I mentioned, grandma, she may only
have 100 books on her store, but there's 1,000 of her.
So that adds up quickly.
And they got the same books you do, right?
But again, how do you do better than what grandma's
doing on her listings?
Yeah, segue to Mr. Mike.
People would argue that.
I mean, at least I would argue that.
There's more resellers today than there's ever been.
So that's like, oh, that's why I'm not going to start
because there's so many resellers.
It's not like the reselling pool is going down.
I mean, I wish there was an official reselling number.
How many people are reselling this month, month over month,
just so we can see what the actual community, if it's
growing or if it's getting smaller when it comes to selling?
But I agree with you.
There is a lot of people, but that doesn't mean
there's not a lot of opportunity.
Just because, I mean, I would argue, how many people
have a reselling business and aren't making money
and have no idea what they're doing?
That percentage is probably the highest in any profession.
Never going to take reselling as a profession here.
When it comes to not knowing what
you're doing in your business, I would probably
bet a lot of money that reselling
has the highest percentage of people that really don't
understand their business and don't really
do the things they should do.
But you can get away with it because there's nobody,
nobody holds you accountable.
I'm not like, you do something wrong.
I'm not coming over there and yelling at you
or firing you about it.
You just keep doing it.
And a lot of people just do it wrong
and they continuously do it wrong.
Right, and another mistake people make
is they don't pump the money back into the business.
Because it takes time, no matter which way you go,
to build it to an ability where, OK, I
bought everything I can buy.
All my systems are in place.
All my equipment is as good as it's going to get.
I bought all the redundancies in that equipment
in case it ever breaks down.
I won't be down for a week while I'm waiting for it to get here.
They go out and, oh, I made 1,000 bucks.
I'm going to spend all 1,000 bucks on me.
Maybe it's clothes.
Maybe it's an upgrade to your car.
Maybe it's just going spree shopping
and they don't pump it back in.
And then they've made no money, essentially,
when they're trying to grow a business.
I mean, even another point is the software guys.
How do you compete with software guys?
Because I don't do software personally.
But again, I do things differently
than the software guys.
Normally, they don't do photos.
They got stock photos.
There's some out there where you can.
But even those people don't use that feature
because they're just like scan, boom, scan, boom, move on,
move on, move on, which is that game.
It's very much a volume centering game.
I do a lot of listings.
So I do have some volume.
But I can't compete with the machine.
I'm just not fast enough.
Even if I was all copied up, I was feeling extra froggy.
I just can't do it.
But I do things differently to account for that.
And I think those differences do matter in the long run.
You're basically Rocky training to fight Ivan Drago, who's
all steroided out of his mind, right?
And you're out in the wilderness pulling cars in the snow
while he's just getting a needle shot into his arm
for his steroids, right?
And that's kind of what they both work, right?
It's different, completely different things.
And I think that's where a lot of people get caught up with it.
If you just want to go copy a software, somebody
that's using software, it's going
to be a lot harder than just finding your own niche,
your own specialty, what you do with your eBay store.
And I think that if you just go the software route,
it's going to be a lot harder because a lot of the software
people are huge sellers.
And you're literally just, everything is the same.
Every single listing they do is the exact same.
They're all pulling the exact same information.
The listings are exactly the same.
So you've got to kind of differentiate yourself
when it comes to reselling anymore.
I think it's everywhere you look, at least for me, right?
TikTok videos, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter,
all the reselling community posts about is like,
I'm making all this money.
And look how easy it is to go into Ross or Marshalls
or go into a thrift store and buy an item for $5
and sell it for $200.
So I think it kind of works both ways.
If people get in the mindset that you just
got to walk in a store and make money and it's that easy.
So I think a lot of people are willing to try reselling,
even if in their mind they think it's oversaturated,
because you only see the huge wins when you're on social
media or any kind of media platform at all.
You don't see kind of the actual business side of it,
the actual times you go to a store and don't find anything.
So I think a lot of people think it's oversaturated
because they see all the content out there,
but they're willing to give it a shot
because it seems like it's easy money.
Right.
A YouTuber I really enjoyed and I still enjoy him,
it was Harry Tornado.
