Welcome back to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast
My name is Mike also known as a 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 a 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 into episode 30 10 10 and jb. Give me 10
Jumping jacks, whatever push-ups other retailers mindset podcast today's episode is going to be another one where we answer your questions
Right. So about once a month, maybe a little bit longer
Maybe every six episodes we post a link on the youtube channel and we address every single question we get
From that poll. So johnny b. He has no idea what any of the questions are. I posted this
Uh poll about 10 days ago. So I actually have no idea what they are either
We were going to do it last week, but we had max on so it got pushed back a week. But here we are today
Lots and lots of questions. Remember johnny b is the ebay guy. I'm the amazon guy two different worlds two different perspectives
Look at his background. Look at mine, right? This is not really my warehouse, but uh, you know, it's one day it will be
One day it will be one day. No, I don't I don't want I don't want the the warehouse life
So we're gonna hop right on into this because we have quite a few
So first up we actually have this from a previous guest on the podcast
Caleb antique book collective says what do y'all think about water damaged books?
I still sell them they might not be worth as much but with older books
They can still be valuable for my niche don't know about newer books. You want to i'll let you go first
Uh, yeah, I sell water damaged books as well
Uh, I account for that they go to my bottom price bucket essentially instantly
um, but he
unless it's like
Really really rare and then maybe i'll go like half of what the high market is. So if they got it for 75
I'll go i'll go half of that. So like 34 dollars 34.99 or something like that because it's the lowest price of that item
and
Because it's so severely damaged i'll even take an offer way lower than that because it is
Severely damaged like it can be lightly water damaged or it can be heavily water damaged
But still I usually go about half of the value or the bottom of my pricing bucket when I encounter these
Uh lately though, uh as i've been growing because as you're starting you just want to list what you bought because you bought it, right?
um, but sometimes I just jump that stuff unless I
I can tell there's probably some money here. Let me price comp it real fast. Otherwise, i've been junking them lately
but in antique world, he's probably right because
Those things are always there's always something wrong with it and just the fact that it's water damaged
Okay, that's just another thing that's wrong with it. So in antique antiquarian stuff. I can definitely see
Still selling that but when paperbacks it's got to be rare or scarce. Otherwise, it's going in the well
I'm sorry book lovers the trash bucket
I'll give a eva example from my own experiences. I uh, I got a east impressed and it was like water damage
But like you're saying if it's if it's there's a demand for it
And if you know if you already have it, I think I paid a quarter for it
Um, you're still going to make money on it, but there is a fine line
And when it comes to amazon in my mind when I first started if it was like a pretty beat up book
Uh, but it was worth decent money and maybe you know water damage. I'll admit I sent it in as good
With my condition note, right? Um, maybe acceptable, but I can sit here and say I don't have any negative feedback on my amazon account
So I I don't do it today like you're saying right as you grow when you learn you kind of just avoid it, right?
Because you you know, there's media everywhere. So even if it's you know, it's a 50 book and it's you know
Maybe the dog peed on it. Uh, you're just going to leave it behind
It's just you know, somewhere else is going to be another 50 book and you're not going to have to worry about the headaches of it getting returned
And you just learn to kind of avoid the headaches. I think that's the thing as you start to scale
You want to decrease your headaches and just you know increase your revenue and
Buying beat up stuff like that. There are times and places where it makes sense to do it
But as you continue to grow you'll know hey, it's whatever you leave it behind
It's kind of like you know when you're buying disc and the disc is all scratched up and you don't have a cleaner
You just leave it behind and move on to the next one. So
There's a judgment call when it comes says I don't think it's a fully no
I don't think it's a fully yes when it comes to water damage books
It's a judgment call with you learn with experience whether or not you're going to waste your time listing it
Yeah, and with experience, I would never ever hide the condition fact
And I wouldn't sell it as just an acceptable book and just leave the water damage portion out. I just flat out let them know
Because as long as you do that, even if they get it and didn't read
The description like they should have you're covered by ebay standards
Same for amazon if you got it in there
I'm not sure how much amazon's got your back opposed to ebay when you've notated everything but ebay's got my back when I do that
I mean amazon fba, they'll they'll strike out, you know any
Any comment no matter what it is if it's fba
If it's merchant fulfilled, I 100 would not sell anything water damage because those reviews are you know next to impossible to get rid of
But the fba ones they don't care they could say anything and i'd be like nope
This is this is against the pilot and it's kind of frustrating because
A lot of sellers out there take advantage of that system
Maybe you know that maybe that review is actually correct
You know, maybe the book is totally water damage, but you can still get it struck out if it's fba
But don't do that stop. We're going down the rabbit hole here ripping people. Odyssey is the best policy. That's all i'm gonna say
All right moving on here. We have uh, two questions from the same person here. We have shila
She is a member of the channel recently. So she has two these are ebay questions, which is great
Which means I can kind of just kick back and relax here. So the first one is
How long after listing an item do you wait to lower the price if it's not selling?
