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Stephen Raiken
Are you sick and tired of working a job you hate, are you fed up with living a life that is mediocre at best? Do you wake up every morning unmotivated, uninspired, and feeling as though you don’t have a real purpose? If you dream of running your own business, being your own boss and experiencing financial freedom, then you’ve found the right podcast! My name is Steve Raiken and over the past 5 years I’ve been purposefully building my own dream into reality. I’ve gone from quitting my stressful minimum wage job, moving out of my parents house, and losing over 60 pounds to totally transforming myself while creating a successful online business that now makes me over $100,000 per year, and continues to grow! Let me and other like-minded entrepreneurs guide you through multiple eCommerce platforms and actionable strategies as we share our stories of success so that you can prosper as well! This podcast is dedicated to motivating and developing you in every way possible and teaching you how
Worst Times to Visit Thrift Stores I’ve been asked before what are the worst times to go to a thrift store, the times when you are less likely to make money and just won’t do very well. It’s Not an Exact Science, But… In general, I’m going to give you an answer that you may or may not like. There really is no worst time to go. Now, there are some times that aren’t optimal, but really there’s no worst times. You really don’t know when there is going to be a deal inside the thrift store. You don’t know when a new clothing rack’s going to come out. You don’t know when the new bins are going to come out. You don’t know when a random item was in the back and an employee decides to throw it on the shelf. Maybe a customer just returned something for some reason. There really is no worst time to go.
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There Are Some Patterns With that being said, I prefer the weekdays over the weekends. I never really do well during the weekends. I find generally they are not putting out as much new inventory then. There seems to be a lot more competition because a lot of resellers work full-time jobs and have time to source only on weekends. Also the general public is smashing the thrift stores during the weekend. So the best times for me are during weekdays, typically mornings and early afternoons. I find that for me, profitability declines later in the afternoons. But you’ve got to take that with a grain of salt. There have been times when I hit the jackpot of all jackpot right before the thrift store closed. Take Note One thing that I recommend doing if you’re brand new to thrifting is get yourself a little notebook. Every time you go to the thrift store, write down what time you went and how well you did. You’ll start to see a pattern over time of what thrift stores do better at certain times and days of the week. But really, at the end of the day, the more you go, the better chance you’re going to have of making money. You really can’t make a hard-and-fast rule and refuse to go at a certain time or on a certain day. Talk to the Manager Feel free to communicate with the managers. Build a rapport; build a friendship. Then you can ask the manager, “Hey, are there certain days that you don’t put out inventory?” I’ve done that before, and the manager let me know that they have a sort of schedule for putting out new inventory. I avoid the days they don’t plan to put new stuff on the shelves. You also want to figure out what the times during the day that new inventory is typically coming out. At my local Goodwill, they’re always bringing new stuff out in the morning. And then on certain days during the week, they’re putting out new inventory about an hour before they close. Build relationships with the employees. Talk with them. Communicate with them so you can find all this out. The No-Brainer Stuff Of course, you will want to hit the thrift stores when they have their sales on certain items or on the days where, say, everything is half off. All you have to do is ask an employee, and they will let you know. Maybe they have signs up or some kind of newsletter that explains their sales. And it also follows that if you have gone to a certain store several times and have never found a thing there, then the worst time to go is any time! But the trick is knowing when the competition will be a bit less and when they put that new inventory out. And that may take some investigation on your part.
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What's going on everybody? I'm YouTube Steve here, Raiken Profit, raikenprofit.com, coming back to you with another video. Man, I've got a lot of LEGOs back there, I'm not sure if you can see them, but I've got a deal that I'm about to me meeting up with a woman, going to be selling a whole bunch of LEGOs for $125. And I popped on the whole thing of LEGOs, plus a whole bunch of video games, Mario games, systems, for 70 bucks, so I'm making a killing on this deal.
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But anyway, in today's video I want to talk about the worst times to go to thrift stores. What are the worst times that thrift stores, they're not going to do well, you're not going to make money? I haven't done very well in these times going to thrift stores, so I want to talk about that. So, in general, I'm going to give you an answer that you may or may not like, but there really is no worst time to go. I'm going to talk about some times that aren't optimal, but really there's no worst times. Like I gave [inaudible] Latina Hustler when they are closed, exactly, because you really don't know where there is going to be a deal there. You don't know when a new clothing rack's going to come out, you don't know when the bins are going to come out. You don't know when maybe just a random item was in the back and they threw it on the shelf, or there was a return or an issue. There really is no worst time to go. I could tell you in general, I prefer the weekdays over the weekends. I never really do well during the weekends, generally because I find they're not putting out as much inventory. I find that there's a lot more competition, because typically a lot of resellers work full time jobs. So in the weekends they're going out. Also the general public is smashing the thrifts stores during the weekend. So, I generally find that the best times for me during weekdays, typically mornings and early afternoons. I find that typically later afternoons, it slowly starts to decline in terms of profitability, here in Connecticut for me personally. But you've got to take that with a grain of salt, because there have been times where I have hit the jackpot of all mother jackpots, whatever you want to call it, mother loads, right before the thrift store closed. So, really, you know, one thing that I recommend doing if you're brand new to thrifting, and I had my mother do this for a long time and it helped her out a lot, is get yourself a little notebook, something like this, get yourself a little notebook. And every time you go to the thrift store, write down what time you went, and write down how well you did. And you'll start to see a pattern over time of what thrift stores do better at certain times, days of the week, so on and so forth. So it's definitely a great tip right there, but in general, I like thrifting during the weekdays, I like thrifting earlier on. Early afternoons tend to be better for me. But really, at the end of the day, the more you go, the better chance you're going to have of making money, because you really can't generalize and say I'm not going to go at this time, or I'm not going to go on this day. You'll start to recognize patterns, but yeah, like Gabriela said, the worst time to go to the thrift store is when they're closed, because you're not going to get in, for sure. So, feel free to communicate with the managers, that's a great tip right there. Build a rapport, build a friendship with the workers, the managers, and say, "Hey, are there certain days that you don't put out inventory?" Because I'm not going to tell you exactly which store it is, because I don't want to give away this super awesome secret in my general area, but there's a store, and they told me that on certain days they don't put out new inventory. So that was like [inaudible]. I avoid those days. Hey, thanks Michael, I appreciate that. I didn't see what your question was,
What's happening everybody? Steve here, Raiken Profit, over at RaikenProfit.com, coming back to you with another video. And I know this topic probably sounds like a broken record on my channel. I always talk about the importance of building a listing routine, and building the habit of listing on a daily basis. Because really, if you wanna grow your Amazon business, or eBay business, or Poshmark business, or Etsy business. It doesn't matter what reselling platform you're using, you've gotta list your items up.
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And one of the reoccurring themes that I hear about, and I see, and I've fallen victim to it as well, is this enormous debt pile that us as resellers continue to build, and build, and build. And we're so addicted, and we're obsessed with thrifting, and sourcing, and hitting garage sales, but really the lifeblood of our business is listing our items and getting them for sale for potential customers to buy. So really the purpose of this video is to let you know, listen it's a lot of fun to go out thrifting, it's so much fun to freaking go to garage sales and thrift stores, and source using eFLIP, and buying books on Amazon to flip back on FBA, it's so much fun. But we've gotta take the time on a regular basis to either, A, list the items ourselves, or B, put a system in place, aka hire somebody to do the listing for you. You've gotta get your listings up. You've gotta get your items for sale. And at first, when you first get started selling at eBay or Amazon, and you're listing your items on eBay, you're shipping out FBA packages to Amazon, it's tough, it's difficult. You're literally like, "Ugh, I hate this, this isn't fun." But you know like it's gonna make you money. But over time, the more you list, the more you get involved with your photography, and the more you go through the process, and you build it into a habit, it becomes easier and easier and easier, and that momentum drives you forward, because you start seeing the results, you start making sales on a regular basis. You stop having as many slow days, and slow weeks, and slow months. And before you know it, you're making more money than you actually need to pay your bills, and you start growing your income. Your bank account starts growing. Maybe it was at 1,000 bucks last month, now it's at 1,300, then a couple months later, it's at 2,200, and you're like, "Wow, this actually works, like I'm doing this." And maybe you even get to the point where you have so much money saved, 10,000, 15, 20,000, enough for you to be able to chill out for three to six months. You say to yourself, "I've got enough cushion to quit my job. I'm putting in my 30-day notice or my two-week notice. And I'm doing this, and I'm gonna talk to my husband or my wife, and we're gonna put a plan together, and we're gonna make this happen, this is actually something that works. I've seen other people on YouTube doing it, and now I'm doing it." So that's what it's all about, it's getting into that listing routine, that's the first step. It's easy to source, right? It's easy to stay motivated when things are going well, but you've gotta keep that listing routine going, because when things are slow, a lot of times, it's because your listings and your shipments to Amazon, or whatever platform you're on, you just haven't been doing all that you needed to be doing. So really, I just wanted to chat with you a couple minutes about this, hopefully you guys are having a fantastic day so far and business is going well. Don't stop listing, don't stop sourcing, kill that debt pile, make it happen, right? And I think you're gonna be really happy with the results you get. So I just wanna say hello, appreciate you guys watching, like, comment, and subscribe if you enjoyed this video, and I'll see you in the next one. Peace.
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What's going on, everybody on YouTube? Steve, here, Raiken Profit, over at raikenprofit.com, coming back to you with another educational video, and I have been getting some fabulous questions from you guys on Facebook, over at Raiken Profit, Instagram, over at Raiken Profit, and also, my new little questionnaire at raikenprofit.com/question. So if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on either one of those platforms. But I got a question that came in from a girl who said that she was going through some of her old clothing bins. She's got a bunch of clothing, but all of these clothing bins were stored in a room that I believe her parents are smoking cigarettes in, and all the stuff is smelling like cigarettes, right. So that's kind of what propelled me to create this video, but I also wanted to take it to another level, and I want to answer the question of, what do you if you come across an item that's a jackpot item at a thrift store, or at a garage sale?