He was a fun guy to watch, but he would go in, buy stuff,
and he would post his numbers and he would be honest
with his numbers, what he was making.
But to use that to transition to start doing it,
it's not as easy as he made it out to be.
And that was no fault of his own.
And I very much think it was region-based
because he just had access to different things than I did.
And again, I'm not slashing the man or anything,
but they gave me a false illusion of how easy it is
just to relate to this conversation.
And again, he didn't do anything underhanded at all.
It was just, I didn't have all the facts
and I thought I did.
So that's on me.
That isn't on him at all.
Yeah, because I mean, listen,
you don't wanna watch me organize
my storage unit on YouTube.
You don't wanna watch me pack a box on YouTube.
So I mean, the argument that, oh, reselling YouTubers,
oh, they're a YouTuber before a reseller.
Well, listen, they have it clearly have a business.
All, I mean, mostly all of the YouTube resellers
have a business and they just show you little parts of it,
maybe the highlights of it.
And that's just because that's what brings the views in.
It's kind of people do kind of the click baity titles
and things like that.
It's the same way.
And people don't wanna watch me sweep the storage unit.
They don't wanna watch me do these stupid things I do
that pertains to the business.
They don't wanna watch me sit here with a heat gun
and peel off, you know, Hunter Goodwill stickers
like I did the other day.
Like that's not entertaining.
So it's like, sure, I'm sure you would have
some kind of audience because people relate
to actually seeing everything that goes on.
But the majority of, you know,
if you're gonna be in a media space
where you're trying to grow a brand
or social media following,
people don't wanna see that.
They wanna see, you know, oh yeah, you know,
I bought this for a dollar and I sold for a hundred dollars.
Like that's the kind of stuff
that's gonna bring you the clicks basically.
I remember a video of yours very early on
where you did the heat gun
and you're peeling stickers on the table
and you did the speed up thing because it took forever.
It was very enjoyable, Mike, I will say.
I was like, huh, it takes that long, huh?
Cause he had to speed up the video.
Cause I'm like, it's gonna take four times
as long as what I'm seeing here.
Yeah, that was the only video I ever heat gunned in.
And it takes time and it's not, you know,
it's not all fun and just going to the store
and buying something and selling it right away.
Like there's actually work that goes into it.
But like just thinking about how many people resell today,
like what do you think the percentages of full-time people
where their primary income source is reselling
versus people that do this part-time?
That's interesting.
And we're including people, yeah, okay.
So we would include people that have been at it for a minute,
not people just started that are starting full-time.
We don't know if they're gonna last or not.
Yeah, no, where somebody that's making full-time income
where their only income was their reselling business,
they could cover their bills and live.
I'd say it's less than 20%.
I was thinking even lower than that.
So yeah, I think that's lower than that, be honest.
I think that's a good kind of starting point
because a lot of the things you see, it's like,
hey, I flipped this for 200 bucks.
Well, you know, 200 bucks gonna pay your monthly bills.
You would be sorely mistaken.
I mean, unless you have no expenses
and you got all your utility, you got a solar panel.
Johnny B can't figure out his camera here
for those watching on YouTube.
I win.
Yeah, so I think it is a lot less than it actually,
it's made out to seem, right?
Because even a lot of the YouTubers,
they don't make a full-time income doing this.
They might show you some huge scores they have,
but this isn't like a full-time income source.
And a lot of it is, and I can jump in here
and I'll even say a lot of people that do like,
that post their sales on Amazon, they mean nothing.
The sales mean nothing.
What are you really making at the end of the day?
You could sell a million dollars
and I could argue that you probably spend a million too
just to sell a million, right?
It's a fine line.
And I think it gets misconstrued that every reseller you see,
every piece of content you see,
that person is doing this full-time
and this is how you make easy money.
Now there's some other people in my daily refinement group
where they make a full-time living with their eBay business
and they also make a full-time living
with their full-time job.
They figure out a way to do both,
how to basically double their income.
They don't need their quote unquote full-time job.
Maybe they wanna keep it for benefits reasons
or tax reasons,
but they could walk away from their day job
any time they want, but they don't.