It's not okay. Now, this is a great question. Um
I'll tell you what I do money. I'll tell you what I do. Um
So I use pricing buckets and about a hundred dollars a month
I use pricing buckets and about every
My store is built up and now so this take this to the grain of salt in your smaller store
You use different math numbers, but here are my math numbers. So every month I reprice
1500 items plus the last time i've gotten to that I list more than that. I list about 2000 books a month
So it's less than what i've listed
So 30 days go by from when it's listed. So let's say i've done 3000. Okay, i'm going to now do
another 1500 4500 onto that so
1000 items through 4500 items. I'm going to price down to the next pricing bucket till it reaches my bottom
Now let's use a smaller store. Let's say you got 100 items. You're new at ebay. Yay
So you've done 100 items been 30 days. I might do a third of that. I reprice it a third down
Um 45 days you could wait as well. Give it 45 days or 90 days
Because books to me, I think are a lot longer tail items than let's say clothing
Um, because everybody's got a reading list
I'm not sure a lot of people have a to be born list for clothing
Example say so you may want to wait a longer period of time
I think anywhere between 30 and 90 days before you start repricing in books is a good
Range um if it's a rare older book, you're that kind of seller. You might even go longer
You may want to go 120 days
But for just run of the mill, it's less than 100 years old. I would use somewhere between 30 and 90
Now what your numbers are that's up to you. I don't know your store that could we could be here all day talking about that
But my my addition to this question is uh, we're you know somebody like myself
So can I go into my inventory and sort of buy how old it is?
Um
Kind of yes. Yes, you can. Um, there's a couple ways to do that. I usually do it with my
Promotionals my marketing promotion tool the markdown thing is how I do it because you can set how old it's been on there
And there's a way to do it on
The surface value itself, I don't know if you can see it
Uh the surface value itself, but how I have it by skew numbers
So I don't even need to mess with that anymore. But if you're doing the date based model, you can sort by date
Um, even if you even if you just put like the month of may in there, right?
You can you can pull up all the mays and okay. It hasn't been
There it's not june yet. So i'm not going to reprice these items
But when june comes along you can go back into your skew column of may and reprice all of may
I don't uh, I don't have like an official way of doing it. I just
One one day i'll be in the storage unit and i'll be like this book has been sitting here forever
And I just go through and reprice all my stuff and just drop everything, you know dollar two dollars three dollars
Do you think it's beneficial to run a sale on those items or just permanently decrease the price?
both
Um, I would decrease the price
And use your markdown sale for your 500 oldest items
Now if you don't have more than 500 oldest items, maybe you just run a markdown sale
You don't have to reduce the price. You can just use the percentage or flat dollar amount off
But once you get over 500 items active, I would I would use both just reprice and if it
In your markdown sale doesn't catch it
Well when you sell off something that 500 block and that sale ends your new stuff can go into that
Now you can run multiple markdown sales, too
but
Unlike amazon, you doesn't have to be erased to the bottom
I it
In my experience everything will sell it's just when it will sell
The reason I lower my price is for my str or your sell through rate because I want to turn over my inventory as quickly as I can
So the more proactive I am with that the more it helps the str in my opinion
All right
Her next question is going to be a fun one for us to address
here. Oh fun. I've seen sellers list a generic single phrase description and others with more extensive details
Listing is already my least favorite part me too
And i'm wondering if i'm spending too much effort on a description or if it's worth it
How descriptive do you get with each listing? I'm talking about the item description text box
Not the drop down item specifics in what way if any does it affect the algorithm?
Or search now, this is a fully loaded, you know, this is like secret sauce kind of ebay stuff here and
JB is going to give you the correct answer and then i'll give you my wrong answer of how I do it
sure
I do the longer detail description
There are faster ways to do the longer detail description. You can go to goodreads. You can
To search out the book. Um, I also think that's great for coming up with the topics and genres
Especially if you're not familiar with the book. So goodreads is a great tool for that
Um, I don't think you could spend too much time doing it unless it's like taking you 10 or 15 minutes of listing
Um, then you're probably a slow typer and that's okay. You don't have to be a fast typer
So you can use copy and paste from goodreads that's a good tool
You can use amazon sometimes amazon has book descriptions when goodreads does not which funnily enough amazon does own goodreads
Um, there's other book sites. You can go to get book descriptions
Now the reason i'm saying do the longer descriptions is you got to set yourself apart from the other book sellers that are selling your same book
And that's how I do mine. That's my separator. That's why my listings are slightly better than any other person's on the site
For the majority along with proper title structure and the item specifics now don't get me wrong. No one likes listings
I don't even like listings. I do 50 plus of them a day close to 60. It sucks. It always will suck
But if you embrace the suck, it sucks less
And just get through it now if you have the habit of like listing three walking away coming back listing three more don't do that
You don't have to do that. You don't have to do that
You don't have to do that again. You got to embrace the suck bite your tongue and just do it all the way through
Now if it's five o'clock and you need to have dinner made by six
I think breaking it up throughout the day makes it take 14 times as long so it's start to finish just get it done
Just get it done. It's like taking out your garbage. So your garbage man takes your garbage away. It's the same thing
It sucks, but you got to do it
I agree. I don't I mean if I had to just actually list an item from nothing every single day for ebay for me for my one listing
That'd be if I'd be done. I won't even bother right? I get all my drafts done in one day. I'm like, all right, Deb
I'm going to the storage unit. My life sucks. I'm going to be doing ebay listing. She's like, yeah you poor soul
Whatever, but I will say that I am the opposite of you know, johnny and it really depends what your business is, right?
You know, he's mainly focused on the
BAM on amazon. So ebay is just kind of secondary. I don't need the income or anything like that
So I kind of I kind of just you know, half bottom, right? I I put in my description, you know
And I always I list through my phone. So I hit sell similar one thing I do do is I double check all of the
Item specifics because a lot of ebay sellers don't do that and you could it could be a book
It could be any book, you know by somebody and the author they somebody could put in a book
And it's not a steven king book. So I do check the specifics, but my description just says
What like what kind of condition the books in if there's any like defects any markings and then see photo for detail?