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I'm talking about a jackpot item. Maybe it's a Kiton ... look that brand up if you don't know it ... dress shirt, and it's $1, but it reeks of cigarettes. Or maybe you're at a pick or something off of a local deal on Facebook or Craigslist, and you're in some guy's attic, but everything stinks of cigarettes, but there's all these amazing, profitable items, what do you do? How do you get the cigarette smell out? How do you deal with all of that, and ... I'm just seeing what's going on here. I've got some freaking car going crazy in front of me. That was really, really weird. This guy right here literally just shot out like a racehorse. Not sure what was going on there. But what do you do if you're in the presence of cigarette smoke, so on and so forth, can you sell ... This guy is acting bizarre. He's literally driving in circles. But anyways, what do you do in that situation? Got to watch your back, you don't know, there's some crazy people out there. So first and foremost, if you come across a jackpot item but it reeks of cigarettes, don't just say no to it instantly. You've got to weigh out your options, right. Really, it comes down to numbers. If I come across an item that reeks of cigarettes and it's only selling for $20 or $30, I'm probably going to pass on it, just because the cigarette smell will infect all of your inventory. I've made that mistake before, where I hang it up next to other clothes and then everything else stinks of it. I've also washed it at my own house and it just makes my entire laundry just stink of cigarettes. No offense if you smoke cigarettes. I used to smoke cigarettes, two packs a day. I quit in 2011. But cigarette smell will wreak havoc on your inventory, so you've got to definitely be careful about it. But if come across an item, run the numbers. If I find an item that's maybe selling for 50 or 60 or 70 bucks, and it stinks like cigarettes, then I'm going to follow the steps that I'm going to outline for you, coming up. First thing you want to do is, if you come across an item that reeks of cigarettes, is the best thing that you can do, well, one of the first things you can do is you can let it air out, outside, for a little bit. This isn't going to take the smell out completely, but by just leaving it outside for a day or so ... not too long, make sure it doesn't get rained on ... it'll kind of air it out a little bit, so that's step number one. Step number two is obviously washing your clothing with some strong detergent. Again, be careful not to wash it with other clothing that you have because it's going to ... the smell's going to just ... it's going to go all over everything. So I would do it by itself and just know it might even mess up your ... might make your laundry kind of stink a little bit for a couple of days, like, the actual unit inside. But that's step number one,
Hey, what's going on everybody? Steve here, Raiken Profit. Coming back to you with another video and I wanted to make this video to be able to add value to your life because, you wanna know what, when it comes to building a business or if you're on a health journey like myself, I've lost 25, 30 pounds over the last couple of years, put on a good amount of muscle, when you're building businesses, when you're trying to get healthy, when you're going after your goals, it's not gonna be just straight up towards success and achievement. You're gonna have ups and downs and sometimes life's gonna just smack you in the face and something's gonna happen but at the end of the day, it's not how many times you get knocked down, it's not how many times you get stuck in place, it's a matter of are you getting back up and do you keep fighting and pushing forward?
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And I'm not making this video to be all rah-rah, Tony Robbins, Gary Vee, get you all pumped up and motivated because a lot of people think that I'm making these videos to motivate you. At the end of the day, I'll be honest with you, I'm making these for myself. I really am trying to cope with my own emotions and deal with what I'm going on. Obviously, I have the goal of I wanna share it because I wanna help you guys out as well but I make a lot of videos as like therapy for myself and I wanna make this video kind of as an accountability post for myself and for anyone who can relate. And what I wanna talk about was my health and dealing with emotions and stuff. Lately, over the last month and a half, I've been dealing with some issues, some relationship issues. I messed up my back really, really bad a month and a half ago and I've been struggling and I kind of lost touch with my goals and my purpose a little bit and sometimes you just get overwhelmed and stressed out and a month goes by, two months goes by and then negative things start to happen. Like over the last month and a half, I've gained a good six pounds or so, maybe a little bit more. Now, that might be all fat. It could water weight and what not but the reason I gained weight was because I was using food to deal with my emotions and when it comes to accomplishing your goals, whether that's financial, business, Ebay, maybe you wanna get a certain amount of inventory because you know that your inventory number correlates with how much sales you make where you have a goal of how many times you want to go to the gym, weight loss, whatever it is. Your ability to deal with your emotions is going to be strongly correlated to you accomplishing your goal and when you lose focus of what you want and you lose control of your mind, your body goes and then the next thing you know, your actions go, your thoughts go and you're five, 10, 15 steps behind where you wanted to be. So, I wanna make this video to kind of give you a tip in terms of what I've been doing to regain control of my mind and to get back on track again. One of the best things that you can do is starting your day off on the right foot by going through a morning ritual. How you start the day is typically how you end the day and if you start your day and you're just pissed off and angry and negative and when you're kind of in a slump. I'll be honest, I've been waking up every morning just kind of being a little depressed and not feeling well, not super motivated. It's tough to get through the day so by starting the day off by doing certain things, which I'm gonna talk about, and I've shared this in previous videos, it really helps out a lot. So, one of the things that I like to do in the morning lately and that's been drinking a ton of water. I'm not talking about just drinking one glass of water but if you drink like five or six or seven glasses of water first thing in the morning, now talk your time. Don't just all chug it super quick, take your time.
What's going on everybody? I'm YouTube Steve here, Raiken Profit. Early morning Connecticut. Car's all frosted up right now. But I wanna make a quick video for the new reseller who might be addicted to watch an YouTube videos of other resellers, Instragrammers, you know, others out there who've been doing this for five, six, seven, eight years who are getting a lot of results because sometimes it can be discouraging starting an eBay business.
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You're beginning to go to thrift stores and garage sales and maybe you've only made a couple of sales. And here's the thing. When you see people on Instagram, on YouTube who are having success, like I said before, they've been doing it for five, six, seven, eight years. In order to start having success, it's gonna take time. It's gonna take experience. A lot of times, I hate to say it but on social media, we all portray things to be perfect and no, we never make mistakes, we never have setbacks and that's not the case. And that's why I really try to share my ups and downs on this channel to be realistic. So, if you're getting started in eBay and Amazon and just entrepreneurship in general, just know, it takes time. All the people that you're watching who are having success and getting results, it takes time. They've made a lot of mistakes. They've failed multiple times and it's gonna be the same with you as well. You could shorten your learning curve by watching these videos but you've gotta take action. You've gotta go out there and get that experience. So, don't get discouraged if you're seeing people putting up numbers of five, 10,000 a month and 50,000 a month with Amazon and private label and selling clothing, making a couple a grand a month. Whatever it is, right, don't get discouraged. Don't try to compete with them. Compete with yourself. And don't try to compete with their results. Compete with your processes. Compete with who you were, the day before. If you listed five items the day before, let's list six today. Let's list seven. If you only went sourcing twice last week and you got 40 items, let's go sourcing three times this week and get 50 items. If you only studied the sold listings twice last week for an hour and a half, let's study three times for two hours. Let's start slowly improving and getting better and let's not compare ourselves to the people on YouTube and Instagram and Snapchat, right? Because at the end of the day, they've been in the game for a while. Very seldomly do you see, and it's very rare that you see somebody who just comes on the scene and starts getting amazing results in like a month or two. It just takes time. So, wanna just make this video and just be real and share what's on my mind. There's a lot of money to be made in this business of reselling and there's so many opportunities out there with the internet and it's crazy with online selling in general. Let's start naming things. eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Craigslist, I mean the list goes on and on. We could talk about Etsy. We could talk about Poshmark, right? It's crazy. But you gotta pick something and start taking action and start getting experience. So, with that being said, keep up and keep making that money. I'm freezing my butt off out here so I'm gonna go back in the car. But have a great week and I'll see you in the next video.
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What's going on everybody? YouTube Steve here, Raiken Profit over at raikenandprofit.com, coming back to you with another video, live in the parking lot of Savers, waiting for my mom, AKA momma profit to arrive and we're going to go in and do a little book sourcing, probably look for some video games, board games, DVD's, go through some clothes, see what they have over here. But I want to make a video talking about is Ebay really a business? Because my friend, he works a full time and he's pretty miserable, he doesn't make a lot of money at this job and he told one of his managers that he needs to cut his hours back because he needs to focus on his Ebay business and guess what this person said? Well first of all, they laughed at him and said, "Ebay's not a business, Ebay's a hobby." What do you do in that situation if maybe a coworker or a friend, or a family member or your manager, or your boss says, "Ebay's not a business," what do you do? What do you say? Is it true? Is Ebay a business? Here's the thing, I'm going to tell you. The average person who doesn't sell on Ebay, or Amazon, or Resell, they think and even the people at the thrift stores, I swear I've talked to a lot of them, they think that what we do as resellers is a hobby, they don't think we're making money. They think that we're working for pennies, right? Great comment from Rhea saying, "We pay taxes right?" The general public does not think that Ebay sellers and Amazon sellers for the most part, they don't think we're making money. They actually think we're the bottom feeders, the scavengers, going to these thrift stores, going to garage sales. The average person doesn't realize how much money you could make selling on Ebay, selling on Amazon, flipping stuff on Craigslist. So, I'll tell you right now, if a manager or a boss, or a friend, or a family member says that, you want to know what? Don't listen to them. Don't listen to people who have no experience. So many people want to give you their two cents and their feedback on what you should do and what you shouldn't do but they've never even sold on Ebay. They've never even a run business before. The average person never even starts a business because they listen to what other people say about business being too risky and most businesses fail, and you want to know what? That's true. The reason why most businesses fail is because people, they don't think and they treat it like a hobby and they're not constantly improving and they're not constantly growing and they don't take it serious. Ebay is most certainly a business. Now, I guess you're going to have to define what a business is but for me, a business would be something that I create to add value that makes me money, right? I own it to an extent, with Ebay you're getting $10.99'd but still at the end of the day, you're sourcing products, you're storing products, inventory management, you're shipping, you're dealing with customer service. I mean, Ebay's pretty much the same thing as every other business, the only thing that we're not really focusing on as Ebay sellers is driving traffic, Ebay they have their platform and there's millions of users on it. So, one of the hardest parts of running a business is acquiring customers and for the most part, we don't have to worry about that when we sell on Ebay because we're relying on Ebay's traffic and Ebay's brand. But I tell you, if someone tells you Ebay is not a business, Amazon's not a business, reselling it's a hobby, you're wasting your time. I could promise you they've never resold before, so just ignore them, don't worry about them. If you're trying to quit your job and you got people doubting you or you're trying to grow your business and people are telling you, "You can't do it, it's just a hobby. You can't make money." You want to know what? Listen to people who are currently running part-time to full-time businesses who have been in it for three, four, or five years. I've been selling on Ebay,
What's going on everybody. Steve here, Raiken Profit, RaikenProfit.com, coming back to you with another video. I want to share with you some information and some content about something that I'm going through personally right now that could help you out if you're looking to start a business, or you're looking to begin a journey. Whether that's a fitness journey or some type of journey in your finances, or an Ebay business, or an Amazon business. I'm not sure exactly what it is you're going through, but personally, for me, I'm relating this to my real estate journey that I'm getting ready to embark on. If you have seen some of my previous videos, I made a video talking about my goal of buying my first real estate property by March 1, 2019. I'm looking to buy ... I've kind of defined it to a three to a four unit duplex, and I want to live there for at least a year, maybe more, owner occupied. I want to learn the real estate business, the landlording business, so on and so forth.