And I haven't figured out why they don't,
but I think it may have to do like security
and what they know and they're able to do
their eBay reselling life and their work life
and their home life just fine.
And I think that's their routine and what they're used to.
Even for me changing my routine, I don't like doing it,
but sometimes I need to do it.
And for them, it may be a similar kind of thing.
They don't wanna change the routine,
what they got to work and why rock the boat kind of deal.
But that's interesting for those types of people
who have made it and have made it
and have made it in both home reselling and work.
So.
Do you think if there was like some disclaimer
you had to say, right?
Whether you were making full-time or part-time income,
do you think that there would be as much like attraction
to something if it was like,
something if it was somebody that had to say,
hey, I do this part-time,
I only make part-time money doing this.
Do you think like the whole appeal of reselling
would be a lot less?
Because to me, I think it would,
because if people would have to say
whether they're making a part-time or full-time income,
I think a lot of it would be part-time income content
you see out there, at least in my opinion.
So I think it would be a lot less appeal to kind of,
even go to a store and try buying something to flip
or scanning stuff to flip.
Right.
I mean, I meet a lot of people that say they're full-time,
they work full-time hours,
but they don't do full-time effort.
They're trapped in, again, a routine, a bad habit routine,
and it takes them all day to do like 10 listings.
They're barely scraping by,
and either they're not reallocating their money
and they're not making enough money,
and they always ponder why.
They don't fix their own situation.
And they work really hard,
but they're just doing things incorrectly.
And though they are quote unquote full-time,
there is difference between effort full-time,
like putting actual effort into it,
and just going through the motions full-time,
and making no changes and spinning your wheels.
I searched part-time reseller on YouTube
and like went to channels to see if there's like,
how many people actually are like,
have part-time like in their channel name.
And there's honestly not many, like a handful.
At least that's showing up for me.
I know part-time pickers,
I've been subscribed to him for a while,
and you know, his channel is part-time pickers,
but like, I feel like people are almost hesitant
to kind of be willing to say that.
It's like, we have plenty of people in the YouTube group,
in the Discord that do this part-time,
that I would guarantee make a lot more money
than people that actually say they do it full-time make.
And that's crazy to me because, you know,
they don't try to be like,
oh, I do this full-time and blah, blah, blah,
they're like, no, I do this part-time,
but the revenue they're making is more than probably
what a lot of full-timers make.
So it's kind of weird to me when you think about like,
the part-time full-time aspect ratio,
when it comes to like the content you see out there,
and how easy is it to just go out
and start a reselling business?
Because all you got to do is open an eBay, Amazon account
and go to, you know, Ollies, Ross, Marshalls,
and scan stuff and sell it.
I mean, it's kind of, I think,
you think that's another problem
why we say it's oversaturated,
is because the barrier to entry is basically zero?
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, it's hard to go over what's all involved
when you're learning on YouTube or through articles and stuff.
You don't really know it till you go out and do it,
what all, and I mean all is involved,
and how long it really takes.
I mean, even the account setup,
no one really talks about how to set up your account
either on eBay or Amazon,
but that is a long lengthy process.
It's not a day, several days,
because there's always delays of some kind.
And it does look, everybody makes it look easy,
but the reason it looks easy is because the people
filming the stuff have been doing it a minute.
They know what to do.
It's like learning to play baseball.
You can't just watch a whole lot of videos on baseball
and then go out and play baseball
and expect to be an expert at baseball.
That's not how that works.
It takes training and time.
You think a lot of people that jump into reselling,
like kind of get smacked over the head almost,
because they're like, wait a minute,
this isn't just going to a store
and scanning something and selling it.
Like it's kind of almost a reality check,
because like you said,
they don't show none of that stuff.
Or if it's me showing you how to list a book,
yeah, I can get it done in 15 seconds on Amazon.
Maybe it's going to take you two minutes.
And that's a big difference when you think about it.
Yeah, no, no doubt.
And even packing, I remember packing my first box.
It took me like four hours.
It didn't take me nearly that long
after I packed 10 or 15 boxes,
but I was not prepared for that four hour jaunt of,
uh-huh, this is how it works.