So my my descriptions are a paragraph long
Nothing extensive, but I just think it's what you want to get out of your business
If you if you're mainly an ebay seller then johnny's approach is the right way
If you're mainly an amazon seller then johnny's approach is the right way
If you're mainly an amazon seller and you you want to have ebay, but you don't want it to be a huge, you know time sink
Then do it the way I do it
But just expect to get less results in comparison to somebody like johnny
And if you're fine with that, like I am then there's nothing wrong with doing it that way
Right, like I said it all sells is just how fast you want to sell the more effort you put in the faster it will sell
the
Least amount of effort you put in the slower it will sell that's just what you're really going with here
The more fire emojis you put in the title the quicker it'll sell every fire emoji decreases bad advice
That's the worst advice you can give it. Stop it mike stop it
But I'll sell things with fire emojis, dude
I told you it all sells but you're at the bottom of the list my man
The bottom of the list with fire emojis. What if somebody uses fire emojis in their ebay search?
They got problems
But not a serious note ebay does not like special characters like emojis, um
Dashes and commas in parentheses now, you'll see this in abundance on ebay, but it's like I said
Ebay doesn't like it. So it kind of moves you down on the page ranking
But it's still there. Oh man. We got a good one coming up here from miss lachey
She is also a youtuber check her check out her channel. She's out there flipping books
She's like big into book sets on ebay and like that is like the bane of my existence and like
Anytime I see her selling a book set i'm like, oh my god
And she's just yeah, they sell for like she'll post like yeah, I sold I sold this book set
I'm like I would never in a million years even touch that thing. Oh, she's doing sets. She's not doing lots
Uh, I think she does both so like i've seen her sell like that. Uh,
Uh that tom lahey set like the the religious book set where it was like four. She she's just sell sets
I don't know what it is. It works for her and she gets lots move quicker
But in my opinion the listings take away longer now if you're not doing that many listings that may be okay
And that would be pretty cool. Just to have an all book set kind of ebay store. All you do is book sets
Yeah, it's down to book sets. That's cool. I mean if you walk into a store and the full sets there
I mean then yeah buy it right that's happened to me a few times
But yeah, she's she's heavy into selling sets. I see them all the time
But she says if you could implement one thing from the other's business model, what would it be?
This is a loaded question. I'm gonna go first. You're first. I know I know what mine is
I would I would I actually wouldn't mind having an ebay store like johnny's
Um, so I would implement basically his whole business model on the ebay front, right?
Find find an employer too. That is actually good and train them the correct correct way from the beginning
And it kind of gives you the ability right his long-term goal is kind of stepping back from his business
Sure, he's still going to be you know the overseer of everything
But he wants to grow it to a point where hey
Maybe he has a warehouse manager that manages his listers and then he can kind of step back and maybe focus on something else
So I do think that is kind of the biggest thing for me that I would steal from him is basically being
Johnny B 2.0 and the benefit of like kind of social media and youtube is like
You have the connections right you can reach out to anybody and say if you like what they're doing, right?
I can say hey johnny b walk me through every single thing you do and i'll be like all right
Here's exactly how I do it from day one with a new employee to where we're at today
My 10-year plan my five-year plan and that's kind of like uh, what I like is the idea of stepping back, right?
The used book guy's always got to go out and get the books and uh list them and source them
So I think the employee route that he has going on in his you know, 10-year 15-year plan
Is my my jealousy of his lifestyle
Oh aw shucks mike
Uh for me what I would steal from mike here, um
I think he sources sources a bit smarter than me. I source a bit faster just to get it here and process it
But if I could actually take my time with it
I think I would have less work on my hands to do in all
Technical stuff
But I decided I just want to buy it process it list it and be done
With it kind of like a factory. I don't really care what's really inside them. I care a little bit
but I should care more than I do and I think I
I think i'm gonna be doing that a bit more in the short term future here because it's something i've been giving a lot of thought
Like i'm just bringing in junk like readers digest and it goes in the junk pile. I want less of a junk pile. I want
more good better items coming to through me and my bulk pickups than i've been doing because
I think that would be to my benefit. I think mike does that very well. He'll go out
And don't get me wrong. He does do bulk buys too, but he's a little bit smarter about it than I think I am
to be fair
Um and a little bit more detail oriented on that side of the business
And I wish I was more like that and I think i'm gonna start trying
I may not be at the start, but I think I can grow into it
I see like I thought about this like, you know, we're trying to move right and we buy a house in the middle of nowhere like
I am gonna have to adapt more of your business because everything I bring in
I don't have the same outlets right? Maybe i'm moving an hour and a half away from where i'm at. So
Maybe all my duds no longer go to second and charles
Maybe that stuff I take the time out the list on ebay because I have i'll have this space right i'm not in
A little apartment here. I can have shelving set up
So all my duds and in essence become things I can list on ebay and make a few dollars on
And I think that would make sense. So I think that's a good thing
I think that would make sense
So that's where that's where my mindset is like moving forward like when we move and we're out in the middle of nowhere
And I don't have anywhere to get rid of my duds
My duds will just get listed on ebay and when they sell I make three bucks per dud
Which is fine by me and I throw it on the shelf in a room. It's that easy
Right, and that works it does because I do it now
um, but i'm going to try to start
I think i'm going to start trying to find
More higher end thing i'm going to try to take the amazon approach to it and start trying to list those but they're still going
To be in my vintage area
But I have to figure out a way to do it in bulk and I don't know how to do that yet
And so I got to work on my sources themselves
So that's what i'm probably going to spend my summer doing is finding different sources that have higher
Gold tier
Silver tier kind of items versus then it's a mixed bag and there's a little bit of silver a little bit of gold
But there's a hell of a lot of bronze. I want less bronze. I want more silver and gold items
but I know how to sell the bronze items, I know because I do it every day and I don't mind if I get them but I want to
expand my sources, um have
More of them and better ones so I can control the volume and output
um
But that we're getting off topic. We got more questions to go through. That was a good question. You got me on a tangent
All right. All right. Next up. We got sigil we got a signal from the group here. He uh,
I'm glad he kind of dove in and it was like it was weird, right?