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I share that with you because, a lot of times we have a goal, maybe we want to buy a piece of real estate, or we want to start an Ebay business, or we want to quit our job. But in order to actually accomplish that goal, it might take 50, 60, 70 steps to get there. A lot of times a worthy goal is going to take a lot of hard work. The problem that I was starting to fall into and the mistake that I was beginning to make, and you could probably connect this as well to what you're going after is, I started to research things that were irrelevant. For example, right now, where I am, I did months of research, I had a good foundation built. For me, it was time to start taking action. What I really needed to focus on was, one, getting connected with a real estate agent, a buyer's agent, so I can get access to the MLS and I can start getting leads fed to me. I can start analyzing properties, going to properties, looking at them, because you're going to need a real estate agent to go see these properties. So on and so forth. And number two, I needed to get pre-approved. The problem that I was ... The big mistake that I was making is, I wasn't getting started because I thought that I had to know everything. I was researching how to sign up tenants, when I get a tenant into the property, how do I create the documents? How do I manage tenants? How do I deal with legality issues and bookkeeping? I'm researching things that are step 35, 38, 56, step 59, step 80. And the biggest problem is, when you're hot, when you're motivated, when you're excited about something, that motivation is very short lived unless you begin to take action. If you're motivated, start taking action on step one. Take care of step one and then take care of step two and take care of step three. In the past, what I've done is, I would be super excited about something, I would research things like crazy, I would get burnt out and then I wouldn't take action, and then a month or two would go by and I made no progress towards the goal. The big commitment that I've made to myself and the big realization that I've come to is, listen, it's great to get a solid foundational education in order to get started. Research for a week, two weeks, three weeks. Network with people, watch videos, listen to podcasts, read books, and I've been doing all of that. But it comes to a point where you've got to draw the line in the sand and say to yourself, "Okay, it's time to get started. I don't need to understand step 97. I see the vision, I understand the direction I have to go to, or the destination where I'm headed, and it's time to get started. Let's write down five things that I could do to start making progress towards my goal." You might be in a situation where you want to start an Ebay business but you're trying to figure out the inventory system. You're trying to figure out,
What's going on everybody? Steve here. Raiken Profit. Raikenprofit.com. And I was just having a conversation with a friend of mine who wants to get started selling on eBay but they have zero experience. So I wanted to share some of the tips that I had shared with them in hopes to be able to help you out if you're looking to get started selling on eBay or just reselling in general. You can apply this to eBay, Poshmark, Etsy, Amazon, so on and so forth. But there's a lot of people out there who want to start building an extra income stream, selling on eBay, making money on eBay. There's a lot of people out there doing it. And there's so many cool products you can sell. There's so many thrift stores, garage sales, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist.
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And a lot of people in general just have a lot of items sitting at home, thousands of dollars worth of products that they can sell to make money. So I want to share with you five tips to getting started selling on eBay. Five things that I would do if I was brand new that could help you start moving in the right direction and help you again to build out that income stream. Which could be a hundred bucks a month, or two hundred a month, or even up to a couple thousand dollars a month plus selling on eBay. So without further ado, let's dive right into this video. So tip number one, if you want to start selling on eBay and you have very little experience, what you're going to want to focus on at first is building your educational foundation. You want to start learning as much as possible. And one of the best ways that you can do this, especially if you have a full time job and you're a busy person ... Maybe you have a family or maybe you're a college student ... Is to turn your car into a university on wheels. And what I mean by that is when you're driving or maybe when you're walking or when you're just doing certain things, have your headphones on or have something playing in the background while you're driving, instead of listening to music. So a couple things you can do is you can have YouTube on in the background, listening to resellers talking about what they're buying and selling on eBay. There's great YouTube channels out there, like the Bonafide Hustler, Rally Roots, Rock Star Flipper. And these are awesome YouTube channels that talk about making money on eBay and different platforms. So turn your car into a university on wheels. The average person's driving for usually at least an hour per day. Some people are commuting even longer, two, three, four hours. So by listening to something educational, YouTube, podcasts, different things of that nature, you're learning and you're bringing in all this education that can help you to start selling on eBay. So when you start sourcing or when you're shipping or taking pictures of your items, you have that knowledge. It's huge. So turn your car into a university on wheels. Tip number two, and this is going to stem from the foundation of education as well, is you want to make sure you're studying the sold listings. One of the biggest problems that new eBay sellers make is they buy items that aren't profitable. They buy items that don't have a market. They buy items that, when they list it, it sits, sits and sits and it never sells, and their money's locked up and then they have cash flow issues and then they quit. You want to make sure you're buying items that not only have a market and a demand, but also items that are selling for a price high enough to give you that profit that you're looking for, right? Because you're not selling on eBay just for fun; you're trying to make money. So by studying the sold listings ... And if you're not sure what the sold listings are, it's essentially eBay's sold items. What items have sold for? So maybe you want to get into selling clothing on eBay. You can go into the men's clothing section,
So I don't know about you but I love planning. I love strategizing, I love thinking about the future and writing down goals and positive affirmations. I'm a huge fanboy of Tony Robbins but at the end of the day, you've got to start taking action. Really that's it. For you to get where you wanna go, you've got to take action, you've got to have faith. And in order to have faith, you've got to just be willing to take the first step without seeing the whole entire staircase. I know Martin Luther King had a quote that I just paraphrased. But that's it, I mean at the end of the day positive thinking, hanging around with people who are making a lot of money, who are successful, like that's great. Listening to Tony Robbins, going through a morning routine, that's great. But you've got to take action, you've got to understand okay this is where I am right now. Maybe I'm making $1,000 a month. I want to get to $3,000 a month, this is the plan, here's the blueprint, what's the first thing that I can do?
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You don't have to know how to do step two, three, four, five and six. You don't have to know the best way to store your items if you're trying to build an eBay business. The best way to scale, the best way to do your bookkeeping and what are you gonna do when taxes come along? You've just got to worry about the first step and then you've got to take that action. That's it, because you want to know what? When you take action, on whatever it is that you're going towards. When you take that first step, once you get past that, another door is gonna open. And your main objective is to get past that second door. Once you get past that second door, the third door. It's kind of like when you're driving your car at nighttime. You have to have faith because your headlights can only see, I don't know, 20, 30, 40 feet in front of you. But you have faith knowing that as you keep driving and progressing, the road's gonna keep progressing and you're gonna keep moving forward. You have faith in it right, you have trust in the process and that's the way it is when you're building a business and going after your goals. Don't get stuck worrying and planning and trying to figure out step two through 26 because you wanna know what? Step two through 26 isn't gonna be what you think it's gonna be. You can do all the research you want, you can watch all the videos, you can plan, plan, plan. But nothing beats experience and nothing beats taking action. You can apply this to any area of your life. So whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish right now in your business, I know we've got less than three months left in the year. Finish it off strong, take action, I've been saying this to myself lately about my real estate goal because I have a goal of buying my first real estate investment property by March 1st 2019. And I've read like five or six books, and I'm learning and I'm listening to audiobooks but I keep saying to myself, you gotta take action. So my next step is getting a real estate agent and then getting pre-approved and starting to get deals fed to me and start analyzing them. I can read all the books in the world, but if I don't start looking at properties and analyzing them, nothing's gonna happen. If you don't start going to the thrift store and buying stuff, if you don't start listing stuff on eBay, if you don't send in your first FBA shipment, if you don't just buy eFLIP and source your first book and learn to process, nothing's gonna happen. It's the way it is. So just wanted to give you guys this positive message, go out there, take action, crush it, make it happen and I'll see you in the next one.
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Hey, what's going on everybody, Steve here. Raiken Profit, raikenprofit.com coming back to you with another video and this is a video that was inspired by my good friend Greg at the Valet Picker YouTube channel. Definitely check him out. He came to the Connecticut Thrifting meet-up about a week ago, well less than a week ago, and he found a vintage Nike tee shirt that he put up for sale. I think he said he already got an offer for $90 or $100 on it. I think he's shooting for $200 on it, but it was crazy. We were so blown away when he found this item at a Savers Thrift Store and I think he paid $4. If you're watching Greg, let people know in the comments, but it was a single threaded tee shirt, so if you actually flip the tee shirt inside out, it's a single thread, I think, instead of a double stitch.