This is back when I was doing the 30 up labels
and it was play, find the book, find the book,
match the giant match game is what that was.
Yeah, it's like, yes, there's more resellers than ever,
but I feel like I would also say
that there's more opportunity than ever in reselling
than there ever has been.
I mean, even if you're brand new,
even if you decide to go out tomorrow
and start a reselling business,
I feel like there's more opportunity today
than there was a year ago, just in the overall spectrum,
no matter what you wanna sell, right?
No matter what you wanna sell
when it comes to any kind of category,
clothing, sneakers, Lionel trains, kids' toys, anything,
I feel like the opportunity is, it's endless now.
I feel like it's never been higher to kind of start
because there's stuff everywhere.
And if you build the business correctly
and leverage your cash and pumping money back
into your business and building relationships,
you can almost have it to where it just operates
like a well-oiled machine, right?
The stuff comes to you, you list it,
maybe you hire somebody like yourself
and you just have this smooth running process
and you just continually grow it and grow it and grow it.
And yeah, it takes time, but the opportunity today,
even just on social media,
even just being able to reach out to somebody, right?
Having the chance to say, oh, I'm gonna send Reezy,
I'm gonna send Reezy Resells a DM
who respond to you, right?
That never existed before, 10 years ago, 15 years ago,
when these platforms where you still had to mail a check,
you bought something on eBay
and you had to mail the person a check or money order.
I remember doing that when I was a teenager,
like I'm buying this off eBay
and you gotta mail them a money order.
And it's like the opportunities today
are endless across the board.
Right, I mean, even if your market is full or,
let's do one better
because I talked about full markets already.
Let's say there's a small market,
no one's really selling this thing.
That's where I would ask a lot of questions,
like why is nobody selling this thing?
Are the margins super slim?
Small margins are okay if you can do it in scale,
or are these really expensive items
and there's just not a lot of them out there,
like collectibles.
How do I find a bunch of $200 plus collectibles?
Okay, and if you can answer these questions,
hey man, the market's all yours,
even if it's a small market.
Yeah, and I think another thing people have to realize is
the percentage of resellers you see on social media
and YouTube and everything,
that is a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage
of the overall number of resellers.
How many people out there aren't on a podcast,
aren't listening to a podcast,
literally they just do their business behind closed doors.
Nobody even knows they do it
and they make a whole bunch of money doing it.
So I think a lot of us get caught up in,
oh, you know, this is how it's going
because this is how I see it on YouTube,
but in actuality, that's not the case at all.
There's so many people out there
making millions and millions and millions of dollars
reselling that don't even have a social media,
don't even, not even on YouTube at all.
And I think a lot of us kind of just think that,
oh, reselling is just what we see.
Well, in actuality, there's a lot more sellers
that aren't visible than that are visible.
Right, there are tons of rich people that do reselling
that are not in the public eye, have no interest
to be in the public eye
because they're busy running a business.
Now, a YouTuber who shares their business online,
either as the YouTube's their main business
or as their side business,
they're still a business owner themselves.
Their business model just may be different
because YouTube's very much a part
of their whole business model,
not just part of their business model,
or it may just be for fun for them.
Because I'll be honest, doing this full time, it gets lonely.
It is very lonely.
Either you're on the road all the time
or you're stuck in the warehouse all the time
or you're in a store.
You can be in a crowded room and be lonely, honestly,
because you have no one to talk to,
no one knows what you do, you have no way to relate to.
And those kinds of people can make a lot of money as well.
You don't have to be the loudest person
to be the richest person.
Yeah, it's almost, you know, it's like,
what do they say?
Like, yeah, gotta watch out for the quiet guy
or something like that, the quiet person, you know,
those are the people that kind of just,
and we even see it in our group, right?
A lot of people that just lay low,
like they're just crushing it on the backend of like,
they'll message me like, hey, how's it going?
Like, how's it going?
You're like, I'm making a whole bunch of money.
I'm like, yep, that's how you do it.
You just kind of stay in your lane, focus up,
and just keep going and you'll get results.
And I would say, you know, when it comes to saturation,
media man, oh my God.