Because he he makes his own music and he found that you know, 14 000 cd
Storage unit by like it was almost like the stars aligned for him, right? They're like hey
You're gonna start selling on amazon. You're you're in the music. Well, here you go. Here's your golden ticket, right?
Uh, he asked in what circumstances is it best to separate your items into two different ebay stores?
In my scenario i'm selling cherry picked everything category items and want to also add on selling high volume media
Will it hinder the success selling them in the same ebay store? This is all you
I would only have multiple ebay stores
I'm going to answer this specifically procedural because I know what it builds in
I would have a disc only store and then I would have everything else that you sell on ebay store
And the reason I say that is you can never get top rated seller
If you have a disc only store because you can't do the tracking method with that the tracking number method
um, and you'll lose that 10
Which you get with top rating. So that's the only reason I would split
Your into two stores. Otherwise have everything in one store
um
And extrapolating that if there's something that's preventing you from getting more money on ebay
That would be another reason to have another store
Um, the one I specifically mentioned is for disc only and then everything else store
There's probably some others but I don't know too much on that
I know disc only because I know a few fellows that do disc only and that's what they have to do
They have everything that they primarily sell on one and they have their disc only and that's literally the only thing on there is disc only
So that would be my reason for only ever having to be based stores. Be honest
Yeah, and if you have any questions, uh reach out to mike mike e not mike the used book guy mike e in the group
He uh created another ebay store specifically for that. So it's pretty easy to do. You just gotta call have a conversation with ebay
Tell them exactly what you're doing and then you'll be good from there
And then you just kind of you know, keep keep the tooth strap it so you you don't you don't mind up losing top rated on all your other stuff
Right
All right moving right along here. We have dragon man zero one, two, three, four five
Dragon man when doing bulk buys. Do you send in fast movers to amazon fba?
You normally wouldn't for instance, you have an item with a low rank and a 180 plus e score
But you only make three dollars on it. Are you going to send it in or just take it to a store like second and charles?
All right. Well now this one I guess is probably for me, right?
I understand the appeal of the three dollar profit book. You already bought it, right?
Kind of like johnny b says you already have the item. So you're going to list it, right?
But with amazon, it's a different beast
The fees now the removal fees. They're higher than they have ever been
Along with storage fees and I understand. Hey, it's three dollars
But if you were to you know, say something happens, so it gets ordered customer damages it sends it back. It has to get removed
You're going to wind up spending two bucks to get it sent back to you
Depending on how heavy it is, right? If it's a heavy bug, you're going to spend more than two bucks
If it's a textbook, it'll probably cost you five dollars to have that book sent back to you
You can liquidate it short for a little bit less, but I I personally
I'm going to pass on that every single time, right?
So I do recommend having a bulk trigger set and like your your scan and trigger set like your source and trigger set
Now you can't have the profit lower on the bulk one in comparison
But you don't want to have it low to the point where you're sending in a three dollar book, right?
Because you also have to value your time
It takes time and you got to list the book. You got to sticker the book. You got to pack the book
You got to take the book to the store and we kind of get caught up with not valuing our time as resellers. So
Say for example, you had a box of you know 150 cds and they're all 250 three dollar profit. That's going to take you, you know
Probably two hours to get all that listed prepped clean
And even with the books it takes a little bit right? Maybe a book's got something on it
You got to clean it up with a I use the alcohol prep pads
For like my clean cleaning supplies
They work pretty good just a single use ones. So this past week. I had a few I had to clean up
You have to value your time
I know you already paid for it if you have an outlet like second and charles 100 use it
And I also would argue with a fast moving book like that
Sell back your book will probably give you two dollars for it and that's a guarantee two dollars are going to give you
You're not going to have any extra fees or hidden fees
So you you would be better off just sending it to a buyback company
Versus sending in the three dollar profit book in my experience because when you scan it, right?
It says three dollars when you scan it by the time it gets there three weeks four weeks five weeks later
The price probably has gone down because it's a very popular book that three dollars turns into one dollar customer buys it returns
It gets sent back. You now literally wasted your time and you're paying amazon, you know, a dollar fifty
Just to get that book back to you. So that's my take on it. I know it's enticing because hey
It's a fast seller and it's only you know, I already bought the item. I want to send it in
I would just say pivot to a buyback company instead johnny b. Any quick comment on this one?