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Be on the lookout for the single threaded Nike tee shirts. That's an indicator that it's vintage. From my knowledge, that's what he was saying, but it motivated me to make this video because I want to share with you about six or seven vintage Nike tee shirts that sold for just incredible profit. If you're a thrifter, if you're buying and selling on eBay, selling clothing, you definitely want to be on the lookout for these types of items. What I'm going to do is I'm actually going to share my screen with you and I want to showcase a couple items that actually sold on eBay for some ridiculous profits. When you're flipping through the clothing racks or you're at a garage sale, be on the lookout for these items. Now, you may never find one in your lifetime, but if you're like Greg and you're flipping through and you know what to look for, you can make some big, big profit. I'm actually going to see if I can get confirmation from Greg on Facebook and ask him if I could use a picture of his shirt for the thumbnail. If you see a picture of a shirt on the thumbnail of this video on YouTube, then you know that's the shirt that he found. So, I'm going to see if I can do that. If not, I totally understand if he doesn't want to share that. Anyway, first up is a really cool vintage, what appears to be an 80's Hollywood swoosh Nike item. Look at the ... Just look at the design of that. The background of Hollywood, really, really cool. This is from the 80's apparently, so there's the tag right there. I know Greg's tag, as well, said, I think it was 44-46, so you might get tricked thinking that it's a youth size, which a youth size would probably be 16-18 or 18-20. You might get tricked, but that's actually what I think the old tags have on them. We'll take a look at some more tags, but yeah check that out, $399. You might be thinking, Steve you're out of your frickin' mind. No, I'm telling you, these old vintage Nike items, they sell ridiculously well. They actually said we're not experts on any of these items we sell, however we do try to do a reasonable amount of research and describe the item as accurately as possible. Nothing really interesting there, but very, very cool item right there. Next up, now this thing definitely looks vintage. The other item, I was like, oh that might be hard to tell out in the field except for looking at the tag, but check this out, it says Hike Nike. This definitely looks old. I bet you this is a single stitch right there. Tag says Nike XL, size extra large sportswear. $200 and look, 18 bids on this item. Guys, this is crazy, look at that. This old vintage Nike stuff sells for a lot of money. So, I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I'm a very knowledgeable person when it comes to determining if it's vintage and what's real and authentic, so I'm not going to sit here and give you advice about things I don't know, but I know if something looks interesting, if the colors are vibrant, if it's got a cool design, the shirt looks older, if the tag looks a little unique,
What's going on everybody? Steve here, Raiken Profit, RaikenProfit.com coming back to you with another video from my car, and I'm kind of a mess right now. I just got done with a softball game. I still got my little, a thingamajiggys on right now. We ended up winning, super pumped up about it, but I want to make a video talking about, is it possible to find super-duper rare items at thrift stores and garage sales to sell on Ebay.
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The reason why I'm bringing this subject matter op is because I made a video the other day a sharing a bunch of rare Nike items that sold on Ebay, educating you guys about some of the items that are out there. And there were a couple of comments that have come in behind the scenes and in the comments saying, "Steve, it's not possible to find any of these items. You make videos sharing and showcasing items that it's just impossible to find." I wanted to cover this topic because it's a legitimate question. Is it possible to find some of these rare items that sold on Ebay at thrift stores, garage sales, Facebook marketplace, flea markets? So here's the thing, the more you go out thrifting, the more you go to garage sales, the more you put yourself in a position to get lucky, the luckier you are going to get. The more you put yourself out there, the better chance you have of finding these items. Big shout out to Barbara. What's up? Smart God, good to see you. This is the thing. There's so many different types of items, like in terms of just the clothing category, there's hundreds of brands, and within each brand there's maybe one or two super rare things that you could find and sell for $300, $500, $700 or more collectibles. There's hundreds of thousands of rare items. Electronics, computer pieces, shoes. There's so many different categories. So one of the keys that I found as a reseller is to start learning as much as you possibly can. Now I recommend starting with a niche. I wanted to say niche, but I decided to go with the niche. Niche or niche? Help me. I started off with clothing and I mastered clothing. I found out and learned about tons of different brands and items that are super rare. Over time I got lucky and I would find really, really rare items like the brand Willison Geiger, leather jackets. Those are so rare. But if you educate yourself and you put yourself out there and you thrift and you flip through those clothing racks and you go to a thrift store after thrift store, you're going to find those rare items. In one of the previous videos that I posted about Nike, my good friend Greg, who, um, is The Valet Picker on YouTube, he found a rare, I believe it was 1980s, vintage Nike tee shirt that he paid a $1.99 for and sold for $216, which is insane. Now, the only reason he found this is because he went to the thrift store. So keep in mind a lot of these rare items that people share, and sometimes I'll even share, the point of it isn't to tell you to go out there and find it today or find it tomorrow. The purpose is for you to be educated and have that in the back of your mind. And if you ever see it, you recognize it, you're aware of it and you pick it up. Now, if you educate yourself with 1,000 rare items over a five year period, you might only find 12, or 15, or 20, or maybe 80 or maybe six of them. But at the end of the day, you found one of those rare items because you were educated. And that's the goal of sharing these items on my YouTube channel, when I go through the sold listings, when I talk about various brands when I show you items that sold for $400 isn't to get your hopes up, isn't to get too overly excited. I know what it's like to be new and to maybe be a little green thinking that you're going to go out and find it like that. I apologize for anyone who gets their hopes up, but realistically you can find these items. Not everyone's going to find them,
Hey, what's happening everybody on YouTube? Steve here with Raiken Profit coming back to you with another video from live in my kitchen. And I'm actually getting ready to make some potatoes. I'm pretty excited about that. But in any event, in today's video I want to answer a question that I got in one of my latest videos. As you can see, here's a video of myself talking about some beginner tips on buying and selling books on Amazon. And I got a question, saying ... It's actually from [Tanya Gonzalez] asking, "Where do you get all these books? I know thrift stores. I went to three different Goodwills, and didn't find anything that was worth reselling on a bookshelf. Should I just go more often? Any tips on finding books? Thank you." So, Tanya Gonzalez, want to thank you for this question. Appreciate you checking out my channel and everything.
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So let me get right into this question. So, let's talk about, where do I get my books. I live in Connecticut, first of all, to give you some context to this conversation. But primarily I go sourcing for books at my local thrift stores. So I'm lucky enough, in Connecticut, to have a bunch of Savers thrift stores in the area. And if you don't know what Savers is, it's kind of like a Value Village on steroids. What's the other one called? I forget what it's called, but there's another one that's somewhat like Value Village as well. But Savers is big. It's a huge thrift store, and they got tons of items. Electronics, toys, clothing. But their book section is massive over there, and the thing I like about Savers, at least in the Savers in my area, I've seen different ones, but the Savers in Connecticut, they usually price their books at $1.99 or $2.99, even for the big textbooks. Now, granted, there are some Savers where they'll put, like, $10, $12, $15 prices on their textbooks. But the ones around here at Savers, I could get a textbook for three bucks. Two to three bucks. I do really good at Savers. There's a tons of books, a lot of them fall through the cracks. Nonfiction, fiction. My mother, Momma Profits, if you've seen her on some of my videos, she actually does a lot of kids' books, and children's books as well. So, I get a lot of my books from Savers, I get a lot of my books from Goodwills. Salvation Army, I used to do really well with books over there. But they've been kind of going, like, down the drain. They changed up their pricing structure. Before, you used to be able to get like three books for a dollar. But now they're doing this new thing that, the price of the book will be 90 percent off the MSRP. So if the book's coming in at 30 bucks, then it'll be $3. Which isn't bad, but a lot of the textbooks might have prices on at like 70, 80, 90, hundred bucks. And they are ... it just gets crazy. Still, don't discriminate against Salvation Army. It's really different based on the location and whatnot. So, yeah, thrift stories is primarily where I get my books. Now, you did ask a question, Tanya, asking, "Should I just go more often?" And to answer that, I'd say yes. You definitely have to go more often if you want to find more books, obviously. But even more importantly, you gotta find the best days and the best times. For me, I've always found that I do best in the morning to afternoon time. Typically like Monday through Wednesday. It seems like when Thursday hits, Friday, Saturday, like, people are getting out of work early. There's more competition over there. And I just don't find as much. But again, that's just me, my location and how I've been doing. But you're going to have to figure out, Tanya, when's the best time for you to go. Right? When do the Goodwills or the Savers, when do they bring out the new inventory. When is the competition most likely not going to be there. And one thing I want to say is, there is a lot of competition now with booksellers and book scanne...
Hey, what's going on everybody? I'm YouTube, Steve with Raiken Profit coming to you guys with another video and I'm actually at my little work station area right now in my garage. So if you're hearing a little bit of an echo, I apologize. I'm going to do the best I can in this video. In this video, I want to talk a little bit about books and give you guys some tips for selling books. So as you guys can see, I'm in my little work station area right here. I've got my laptop with Inventory Lab up and running, I've got my Scotty Peelers, I just purchased a new batch and these help with getting the stickers off, so if you ever go sourcing books or whatnot at Goodwill's, thrift stores, flea markets, wherever you go, one quick tip I have for you is to pick up some Scotty Peelers, they're on Amazon for like eight or nine dollars. And it's really easy, you just put the book down, you use it and hopefully it works pretty good, but for me it does the job and you peel it right up and boom you've got the sticker off, if that will focus in or not.