I don't know, like, if we can get a report
of the most listings per category,
like how many listings across the reselling platforms
is books versus, I mean,
what would even compete with books?
You should use clothes.
Probably clothing,
because clothing is also an abundance.
I would separate shoes from clothes though.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Us clothes compared to all of media is about the same.
Yeah, so like we're playing in the most saturated game,
you know, I mean, we might be dumb
for doing the categories we do,
but it is, I mean, you go look up a book on eBay
and you'll see how saturated it is
and you'll see how four dollar life it is,
because that's what you're dealing with
and you have to find a way to do something different.
If you're gonna be in one of these saturated categories,
you have to, you know, if it's clothing, you know,
maybe it's certain brands, trends,
trends in fashion, right?
Certain things do well.
So just pulling it up here,
I just typed in book on therapy
and over the last year,
so this is a guy has listed one book
and this is a guy that's listed one million books, right?
There are 692,334 book sellers.
That's just books.
So within one year,
692,000 plus people have listed a book on eBay in one year.
That's crazy.
I mean, that you talk about saturation right there.
Like we were playing a game that everybody else is playing,
but that doesn't mean there's not opportunity
because I'll say it again,
a lot of people don't know what they're doing
when it comes to having a reselling business,
using the tools that are at our hands to use,
doing things the correct way,
doing them the better way,
putting in a little bit more effort
to kind of differentiate yourself.
So even if you know,
even if you wanna get into something like books
or used clothes,
there's certain things you can do
and you just gotta think a little bit outside the box
when it comes to that.
But overall, I mean,
I wouldn't be scared if I had to start a completely new,
even in a new category,
if I had to go sell used clothes,
like you said, Mike, tomorrow,
your media is gone,
you gotta have a used clothing store.
I wouldn't be worried about it
because yeah, it's saturated,
but I would argue also with used clothes and books,
there's more of it than ever out there to source.
Right, and then it's like, okay,
who am I competing with
and what are my margins gonna look like?
Maybe I go high-end brand.
A lot of people do high-end brand
because they can't get enough of it, right?
And or maybe there's a really popular brand
of clothes only overseas.
Maybe you go, okay,
I'm gonna find the rare overseas clothing kind of thing.
And even outside of clothes,
even if you pick something fun like toys,
because toys are fun,
maybe you don't do,
maybe you're the parts only toy seller
and people come to you for just the parts
and not the actual completed, assembled,
or sealed in box only toys kind of deal.
There's all kinds of things, all kinds.
All right, I'm gonna roll out here
with the last words on saturation.
Yes, there are more than ever resellers
that have ever been on Amazon.
There are more than ever resellers
that have ever been on any single platform.
But yes, there also is more opportunity
than there ever has been.
You just have to figure out
what excites you in this business, right?
If you're not happy with what you're doing,
you're not gonna make it anyway,
whether there's a million people or you're the only one.
If you're not happy with what you're doing
or what you're selling, if it doesn't excite you,
it's just not gonna work, right?
And that would kind of be my challenge is,
if I had to sell you clothes,
like I'm not a big clothing person, right?
I'm not a big wardrobe and that's it.
I'm not into fashions or anything like that.
So yes, it is all putting
when you see everybody out there doing it.
There is a lot more work than what you see out there
on YouTube, TikTok, all of these platforms.
There's a lot more work that goes into it
than just walking in the store,
scanning something with your phone, buying it, selling it,
doubling your money, rinse and repeating.
It is not that easy, unfortunately.
But there is, it really doesn't take a lot of work
when it comes to building a business,
kind of following the footsteps.
There's more resources than ever.
So even if you're in an oversaturated market,
you can think outside the box,
reach out to one of these big resellers you see out there
posting videos and you'll get a response,
which didn't exist, right?
There's more guidance out there than there ever has been.
So we appreciate you guys listening to this episode
and we'll catch you all next week.
Thanks for listening to another episode
of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Today's full episode and all previous episodes
are available to all YouTube members,
along with a weekly Zoom call and private Discord.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash to use book guy
and consider joining for as little as 2.99 a month.