I agree
That's my quick comment. That's all that matters. All right
Moving along this is there goes you got another good question here from josh josh graph. He also has a youtube channel
He sells all kinds of anything and everything if you just look at his what sold videos
He like lays everything out on the table and it's just dude sells anything. It's it's crazy to me
But he does have a lot of bulk sources
So he's got a source and down where he's only out two days a week loads up his trailer comes back
He says how important is cash flow and what are some things you do to help improve it? I'm gonna let you go
That's probably the most important thing
To be honest, you got to have money coming in all the time
If you don't have money coming in you're waiting for the longer dollar later
Now there's some items to do that with but if it's everything you list is longer dollar later. You can't survive
That's going out of business style
You got to have money coming in even if you're a truck and trailer guy, but the gas money
Your time you got to how much is your time worth? But if you're only selling one 100 item
A month that's not worth it. I'd rather sell 10 10 dollar items a day
Than one 100 item a month. That's kind of that thing. Um, cash flow just keeps the gears turning
It enables you to make expansions in your business like everybody has goals in their business
It's hard to obtain them on slower incoming money
And it it's really hard for sellers to grasp that because they feel like they're cheating themselves
Oh if I only hold out for forty dollars because it says it's worth forty dollars
You gotta let that go you can't be married to your
Items and or your prices too much within reason you can't sell it for negative dollars either
So you got to know your numbers in order to do that to accept an offer kind of deal
Also guys, we pay so so little for this stuff. You got to remember that too
So when a lower offer comes in don't be insulted. Don't get mad at it
Consider it know your numbers and if it's okay, this is in my septical bottom margin
I'm gonna take the money and run because I can then buy 10 more of these things
You gotta you gotta think like that versus this is worth forty dollars
I'm not letting it go for any less than forty dude. You paid 50 cents for it. Let it go
Let it go. There's a song about this and I hope it's burning in your brain right now
I'm gonna take over this one here. So cash flow like he said, it's the most important thing
With media because as you know, if you think about it, right, I would say you probably need at least
Two thousand items in the Amazon inventory for it to start making you see some serious kind of money
Right unless you have super good books
Maybe you're just sourcing textbooks, whatever but for the rest of us that are sending a run of the mill stuff two thousand items
Think about your buy cost with your average buy cost dollar fifty that puts you at three thousand dollars sitting in inventory at any single moment
That always has to be sitting there. So the importance of just turning that inventory over
The biggest headache that I used to deal with was why do you reprice at the lowest fba price?
Mike, why aren't you doing the buy box? Well, I want to sell my stuff
I'm not in the business of storing it at my warehouse behind me here and neither is amazon
Why do you think amazon has changed in the past year the way they have?
Because they don't want to store your stuff
And you shouldn't want to store yourself either you should want to sell everything as fast as you can
That's the importance of having that low buy cost because if I pay 15 cents for a book and I make two bucks
I mean the roi on that is still you know without over a thousand percent, right?
I mean, I know life or more books and do it again. It sounds like peanuts
But when you think about it, if you're doing media, it's all about quantity
Unless you unless you're buying, you know doing some ebay to amazon flips or you're buying something
You know doing some ebay to amazon flips or you buying textbooks off college kids. It's all about quantity
You just want to keep selling
Keep taking those three dollars five dollar bills and keep turning that into more books more inventory
And that's how that's how you get results in this but it is cash flow
Nobody really talks about it and I try to talk about every once in a while
It's intensive when you start a media business because it takes a while
For things to sell and it'll sit there and it sucks to give two dollars today and get ten dollars back in two months
But in reality sometimes that's just how it is, right?
It's just just the way it works with me is doesn't sell every day and you're not selling every single book multiple times every single day
Right as we mentioned earlier books are just a longer tail item
But you need a lot of it and that's okay because you got longer tail selling every day at some point
All right. Next up we have nate
Davis four four four four four four four for another member of the channel says
Mike, do you do any ebay to amazon media flips jb any amazon to ebay flips if you guys don't help come?
Um, i'll let you go first
It's something i've been thinking about and I actually looked at amazon the other day trying to see if there were some deals to be
Had there and there were um, I didn't pull the trigger on it because i'm trying to figure out there's got to be a better way
To do it. So i'm in exploratory mode on that but it's definitely doable
I found a couple things that you could do and I based that off what I sold in my ebay store
So I was just looking at things that previously sold and see what they're going for on amazon
I have uh another previous guest on the show joji
Um me and him are trying to work out where he's going to kind of show me how to do the flips right the ebay to amazon amazon amazon flips
And myself along with jb
It's one of those things right where it's better for me to just focus on what i'm doing that works right now instead of trying to develop a whole new basically
uh
Business trait business skill because it is a skill. You can't just flip on a switch and it happens, right?
Um, so I am working in the background and hopefully, you know joji has
Can show me he knows i'm not good with anything but you know, I said it again earlier
There's people out there that can do this efficiently and the fact that hey, we know joji
We have a relationship with joji
All we got to do is say yo joji hop on the call with us me and johnny want to go down this rabbit hole
And it's taking care of but it is on both of our minds
But we try to stay focused on what's working for us currently and getting us results and that's our business models that we have
So we are interested both of us are interested
But it's you know, how can we time fit this into our already biz?
yeah, that's the thing it's like getting the time to sit down and grind through it, but
We know people these days to help us. So we should well I should reach out more than I do. Yeah
All right. Next up we have
Uh stooge fan says what day and time will this podcast be on? I don't want to miss it every wednesday
Every wednesday 8 pm eastern. Uh, the podcast is uploaded to all podcast platforms and on youtube
That's great question stooge fan. Oh, that's the best question. I don't know if we've ever mentioned when we actually
All right. Next up we have
I think you're right. I don't think we ever have mentioned what day and it's every week too every wednesday 8 pm
I mean we're slackers. I mean listen, we're just here to help people. We're professionals. We've only done 30 of these
We're not trying to get famous. Sorry. I don't want to be noticed while i'm out
You know a burger king eating my food, right? I don't want to sign autographs and pictures
I just want to help people make some money. Exactly. That's why I don't have a facebook instagram or twitter
All right. Next up we have the cool r
Please explain how you price merchant fulfilled books
And and then they put again, is it always the lowest merchant fulfilled price?
Do you ever go with the featured price or is that just fba and then in uh,
Chromo parentheses fba is so much easier. Yeah fba is easier
Um for sure, we all agree that that's the easiest way
But the problem is can you find enough fba items selling media to make it worth your while?