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So that's one tip right there, and it's when you're prepping your books and you're getting them all prepared for your shipment, instead of using your fingernails, just use a Scotty Peelers, save your nails and it's a little bit quicker as well. Another thing is be very, very careful when you are prepping your books that you don't miss a sticker. I mean this book looks good to go, right? It looks like it's ready to roll, but if you take a closer look, they hid a sticker right on the binding of that book and I'll tell you right now, the worst thing you can do it ship in any item, especially a book though with the sticker on because these are usually cheap, you know fifty cents or a dollar. The worst thing you can do is ship in a book that is selling for maybe forty or fifty bucks and it's got a dollar sticker on the side. So be very, very careful that you take all the stickers off. Another tip I have for you guys is during the inspection phase, before you actually pay for the book. So let's just say you're at a thrift store, because that's probably going to be the most common place you buy a book to resell on Amazon or whatever platform you use. Say you're at a bookstore and you take out your phone, trying to see where my phone is, you take out your phone, you pull up your Amazon seller app, I've got my app up right now and let's say you get the app up and you scan it, let's get this things scanned in. All right, so you've scanned the book and as it loads you see a 487,000 rank, and you're like that's not a bad rank, it's got five reviews. Used is coming in at $24.95. You're like you know what, this is only a dollar or two bucks, I'm going to buy it. Right? That's what you're thinking. Wait, before you buy it, make sure to flip through the book a little bit. Comb through it, make sure all the pages are there. Make sure there's not like a ton of writing or ripped out pages, or tons of highlighting. And again, you can still sell a book that has writing in it or even a rip in the page, or highlighting or a name written in it. But just inspect it first because it just might not be worth it. If you know, you're picking up a book for two bucks and it's only selling for $12, you know you could make three or four dollars on it, but is it really worth it if it's all destroyed and you're going to have to sell it in acceptable condition. So be sure to inspect it. Also, one more thing, look at the back of the book. Some textbooks and various types of books will actually have a CD that comes with it and that could make or break the deal. I will not sell a book that's supposed to come with a CD and it doesn't have. I won't put it up there as acceptable and say it's missing the CD, because I just feel like you're playing with fire when you're doing that. This book actually did have a CD,
What's happening everybody on YouTube? Steve here with Raiken Profit, raikenprofit.com. Coming back to you guys with another video. I just left the Goodwill, which is right over here, and I popped out a couple items. I just want to share with you my little thrift haul and share with you what I found, how much I hope to sell it for, what I paid for it, in hopes to help you out. So if you're ready to rock and roll, let's dive into this video. This is actually an item that I found right before Goodwill at the Salvation Army. I want to share this with you. This is a Disney Pixar Wall-E toy. Pretty cool. You can see the original price tag from ToysRUs that was $16.99. I ended up getting this for $5.99. I forgot what it's going for. I think it's going for 20 or 30 bucks. I've got to double scan it but I know it was going for some pretty decent cash. Some of these older toys that are outdated and they don't sell anymore, they go for really good cash. So that was really cool. Always scan, scan the barcodes and see what it's selling for.
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The next item that I picked up was this board game, Great States Junior for ages two to four, no two to four players, ages four to seven. There's a price tag on the back, an original price tag of $24.99. I ended up paying six bucks for this item right here. I forgot what it's selling for. I always forget what it's going for, I think it was going for 20 bucks or something like that. I've got to double check this one. But I love board games. Just scan them, scan them all day long. Let me know what this is going for in the comments section because I know you guys love to look up what I buy. I'll pick up board games and make three or four bucks. I'll make a 30, 40, 50 percent ROI on these items because they sell quickly. Now again, I forget what the rank was on this and I forget what it's selling for, but I can only imagine that if I bought it, it's probably worth some decent cash. All right, next item up is this Puzz 3D puzzle. This is brand new in the stretch wrap. Check out the price guys, three bucks on this. Pretty confident I'm going to put this on ebay versus Amazon because it's got a little, it's really hard to show you this because there's not a lot of room in this car, but it's kind of got a little indentation right here. It's been kind of pressed in a little bit so selling stuff like this on Amazon worries me if it's not in brand new gift ready condition. What I mean is it's in perfect condition like it's coming right off the store shelf. I think this was going for like 30 or 40 bucks new, something around there. So for three bucks, definitely an awesome item. Yeah, cool. Check out Puzz 3D. Some of the Puzz 3D items can go for really, really big money. That one wasn't super popular. Here's another board game, got this from Salvation Army $2.99. These things always do well. This is from 1990, the game is Othello for two players, ages eight to adult. Brand new from 1990. There's going to be someone out there who played this game when they were a kid, when they were younger, and they're going to want it new. Because the thing about new is, they know all the pieces are going to be in there. It might not be in perfect shape, there's some shelf wear and what not, but so many times people buy used board games and the pieces are missing. So if you can find it new, find that people want to buy it more often and for a better value. Let's get a thumbnail real quick, hold on one second. Some more stuff that I popped on. Let me pull out the receipt. For this stuff right here because I got a few of those other Goodwill items a couple days before, this is everything that I just popped on from this Goodwill right here, got the receipt and I spent, what did I spend, I spent $25.25 total. Right there, you probably can't see it. Ended up getting one, two, three, four, five, six items.
What's happening everybody? On YouTube, Steve here with Raiken Profit, coming to you guys with another video from a beautiful Saturday afternoon. It's about 12:06 right now, and I woke up pretty late today because I've been feeling a little under the weather and wanted to sleep in to get some rest and recover, and I really just want to get a good rest. I didn't want to wake up at 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning and hit the garage sales, but nevertheless ended up waking up, like I said, a little later, and went out for a coffee and it was about eleven o'clock and decided to hit a couple of garage sales. I hit garage sales for about 15, 20 minutes. I hit one or two? No I hit two. Two sales and there was a third, but I didn't walk up to it; there was nothing there. I hit two sales, spent about 20 minutes, and I want to show you some of the items that I picked up, just to show you that you can make a couple of bucks just screwing around, grabbing a coffee and just running up to a few sales.
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Even if you don't plan out a route and prepare, and wake up early and prep your car and get gas and get ready to go crazy for the day. Nevertheless, you can still go out for 20 minutes, 30 minutes and make a few extra bucks to be able to pay for your week's gas or whatnot. Which is pretty much what I did. So I'm gonna share with you some of the items that I found to sell on eBay and Amazon. So yeah, with that being said, let's dive right into it. Found two of these puppies over at the first garage sale that I went to. And this was a dollar for both of them. So 50 cents each I ended up getting these for, and these are Topsy Tarvy? I don't even know what these are. Upside down tomato planters. Brand new in the box. Opened up the box just to make sure it was brand new, and it is. And it is, never been used, and I got to do some more research on these, but I think these are going for about 15 or 20 bucks each right here. And again, 50 cents each, so if I can make ten bucks profit on each one of those, that would be definitely pretty cool, right there. So I mean, yeah. Walked up at what? 11.15 and found those sitting there, so that was pretty cool. This next pair of ... Well this next item is a tweeter, I'm not sure what is it, by Jensen. I don't even know what this is I'm looking at. It's says features, "Mounting flexibility, smoother response, built-in crossover", I don't know what it is. A dome tweeter. 100 watts, I don't know if it's a speaker or what it is. I need to do some more research on this. But got this thrown into the deal. As you can see, the plastic's a little ripped off at the edge, and it's got some cracking in the plastic. So I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with this, I see a Walmart sticker on it right there. So I'm probably gonna throw this as like, like new on eBay just to see what it fetches. I need to do some more research but if I could even get ten or 15 bucks, I mean, why not? But that's kind of an experiment right there. Here's an item that I picked up. It's a bottoms up 15 ounce some type of glass. Some type of glass, but I thought it was really interesting because if you look a little closer, it's got a really cool little design on it. And I scanned it really quick on FBA. I believe it was going for 15 or 20. I need to do some more research. I'm actually having some issues right now with my Note 4 phone, and I'm like, I'm fed up. I'm really, I'm fed up with Android and the Note 4 and the apps are always crashing, it doesn't scan anymore. Sometimes you scan it and it just stops working. So I'm actually going to be getting rid of the Note 4. Peace out Note 4 and hello, iPhone 6. So I'm gonna be making that exchange. But I'm having a little bit of trouble researching items right now on Amazon. But I think this should be, do well. I paid two bucks for it. They wanted five, so I actually walked away from the deal.
What's happening, everybody on YouTube? Steve here, Raiken profit, coming to you guys with another video. I'm actually right behind Savers. Saver's is right over here. We got Walmart back here. I actually do quite a bit of sourcing in this area, but in any event, I wanted to make this video, because I want to share with you some cool items that I just recently found, and to the untrained eye, to the average person, I honestly believe that most people will just pass this opportunity up.
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So I wanted to share with you what I found. It's in the book category, but it's a little different. It's a little unique. It's a little outdated, and I was actually quite surprised that these items that I found and scanned were actually selling for some pretty decent money. Let me share with you what I came across here. I ended up picking up four of these old, outdated roadmaps. Right? These little atlases, and they're pretty old. I mean, they've got to be 10 to 20 years old, and I saw them sitting on the shelf over at Saver's, and I ended up getting these for $1.79 each. And I said, you know what. These things have got to be rare. They got to be hard to come across. Let's just scan them. I scanned a couple of them. One was going for $70. I think this one was with a 1.1 million rank which isn't horrible. This one right here wasn't the best but I don't think there were any FBA offers so I'm probably going to shoot for like $25. It does have a 2.8 million rank so that was quite a bit high. But there was another one in here. I don't know if it was the Cape Cod or Metro Boston Atlas but one of them had a 300,000 rank. It was going for like $60. So one was going for $70, another was $60, another was $25, another one was right around that same ballpark area and I was just quite surprised that people were still buying these. Now that I think about it I know that there are some folks that, maybe they're in their 70s or 80s and they're accustomed to that. They're not used applications and Google maps and GPSs and they grew up with good old maps. Believe it or not there was a day and time when we didn't have GPSs. So that was a cool little find that I came across at Savers, $1.79 each. Should make some decent profit but I just want to make this video and share this little bolo item with you because I almost passed it up. But I thought to myself, this is different. This is unique. Let's just give it a quick scan. I used the Amazon seller app and lo and behold there's some good profit to be made in these items. In terms of the actual brand names on these items, this one's American Map right here. The one that was selling for the most, this Western Connecticut one, I believe the name was Hagstrom right here. You can even see these were only selling for $24.95 back in the day. I'm going to see if there's a date in here. I don't see a date but it's got to be the '90s I'm assuming, but yeah, pretty cool find right there. So if you've ever found one of these old-school roadmaps, these ancient pieces of history let me know. If you ever see them, scan them. I'm not an expert when it comes to those but there were literally four of them sitting on the rack, on the book rack and I scanned them all and they were all selling for decent money. Now the ranks weren't spectacular but you want to know what? If I can get something for $1.79 and wait four or five months to flip it for 25 or 30 bucks, I'll do that all day long especially if there's not many FBA sellers. So yeah. Hopefully you guys are all doing well. Sorry for not making so many videos. I've been super busy, focused on my health. Been doing a great job with the working out and been busy with the different businesses that I've been running but I do want to consistently and continue to make more videos. I've got a lot of cool things planned that I've been working on behind the scenes that I mentioned in ...
I cannot say this enough, if you want to be successful you've gotta stop worrying what other people think about you. It doesn't matter if you're poor and you're not making any money and you're broke and you're suffering and you're in poverty, or if you've made it, you're making millions, or you're making thousands, or you have your own business, people are going to have their opinions, people are going to judge.
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Your friends are going to talk about you, your family members are going to talk about you, people on social media are going to talk about you whether you're poor or you're successful, whether you're thin or you're fat, you know? Whatever. So stop worrying about what other people think. If you want something, if you're hungry for something, if you've got this thought in your mind every single day, I wanna start my own business, I wanna get thin, I wanna get fit, I wanna inspire people, I wanna start a youtube channel, stop worrying if everybody else is going to approve, if they're gonna give you permission. Do what you love, it's 2017, we're getting ready to go into 2018 shortly. With technology and the internet, it's easier than ever to connect with millions of people, it's easier than ever to connect with like minded people. And I'll tell you right now, if you're interested in something, if you're excited about something, I guarantee you, someone else out there is as well. If you want something, go for it, stop worrying, you can do it. But I'll tell you, you've gotta learn, and this is something that I've been dealing with, we've gotta learn to get out of our own way. If you wanna build a business, if you wanna lose weight, if you wanna change your life, there's certain things that you're gonna need to do. You can't just look at your vision board and say positive affirmations and read books and watch youtube videos and expect to be successful, it doesn't work that way. Yes, all of those are stepping stones, and it's part of the equation, but at the end of the day, you're going to have to go out there and take action and do something. You're gonna have to do something. So, get out of your own way, stop worrying about what people think. I tell you if I worried ab out what everybody had to think about me and my personality and my content, I would never make another youtube video again. Because the more visibility that you start to grasp, the more you start to put yourself out there, you start going to the gym, you start losing weight, you start making youtube videos, right? You start listing on Ebay, you start having success. People are gonna start talking, and they're gonna start judging and they're gonna tell you, "You should do it this way," or, "You shouldn't do it that way," or, "You're on the wrong path," or, "You can't do that, that's not conventional, get a typical normal job. You're not going to be able to withstand that, you're not going to be able to reach your goals. Screw all that, if you want something, go out there, take it and make it happen.
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Why You Will FAIL Selling on Amazon in 30 Days or Less I want to talk about three reasons why tons of sellers fail when they try to get into the book selling business on Amazon. I’ve been selling books on Amazon for a couple of years. I actually taught my mother, who recently retired, how to sell books. She’s been selling books for a couple of years as well. Now she’s doing it full time and getting great results. If I can do it, if I can teach my mother do it, you can definitely do it as well. But there are three things in particular that stand out about why people fail when it comes to selling books on Amazon. There are some big hurdles that you’re going to have to face, and there are some challenges that are a little bit outside the box that you might not expect.
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#1: You Lack Patience The number one reason people fail selling books on Amazon—even after seeing hundreds and thousands of people succeed—is that they lack patience. When selling books, you really need to be patient. I had someone message me the other day, saying, “Steve, I went into a thrift store, and I scanned like 30 books. There were no good books. I left. This doesn’t work.” But the truth is that you have got to scan more than 30 books. I can tell you, there have been 50 times I’ve scanned hundreds of books and didn’t find anything. Now, I’m not a full-time bookseller. I don’t know it all. But I can tell you right now, sometimes you’re going to win and sometimes you’re going to lose. But the cool thing about books—especially if you live in the right area—is that I can tell you there have been hundreds of times that I found books that sell for $70, $80, $100, or $150. There have been tons of times I found books for $7, $8, or $9 at the thrift store and made $400, $500, or $600. With selling books, you’ve got to find the right books, especially with the fees—long-term storage fees, selling fees, etc. The fees are not minuscule anymore. They’re growing rapidly. You’ve got to be patient to find the right book. You will go through upwards of 150 books. That’s why if you’re using the Amazon seller app—which is a great way to get started—you may want to invest in a Bluetooth scanner. It’s one of those scanners you hold in your hand. It’s just a lot quicker because you’re using a laser versus using a camera. It’s a numbers game. The more books you scan, the more money you’re typically going to make. You’ve got to be patient. If you’re going to go into a thrift store and just spend 10 minutes picking and choosing as a beginner and think you’re going to make it work, it’s just not going to happen.
2: You’re Using a Sourcing Strategy That Doesn’t Work for Your Area
You keep saying there are no profitable books. Here’s the thing. There might not be any profitable books in thrift stores in your area. Why? In certain areas, the thrift stores are actually sending the books off to Amazon or merchant fulfilling them themselves. That may or may not be a good opportunity for you. Maybe you don’t live around a college, near schools, or in a highly literate area. You might not have a lot of profitable books in your area, but that doesn’t mean you cannot succeed as a bookseller on Amazon. That just means that specific business model of going to thrift stores won’t necessarily work. You might have to get into online arbitrage. There are software packages out there that allow you to scan various listings and set up various criteria. You can actually buy books off of Amazon or other websites and flip them on Amazon. Now, there are certain rules you’re going to have to obey. Plenty of people are out there crushing it with online arbitrage of books. Thrift stores might not be best for you. It might be library sales, church sales, garage sales, flea markets, craigslist, or Facebook Marketplace. Don’t say you can’t make money with books or that it doesn’t work for you.
Why You Will FAIL Selling on Amazon in 30 Days or Less I want to talk about three reasons why tons of sellers fail when they try to get into the book selling business on Amazon. I’ve been selling books on Amazon for a couple of years. I actually taught my mother, who recently retired, how to sell books. She’s been selling books for a couple of years as well. Now she’s doing it full time and getting great results. If I can do it, if I can teach my mother do it, you can definitely do it as well. But there are three things in particular that stand out about why people fail when it comes to selling books on Amazon. There are some big hurdles that you’re going to have to face, and there are some challenges that are a little bit outside the box that you might not expect.
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#1: You Lack Patience The number one reason people fail selling books on Amazon—even after seeing hundreds and thousands of people succeed—is that they lack patience. When selling books, you really need to be patient. I had someone message me the other day, saying, “Steve, I went into a thrift store, and I scanned like 30 books. There were no good books. I left. This doesn’t work.” But the truth is that you have got to scan more than 30 books. I can tell you, there have been 50 times I’ve scanned hundreds of books and didn’t find anything. Now, I’m not a full-time bookseller. I don’t know it all. But I can tell you right now, sometimes you’re going to win and sometimes you’re going to lose. But the cool thing about books—especially if you live in the right area—is that I can tell you there have been hundreds of times that I found books that sell for $70, $80, $100, or $150. There have been tons of times I found books for $7, $8, or $9 at the thrift store and made $400, $500, or $600. With selling books, you’ve got to find the right books, especially with the fees—long-term storage fees, selling fees, etc. The fees are not minuscule anymore. They’re growing rapidly. You’ve got to be patient to find the right book. You will go through upwards of 150 books. That’s why if you’re using the Amazon seller app—which is a great way to get started—you may want to invest in a Bluetooth scanner. It’s one of those scanners you hold in your hand. It’s just a lot quicker because you’re using a laser versus using a camera. It’s a numbers game. The more books you scan, the more money you’re typically going to make. You’ve got to be patient. If you’re going to go into a thrift store and just spend 10 minutes picking and choosing as a beginner and think you’re going to make it work, it’s just not going to happen.
2: You’re Using a Sourcing Strategy That Doesn’t Work for Your Area
You keep saying there are no profitable books. Here’s the thing. There might not be any profitable books in thrift stores in your area. Why? In certain areas, the thrift stores are actually sending the books off to Amazon or merchant fulfilling them themselves. That may or may not be a good opportunity for you. Maybe you don’t live around a college, near schools, or in a highly literate area. You might not have a lot of profitable books in your area, but that doesn’t mean you cannot succeed as a bookseller on Amazon. That just means that specific business model of going to thrift stores won’t necessarily work. You might have to get into online arbitrage. There are software packages out there that allow you to scan various listings and set up various criteria. You can actually buy books off of Amazon or other websites and flip them on Amazon. Now, there are certain rules you’re going to have to obey. Plenty of people are out there crushing it with online arbitrage of books. Thrift stores might not be best for you. It might be library sales, church sales, garage sales, flea markets, craigslist, or Facebook Marketplace. Don’t say you can’t make money with books or that it doesn’t work for you.
First 30 Days Reselling: Avoid This Mistake; You’re Wasting Money! There is one mistake that I would recommend new sellers avoid if you’re just getting started with Amazon or eBay. Many new sellers haven’t sold anything. They haven’t made any money yet. Maybe they’ve just watched some videos. But they jump into it and start spending all this money on software, supplies, and equipment. They upgrade their phone. They get these recurring subscriptions for scanning apps, and they haven’t even gotten started yet. I think that’s a big, big mistake, and let me tell you why. If you’re new, the first thing that you need to prove to yourself is that this actually works. There’s a big difference between watching me do it and you doing it yourself. There’s a big difference between seeing it and actually doing it and having that confidence. So many people go out and spend all this money, and then they give up and quit. They waste their time, they waste their money, or maybe they go into debt.