So merchant fulfilled always goes off the lowest price the featured offer price is the buy box
That's the new wording they have for it
It kind of implemented that over the past year. I guess buy box doesn't sound exciting enough for them
Or maybe like I don't know featured offer. I guess just sounds more sophisticated
But with merchant fulfilled featured offered buy box is always usually going to be the fba item
So you always want to reply reprice off the lowest merchant fulfilled
And you have a different template in your repricer for merchant fulfilled items and it's always the lowest current price
And that does take your shipping into consideration
So merchant fulfilled is always the lowest price. So when people hit see other offers
You're the lowest one and that's the one they usually buy when they're searching for merchant fulfilled items
They've done a lot of branding this year isn't like new call it perfect or some silly
They mess with those condition notes every single month and it's always something else items in perfect condition
All right moving along here. Josh is back again with another question
He says do you see yourself scaling up your business or do you want to stay at your current volume profit you already have?
Um, i'll let you go first
I mean, I kind of hinted at this in an earlier question. I'm looking to
Go up on my asp average sell price for those that don't know acronyms
um
But I need to also have the same str your sell through rate
So I want both and i'm working on getting better sources and exploring some online avenues in order to accomplish that goal
because i'm the
Pardon me. I'm the buy it all guy, right? I'll list it all and i'll sell it all that's fine
Um, but that is a very long grind and I work really hard to do that grind and i'm trying to
Adjust a little bit more toward. Okay. I built up my store big enough now
I have enough volume where I can focus a little bit more on the quality of what i'm injecting in my store
Because of the volume i'm able to do my multi-quantity buys and keep my customers buying two four eight twelve. Yay
I know how to keep them happy, but I like to appeal to another kind of buy
Hey, I just made some money. I like to appeal to another kind of buyer that wouldn't mind paying 30 35
50 100 plus books that it's not to say I don't have some of those in my store
I just would like more of them into my store
Because having the best of both worlds, I think is the main goal for myself. Um
And I will let you go now I
It's one of those things right amazon's a different. I don't want a warehouse looking like the one behind me, right?
So when I have a house i'm perfectly fine with having one bedroom be my reselling space for media
Um, that'll kind of be my max
I don't ever plan on buying gaylords of media to kind of scale up that way
I always want to if I can I realize I always rather be picky than take everything because
I don't have the space. I don't have an employee like johnny b does so
If I could scale up, you know, that'd be great. But at some point i'm going to max out right?
There's only so much one person can do and yet again it comes down to uh, it's kind of like a loaded question, right?
Because I wouldn't have to scale up like I could stay where i'm at and live comfortably
But for somebody else, you know, maybe your expenses are different
Things like that, you know, maybe you have different, you know bills or something coming in. It's a it's a different question for me
I could scale up i'd be fine with it
But I don't want to live a miserable life if that means scaling up
I guess that's kind of my big trade-off is i'm fine with where i'm at if I scale up, you know
If for somehow I make you know 200 sell 200k on amazon in a year and it doesn't require me
You know being miserable for the year. I'm perfectly fine with that. But with where i'm at now
I'm happy i'm comfortable with where i'm at and I don't feel like i'm burning myself out
And I kind of value my burnout more than I do scaling up. I guess
Well, here's the numbers for you
And the reason i'm being a little transparent with them because I was transparent in daily refinement groups
So the information's already out there
so
Uh in my current model I would have to
List and sell 1200 items a day to get to my end goal dollar amount wise
Um, and that's that's that's my retirement dollar number that money in the bank
That's a lot of listings and that's over a 10 year period if I wanted to do in 10 years
Now if I wanted to do it longer
That number would decrease 1200 1200 is a lot of daily listings
um
So I got to adjust my model to
Lower that number I'd like that number lower and that's all doable and I don't even need software
I need people to do it. I could I could run a full shop like he's talking about which was my plan all along
But maybe I want less people. Maybe I sell a little bit smarter. I mean
Keep in mind folks. I've been doing this a little over a year. I'm still a newbie quote unquote, but I know a thing or two
And i'll admit when I need to adjust myself or make a mistake which I'm doing so now to all you lovely people listening
next question
Next question we have
Can you sell restricted books on ebay from the cool art again?
Yes, 100 a lot of people go that route if you're an amazon seller and you're restricted you can sell it on ebay
That's the route I would go but for me
I have an ebay store. I understand how it works. So
If you don't have an ebay store, I wouldn't recommend opening a store just to sell your restricted auto
I would do a buyback you can do a buyback company or you know, just commission with somebody, you know
Companies like restricted inventory. It's just going to take a little bit longer to get your money back versus you selling it yourself on ebay
Now keep in mind even on ebay to do something similar. They just use different terminology like vero's
Or you'll get a lovely letter
Email saying hey, we don't want you selling our stuff
um and they have a
Their version of restricted list on their baro thing where you can look at them. There's a lot even in the book category
They don't make it easy
But you can pick up if you've been in the book game a while. Oh this I I see this book company on here
I okay fine. Thanks. Ebay
So just keep that in mind when you're moving or you're restricted from amazon to ebay
Just make sure it's not also not allowed on ebay because it lets you list it
But then you'll get punished for it
If they catch all right, we're coming down to the uh, the final stretch here. We got three more questions left
Miss lachey
Ask who has higher fees ebay or amazon. Do you have an ebay calculator you can pull up?
Yeah, all right. We're gonna do this live here and uh
You want to share my screen or no, no, no, i'm just i have the amazon one pulled up. I have a book
Uh, let me know when you're ready for the information
I'm ready for the information and i'll have some questions. Okay, we're gonna sell the book for 9.99
Okay
Uh free shipping on your side
Okay item cost
Uh, you got it for free
Free all right here
And it is going to be one and a half pounds
Okay, so 420
Um, so
How much you get after fees on ebay for a 9.90 bulk free shipping that weighs a pound and a half
Well, here are my questions. Do I have an ebay store?
Yeah, well just your starter store. Yeah, okay, so am I top rated?
Yeah, sure
And am I running promoted ads or not?
promoted listing fee
Uh, pretty much you got to run promoted on ebay. So I would say yes, we'll just say 10
All right
I'm gonna make three dollars and 15 cents. Okay, the same book amazon fba
Um, it's a normal size book too, you know 10 by 7 by 2 inches. So it's a normal size book
You sell that 9.99 amazon fba
You would make 95 cents
So the answer is ebay wins and that's what the promoted listing of 10 percent. So
Um the amazon fba you make under a buck and like that's before buy cost or anything. So if you're paying a doubt
Yeah, yeah, yeah and chipping it in so
Ebay is the clear winner when it comes to fees
I think even if we scale that up, it still would be the same way
I think you would make more on ebay, but ebay takes more work
So the fees are definitely higher on amazon and they're only going to continue to go up
So that's kind of you know, the situation where a lot of us fba sellers are in trying to figure out what the next step
Is to stay ahead of fee increases on amazon sure if ebay raised or
Promoted to you got to be at least three percent who cares right?
You know johnny b and he talked me into it. You should be promoting all your stuff at 10 percent. Anyway, so
at least 10
All right amazon fees are higher. Miss lachey
If you come to this dark side, just be prepared that the dark side has a very expensive cover charge to get into the club
And miss lachey you ask a lot of good questions. You should join our weekly call
We should have her on I should just get like, you know
All my ebay youtubers that I follow and have them all on one call
I can ask mel from back to burn out. I see her every now and then so
All right. Next one last well two more
Why is it that nearly every book I scan is restricted is amazon gating books now?
I want to have amazon reselling business, but how can I when everything is either gated or restricted?
I will answer this one for you. Yes amazon if you're a brand new seller now
It puts basically everything behind the gate right?
They don't want johnny b who has no clue what he's doing to be able to come onto the platform and sell anything at any given price
That's not customer friendly to them and they only care about the customers right you as a seller
You're you're whatever to them. You don't matter. You just pay all their bills basically
So they they put you behind these gates initially
But over time especially if you're new as you start to send stuff in and as you start to request approval in these books
You're going to get automatically approved and i've actually been seeing this more a lot of people been kind of pushed off because they sign
Up and everything's gated. Well, that's just the reality of it's not the wild west that it used to be they kind of want to
instill some trust in their sellers and some kind of you know, you got to prove yourself basically to
Be able to sell these other things, but don't let it deter you
You know the the trouble is worth the payoff at the end of the road
So you just keep going sending what you can send in maybe get ungated in dvds and cds
So you don't have to worry about gates, although you still run into them
But don't let it deter you. Um, but amazon is making it harder and harder for new sellers
All right moving on here, oh man this one
Thomas he wrote us like a whole paragraph here. So you're gonna give me a long just for last, huh?
Yeah, thomas has been around he's got the 12 month member badge. What an og here. So capital question
And money is tight and i'm trying to get my inventory up thrift stores and bulk buys only really give me
Five dollar profit books, but payouts are not enough with those books
I've been transitioning more into oa books and offer up deals for higher margin books
Should I take the lower inventory for the higher dollar or chase lots of inventory for the lower profit sourcing online and offer up?
Has its pros is I can work mostly from home and I score higher margin books with a higher buy cost
Of course, but sourcing bulk buys and thrift stores has the volume aspect therefore more sales and cheaper books would love your opinion on this
Whether I should keep rolling my dollars into higher margin books or keep investing in low cost inventory that will make me less
Thanks again subscribe to the used book guy ps my inventory is at about 450 right now
I mean you want to start you want me to
Uh, I guess I go first since this is the last one and i'll wrap it up after you're done
Um, I think it's a lifestyle choice, honestly, right?
Everybody has different circumstances if I didn't have you know
The amount of sources I had or the relationships I had and 100% I would dabble in
You know the amazon amazon the ebay to amazon flips because if I could still have a profitable business
But like you said it just costs more money and it's tough kind of having both right because you're used to going in
And paying 50 cents for a book, right?
Well when you're doing online arbitrage all of a sudden that 50 cents might be 20 dollars you're paying for a book
So it's like a mindset switch. You got to be able to flip on and off if you're juggling both
But you have to you know, what works better for you?
Do you value your time more?
Do you you don't mind going out the thrift stores maybe going to thrift stores is like the part that really you enjoy, right?
Maybe it's not all about just the higher margins. Maybe it's being out being active going out. Maybe finding something for yourself
Uh, maybe finding something that isn't media to sell or maybe you collect some kind of stuff that you look for when you're out
In the thrift store. I think it really I don't think there's a wrong answer or a right answer with this
I think it's just a personal choice of what you want your business to look like
I do think you can mix both but I would just you know word of caution is you just got to balance both, right?