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Begin on a Budget I’d highly recommend getting started on a budget. So, for example, I’ve known several new resellers who have gone out and bought these recurring-subscription scanning apps. It’s not that some of these apps aren’t great, but when you’re new and getting started, just start with the Amazon Seller app. You don’t need a sophisticated app if you’re just getting started. You need to learn how to scan, how to analyze, and how to ship your first box into Amazon. You don’t need to go out and buy poly bags and poly mailers and an industrial clothing rack because you’re going to scale to a thousand clothing pieces before you even buy and list and sell your first item. Make Sure This Whole Business Is For You Be humble at first. Prove to yourself that this actually works. The truth is that this may or may not be the business for you. Many people are so accustomed to following directions, clocking in and clocking out, and being told what to do. They’re not used to being their own boss and being disciplined to do things without somebody coming down and threatening to fire them. I’m telling you, being a complete and total self-starter is harder than you think. When you’re first getting started, don’t go out and spend all this money on phones and software and subscriptions. First, go out there and use the tools that you have. You don’t have to have all the fanciest tools and stuff to make it work. I remember when I first got started reselling, I didn’t even have a Smartphone, to be honest. I was so broke. I was out there just going based on memory. The first six months I didn’t have a phone. It was crazy, but it taught me a lot. When you’re first getting started, don’t go out and spend all this money. Just get started, go to some meet-ups, watch some videos, study the sold listings, use the Amazon Seller app, and go from there. Trust me. There’s plenty of time for you to go and buy all the cool equipment and all the gadgets and the scan fobs and the Bluetooth wireless—whatever the next thing to come out that will help you scale your business. But you don’t have to worry about scaling and optimizing when you’re first getting started. Just don’t worry about all that stuff. Start with an Education Just get started, learn, and go out there and start visiting the thrift stores. Start visiting the garage sales. Start taking action. Start buying some stuff. Start listing some stuff. Learn the process. Check out YouTube videos on how to ship your first Amazon FBA shipment. Amazon actually has so much documentation, like videos and all different types of tutorials, teaching you how to do it step-by-step. List that first item on eBay. Learn how to ship an item on eBay. Learn how to process your first return. Just go through the process. Don’t worry about spending a bunch of money at first. It’s not going to help you.
This Simple 30-Minute Personal Finance Exercise Saved Me $342 This Month For many of us, our main goal in business is to make more money, and we’re always focusing on what the next item is to buy. What’s the next business to start? How can I amplify what I’m already doing? How can I make more money in my business? But don’t forget that there are two sides of the coin when it comes to growing your overall net worth and making more money. One side is making more money, but also another side is minimizing expenses, minimizing bills, and saving money where you can. One of the things that I did recently—and this is something you should do periodically, maybe once a month or at least once a quarter—is go through all of my statements. This is just basic personal finance, but I feel it’s overlooked because a lot of people are just focused on making more money and never really take a look at reoccurring bills and if they have increased. For example, my bookkeeping service just increased in price, and I may or may not want to keep it.
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Pay Attention to Bills Do we have subscriptions to stupid things that we don’t even use anymore? Maybe it has to do with your business; maybe it’s something in your personal life. For example, maybe your phone bill went up or your cable bill went up, and you could renegotiate that. Maybe something got tacked onto one of your bills and you didn’t realize it. You got charged something on your credit card and didn’t realize it. Once a month, once a quarter, or once a week—whatever that is for you—go through all of your bills. Now, one of the things I’ve emphasized in the past is making sure that your business and personal finances are separated. So any time you buy something for your business, incur an expense, or gain something in income, it should be separated. Your expenses should be on its own business credit card or at least a credit card that’s only for your business. Your income should be coming through only on your business account. Go Through Everything You should be going through every now and then and checking, minimizing, getting rid of, or eliminating bills that are affecting you every single month. If you’re getting hit by a bill or getting charged an increased amount, that’s taking away from your bottom line. So just make sure to go through every now and then and check all your credit cards, business and personal. Check your bank accounts. Make sure you’re not getting charged something you didn’t know about. Check your PayPal. Make sure you’re not getting something additional or something that you completely forgot about. You’ve got to make sure to go into your PayPal settings to take a look at your reoccurring subscription fees because these things add up. My Experience I just practiced this exercise the other day, and one thing that I actually did was take a look at the bill for my email provider, ConvertKit. I realized that my bill had gone up substantially, which is because my email subscriber base had grown so much recently. It went up from $230 a month to $350. And then what I did was go in, found all my cold subscribers (people who weren’t opening my emails), and sent them a campaign and deleted them. It took my bill from $350 down to $200, so I saved $150 off the bat. Then I eliminated a bunch of apps that I wasn’t using on my iPhone Store. I minimized probably a good $400 a month because I decided to stop being lazy and actually go through and look and update things. I also negotiated a couple of things with my cable company and Internet. One More Tip Just make sure to go through and check this out from time to time. We’re always so focused on making more money, but we can hold on to more money and grow our net worth if we take care of both sides of the equation, not only focusing on making more money but reducing bills, minimizing bills, eliminating bills,
Take a Step Back In all the hustle and bustle of life, sometimes we forget that it is okay every now and then to step back from business, hobbies, or whatever to gain clarity. A lot of people in life are a little disappointed or feel as though they’ve been short- changed in a sense in terms of health, or fitness, or business, or money. Often that’s because we get stuck in the rat race. We get stuck in the grind. We get stuck doing what we’re normally doing on a regular basis because human beings are creatures of habit.
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The Value in Reevaluating The results that we have in life, the outcomes, are mainly due to the things that we’re doing on a regular basis. These things then turn into habits, and in order to change, we really need to take a second to reevaluate what we’re doing, our values, and why we’re doing these things. We need to take a step back to reflect. I’ve done that myself over the course of a week or a week and a half, not only in terms of my YouTube channel and the overall vision of it, but my business and relationships and different things like that as well. If you ever find yourself feeling like you’re on a hamster wheel and just running in place—working hard but not getting the results you want, watching the months fly by on your calendar but only getting the same results without changing the way you wanted to—then try to take a step back. Are You Stuck in the Wrong Habits? At times we’re not getting what we want because we’re stuck in the wrong habits. We’re stuck doing what we’re comfortable doing. What we do on a regular basis is what we expect to become acquainted with. We get comfortable, we get used to it, and we get put in this box. To get out of that box and change, you’ve got to reevaluate. Take some time for yourself. Meditate. Walk. Eat healthy. Brainstorm. Get out a pen and pad and start writing down the things you want to do and why you want to do them. Then start talking to friends and colleagues and associates. Just don’t be scared to take that step back. Many people say consistency is key—and I’m the first to say that—and that the people who succeed do so because they stick with it and don’t give up. But every now and then, you do need to take a step back, whether it’s for a day or two, or for a week, or two weeks, or a month, and reevaluate. Ask yourself, “Am I climbing up the right ladder?” If you’re trying to get to a certain destination and have your ladder leaned up against the wrong house, it doesn’t matter what you do or how hard you climb that ladder. If your ladder is leaning against the wrong house, you’re just not going to get to where you want to go. Take a Moment Right Now Take a second right now to think about your life and where you are. Ask yourself, “Do I need to reevaluate? Do I need to take a step back?” And if you feel that you need to, then do it. Take a step back.
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Why You Are LOSING MONEY Selling on eBay and How to Fix it FAST! I hear a lot of beginner eBay sellers complaining that they’re losing money when they first start their eBay business, and I want to talk about the number one reason people get started selling on eBay and end up losing money. It’s really simple. The thing that they’re not doing is spending the time to research the item appropriately before they buy it. They see an item—it might be some toy or game that to them is very special because they’ve enjoyed it. They’ve liked it. They think, “Wow! This is amazing!” And they just buy it.
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What They Don’t Do They don’t research the price it’s selling for. They don’t research the market of how often it’s selling. They don’t research the competition. They just buy the item without doing research. And that’s it. Before you buy an item to sell on eBay, especially when you’re new, you’ve got to make sure you’re researching the item. You’ve got to take into consideration the risk versus the reward. You’ve got to take into consideration how much profit you could potentially make if you sold it. Now, are you calculating that profit based on the top end of the market? The low end? The middle range? Are you researching how many have sold over the last 30 to 90 days? Are you researching the seasonality? Are you looking to sell a summer item in the middle of winter, potentially tying up your money in the item until it is more in demand? What You Should Do Do your research before you buy an item, especially when you’re new or on a budget. A lot of people start an eBay business and only have $100 in their bank account. Maybe they only have a couple hundred dollars. Maybe they’re working a full-time job, so they don’t have a ton of time to put into it. When you’re first getting started, it’s better to actually move slowly. You want to research almost too much. You want to take your time. You really want to make sure that what you buy is going to be a winner. When you are first getting started, I would rather see you buy things that flip quicker for a smaller profit instead of going toward something that’s more complicated that might be a bigger profit but is a higher risk. You want to start the process of completing the flip. You want to get accustomed to the eBay platform. You want to learn about the various processes from listing to photography to shipping. You want to build that strong foundation. People are losing money when they first get started selling on eBay because they’re not researching enough. They’re getting into items that they don’t really know that well. They might buy an electronic item, and even though the sold listings might be looking good and there might be a high profit, they don’t even bother to test the item. They might not even know how to test the item. They don’t understand the market. Take It Slow to Avoid Some Common Mistakes Take things slowly when you’re starting your eBay business. Get in the habit of making sure that when you buy something, it’s a good risk versus reward. Make sure there’s enough profit margin in case things go wrong. What happens if you do your calculations and you think you can make $20, but when you go to ship the item, you’ve miscalculated and it ends up costing an extra $15? I’ve made that mistake. You’ve pretty much eliminated most of your profit, so you really want to do your research. Big tip: download the eBay app onto your phone, and research the item before you buy it. Make sure that the item has sold multiple times. Make sure that the item you’re looking to invest in is actually pretty close to or the exact item that is selling. Is it the same color? The same size? The same condition? Study the sold listings and see what the competition is doing in terms of their descriptions and their listings. People lose money because they’re trying to rush the process too much a...