If you're going to have both
Don't expect to get the the highest results from either or because your time is split
You're not dedicating all your time to this one or that one
So you got to expect to kind of get 50 results from both of them instead of getting 100 percent
And zero percent because you're only focusing on one of them
So there are multiple business models and here's the fun part as mike just mentioned they all work and it is a lifestyle choice
They really do so you can go
um low margin
High volume that model works
You can go
High volume high margin that also works
Um, you can get but i'm trying here's here's what i'm trying to transition to high volume high margin
That's where i'd like to be because I know how to list a lot, but I learned it on the
Low margin faster turnover books the higher margin you go the less frequently they will sell at least on ebay
But when they sell it's a lot of money. Yay
Uh, kayla from antique books. He does that model specifically
Uh, I think he has a minimum threshold of it. It's not coming in my store unless it's worth 40 dollars or more. However
He's publicly transparent with it. He does he taps into what I do. He sells some paperbacks, too
With his christian fiction stuff because they have a faster turnover for him
Um, and that keeps the sale steady. So I think it's a balancing act now
And very much a lifestyle choice
What I do is a bit of a grind and i'm trying to grind less because I ain't getting any younger
I got some gray in this handsome beard. I got over here
Um, my back don't work as well as it used to kind of deal
Mike's been going up and down three flights of stairs once upon a time. He ain't getting any younger either
So I think the low margin fast turnover is very much a young gentleman's game
Um, you can get away with that. You can hustle even grind but as you start to creep up there
You're going to be doing this when you're 80 years old question mark. No
Um, even if you got a fleet of employees
That's a that's a rough racket. So I think
Figuring out what you want to do business-wise even if you start in one and transition to the other because I learned a lot doing what I do
Uh, and i'm still learning. Um
I'll always be learning always be educating always be transitioning always be pivoting and always be willing to adjust
People that get set in their ways it never adjusts because they think they know better
They're going to go out of business one day. Um
Just how it is even if you're at the top of your field, you know it all right
Do you
You're at the top. There's always another thing to know even if you're at the top of your field
There's always an extra mile to go
I um, I think you hit it right on the head. It's like
I think you can have both
Which you have you still you're still gonna have to favor one or the other
I don't think there's no such thing as a 50 50 display, right? You can't do everything
you can't give ebay the same effort you give amazon it's just unrealistic because
Deep down right you you prefer one way or the other
I mean, it's just one of those things you just got to sit down and say well what what do I get more enjoyment out of?
And yes, you're buying the stuff and
I said it earlier if you know if you're getting a low profit stuff
Just leverage the buyback companies if you enjoy doing oh a more say hey
I'm gonna get that i'm still gonna do both buys because i'm still gonna make money
You'll still get the big hits right that you can send in your stuff
But you're not going to have as much of it and then everything else goes to buyback company
So that kind of makes it almost foolproof and then you can focus on the oa but you still have the fun of going out
Doing bulk buys doing thrift in here and there if you're going to do it the other way
I would say hey send in everything you can that's going to make you the money volume wise and then you say all right
Well, i'm going to set a hundred dollars aside for online arbitrage for this week
And then you spend a hundred dollars
And then you see where you can take your hundred dollars and kind of grow that hundred dollars and then you can
Get that hundred dollars and kind of grow that hundred dollars into an online arbitrage business
Just kind of maybe four hours a week six hours a week something like that
So there is ways you can do it, but either way you're going to have to
You're going to have to take a side unfortunately
You're going to enjoy one more than the other and that's perfectly fine
But if you have both
And you want to keep both or maybe you prefer, you know one compared to the other
And you want to have them both make the other one you don't enjoy as much
Painless is possible like I do with ebay it exists. I take my ebay money
It turns into amazon money, but my ebay life is not johnny b's ebay life. I do it once a week
Draft it out and I wash my hands of it and that's why ebay still exists for me. I wouldn't do it. Otherwise
Right, like for me, here's my thing. I like to get a 20 bill
I'm not doing this right now, but I like to get a 20 bill from every cell on ebay. That'd be great
However, I know the kind of coupon I run it's a buy two get two
So I don't need every item to sell for 20 dollars. So that brings my
listed number down
I think i'm around
20 listed price, which is you're not clearing 20 on ebay if you sell it for 20 you're not
But that's a lot better margin than what i'm dealing with right now with my high str low margin stuff
um
And I think
I think it's a great question. Um, I would say age is a factor to deal with it
If you're 70, I wouldn't do what I do. No, don't do that man. You can do better go higher tier kind of thing
um
My thing on that at least in ebay land is how to get those frequently. That's that's my
Exploratory mission this year is how do I get them frequently?
Or how do I get a lot of silver items with high str?
I don't mind silver items going to my stores the bronze items
I do there. Yeah, see what I can do with them. See if I can sell them
You have to have a way to get rid of the the bronze items somehow some way even if it's a buyback program
Even if you got an antique mall and you just shove it in your assigned
Square footage you run a garage sale you run a church rummage sale if you're in networks with the church or something
Um, you gotta figure out a way to get rid of those bronze items somehow some way and if your model is to list those items on
Ebay and see what shakes more power to you. Just be prepared for a grind
I I do
To kind of capitalize on what you're saying. I one thing I do think is heavily heavily heavily
underutilized in all of reselling
Is partnering with other resellers to move stuff that doesn't have a worth to you
But does to them and vice versa kind of like, you know
How I send you all the paperbacks that I would literally, you know burn thrown to you
It's junk and just like we were talking about for the call. I have a guy coming to get my junk
Well, johnny b has junk plaster. No, I do. I have a junk pile
So yeah, like if you're if you want to do volume and focus on oh a then have a johnny b, right?
Find somebody I mean you've been in the group for a year now
So, you know, you can reach out to anybody be like, hey, here's here's what I have extra
Are you interested in taking them off my head?
And you would be surprised uh, the people in the group, you know
I give away basically my my disc and all my paperbacks to you and just partner up with somebody
So you don't have to deal with it because that's when you get overwhelmed
If you do, you know want to continue both buys is just the sheer volume of staring at all the stuff all of your duds
But your duds are not necessarily their duds
Right, and I got some i'm pretty sure I got some greens in my junk pile that are garbage in ebay land
They are not good
For amazon dollars on ebay and they're going for like four bucks
Oh, that's why ebay to amazon flips is so pro. Yeah, because it exists. It's there
Yeah, like readers digest and time live that's junk for me
I do not want to put that in my store. It's junk junk junk
Yeah, all right. As always we appreciate everybody listening and watching if you're over on the youtube and we will talk to 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
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