Selling Clothing on eBay: Big Money Flipping This PROFITABLE Clothing Tag! There’s a specific tag that I love to pick up when it comes to Ralph Lauren Polo. Ralph Lauren Polo has a lot of various tags. There’s Ralph Lauren Polo, the blue ones, the purple ones, green, black, Vintage Polo Sport—there are a lot of various types of Ralph Lauren Polo out there. But I want to share with you a specific one that I found that probably has an estimated resale of $30 to $60 depending on how long I want to wait to get the right buyer for my item.
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Look for the Purple Label If you’re in the clothing game, you have got to be on the lookout for this. It’s the Ralph Lauren purple label. You’ll see “Ralph Lauren” on the tag written in cursive. The label is purple. I picked up one not too long ago. It was a button-front shirt, 100 percent two-ply cotton in a size 17. On the purple Ralph Lauren label, it said, “Made in Italy.” It was tagged as $9.99 but was half off in the store that week. Truth be told, I would have paid $10 for this shirt. I don’t know why this was sitting in the store for three weeks. I was a little skeptical seeing a purple label there half off because I thought about how many resellers passed it up. I thought maybe there was damage and that I really needed to inspect it. It was flawless—great condition. So be on the lookout for the Ralph Lauren purple label. If you find one, it will definitely be a clothing item that is higher end. And it could be one of several types of clothing: button-front shirts, polo shirts, T-shirts, etc. If you can find a Ralph Lauren suit that has the purple label, you’re in it for big bucks. Just be on the lookout for anything purple label. Another Quick Tip Ralph Lauren is awesome. It’s definitely one of my favorite brands. I’ll give you another tip when it comes to Ralph Lauren. Anything that’s weird or unique or has an interesting patch or has a bear or is made from an interesting material—the rare stuff—can go extremely, extremely high in terms of resale value. So keep your eyes peeled for Ralph Lauren and that purple label!
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Selling on eBay for Beginners 2018: Do This ONE THNG Every Day! Maybe you are the person who is just getting started with eBay, and you’re trying to figure out how to learn about what to buy and sell. If this is you, I want to give you one piece of advice: Study the sold listings. That’s it. Study the sold listings. If you go over to eBay, you can search through various categories. So, for example, if you wanted to learn about clothing, you could go into the clothing category and then filter out exactly what you want to study in the sold listings. The sold listings button is essentially just a button that you click, and it shares with you everything that has sold on eBay.
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How to Build a Foundation of Knowledge What I recommend you do is study the sold listings every single day for 90 days for 30 minutes per day. Doing this exercise is going to help you to build an amazing foundation. So if you want to learn about clothing, the first thing I would do is narrow it down a little bit more. Do you want to sell kids’ clothing? Do you want to sell men’s clothing? Women’s clothing? High-end clothing? What type of clothing do you want to sell? When I was getting started, I wanted to sell mid- to higher-end men’s clothing. What I would do is go over to eBay into the men’s clothing section. I would filter out what I was looking for. I was mostly looking to buy from thrift stores and garage sales, so I would filter out used items because most of the items I were finding were used. I would filter out Buy It Now because that was how I was mostly going to be selling my items. I filtered out US only because I am in the United States. And then I would filter out price ranges of $20 and more. Essentially what that was doing was setting myself up with a particular type of item that I wanted to learn about and to be prepared for when I found it in a thrift store. I was trying to find items that had a good market, that were selling on a regular basis in the United States, and that customers were purchasing via Buy It Now. And I would just go through and study for 30 minutes every single day. Some days I would actually narrow down a little deeper into the men’s clothing and study dress shirts. Another day I would study shorts. Another day I would study pants. Another day I would study T-shirts. And over a 90-day period or so, I built a really strong foundation. If you’re trying to figure out what to buy and sell on eBay that has a market and will make you a profit, you need to study the sold listings. It Works for Any Type of Item You can do this for anything—clothing, toys, ballpoint pens, wallets, ties, computer items, collectibles, vintage items. The list goes on and on. This is the best advice that I ever received when I was first getting started, and I want to pass this along to you. The people who succeed in this business are consistently learning. They’re growing. They’re going out and experimenting with new items. They’re putting themselves in a position to get lucky. Go out there, study the sold listings, and build yourself a strong foundation so you can make money reselling for years.
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Starting an Amazon Book Business (Step 1): Free Account vs. Paid Subscription So you’re wanting to get into selling books on Amazon FBA, but you’re not sure whether you should sign up for the free Amazon account or if you should pay the monthly fee to upgrade to the professional account (check Amazon’s site for the latest pricing; at the time of writing it was $40 a month). As you can probably guess, there are pros, benefits, cons, and downsides to either having the free versus the upgraded professional account. Let’s dive right into the info.
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The Big Deal about the Buy Box If you take a look at an Amazon listing—for example, if you’re looking to purchase trash bags—most of the time you are just going click Buy It Now. When you hit Buy It Now, essentially what’s happening is you’re purchasing from the person who has the Buy Box. The Buy Box is the person who is going to get this sale. If you don’t have the Buy Box, your customer will have to go in and look through all the listings and choose you, which is possible, but a lot of sales come through the Buy Box. By having the monthly plan for the pro account, you are actually eligible to receive the Buy Box, which is something that will increase your sales. Now, if you have the free account, you can’t get the Buy Box. I don’t know if that’s just with books or other products, but with books you can’t get the Buy Box. So that will definitely hurt your sales right there. The Buy Box is one of the biggest reasons why— especially if you want to be selling books on a higher-volume status—you will want to get that monthly plan. It will definitely pay off. Space Another reason, if you really want to take this book-selling business seriously, to upgrade to the monthly plan is because when you have the free account, you’re limited to a specific space. Amazon essentially says, “Hey, you only have a free account. We’re only going to allow you to send in ‘this many’ books that takes up ‘this certain’ square footage.” At the time of writing, it’s a space that would fit anywhere between two to 500 books. For most people, that might not be that big of a deal. Maybe you’re just getting started. You’re not worried about having thousands of books. To be honest, I don’t even have that many books in my inventory. That probably isn’t the biggest deal for you. The Buy Box is a big one though. The limited space may or may not affect you. Additional Fees May Add Up The third thing you need to consider is that when you have the free account, you actually get hit with an additional $0.99 fee. For example, say you were to sell 40 books during the month. You’re actually going to pay around $40 additional in fees compared with the person who has the pro account. So once you start to go over 40 sales, you’re definitely going to want to go to the upgraded account because it will make sense financially. So if you were wondering which account to go with, I hope this information makes the decision a little easier for you.
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Selling Books on Amazon FBA: What Ranks to Buy and What Ranks to PASS! I want to talk about selling books on Amazon FBA. Now, I do want to say the advice I’m going to give you will be concerning FBA sellers, so if you’re selling as a merchant, I would probably skip this information. But in any event, I want to talk about the ranks you should stick with when selling books on Amazon FBA. What’s a Good Rank? People are always talking about rank. They’re saying, “This was an 80,000 rank…a 2 million rank…a 5 million rank. Is this a good rank in the book category?” Rank is going to differ per category. For example, a 10,000 rank in books is amazing, whereas a 10,000 rank in video games isn’t that great. For books on Amazon FBA, anything that’s under 100,000 is, to me, a really, really fast moving product. The book category is huge. There are a ton of books, so you could get into some pretty high ranks, and these books will still sell pretty well. For me, anything under 100,000 rank is a score. I’m like, “Boom! Yeah, I’m going to make some money.” Once you start getting up to, say, 300,000, 400,000, 500,000, 600,000, or 700,000 rank, the book is kind of okay in terms of rank. It doesn’t mean it’s going to not sell. It could sell in a day—rank is funny like that. But to me, when I start getting into that range, it starts to become just average and okay. It’s not bad, but it’s just average.
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What about Ranks in the Millions? Now, when you start getting up to, say, 900,000, 1 million, 1.5 million, 2 million—that’s when it starts to become long tail to me. What do I mean by long tail? I mean that you might be sitting on the book for a while. It could be a month, it could be three months, or it could be six months. It’s one of those things where I’m not going to invest a ton of money in it because it’s not a guaranteed sale—though nothing really is a guaranteed sale. It’s all about the risk and reward. For example, let’s say I found a book that was selling for $20 and was ranked 10,000. To me, that’s a fast-turning book. That thing’s going to sell. It’s an automatic sale. That thing is popular. It’s selling a ton of books per day. So if that book was selling for $20, I might be willing to invest, say, $5, $6, or $7. And if another book was selling for $20 but had a 2 million rank, I probably wouldn’t want to spend more than $1 or $2—maybe $3. I’m not willing to invest as much because it’s a slower seller, it’s not a guaranteed sale, and it is long tail. Overall, I’ll invest in any book that’s up to maybe 5 million or 6 million rank. I’ve even gone up to 8 million rank. But you better believe that I’m going to be spending very, very little on that book and there has got to be a huge reward. Let’s say I come across a book—maybe it’s a textbook that’s a little outdated—and it’s selling for $60. Maybe there are 10 or 11 merchants, but there are no FBA sellers. Let's say it’s a 7 million rank. I’ll pay $1 for that—maybe even $2—all day long because I like the risk and reward on that one. If that textbook sells, I’m going to make up to 100 times my money. That’s the way I like to think about the risk and reward when it comes to selling books on Amazon FBA. My Experience If you’re wondering what rank is good and what rank is bad, I can only give my own experience. I’ll stick with below 100,000—that’s amazing to me. If you get under 50,000 or under 20,000, bada-bing bada-boom, the profits are coming soon. That’s a really, really fast sale right there. Anything under 50,000 to 100,000 is really, really good as well. If you start getting over 300,000 and upwards of, say, 700,000 or 800,000, it’s decent. But again, don't discriminate. Just because the rank is saying it’s 800,000, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to sell. I’ve had 2 million rank books sell within a day. There is no exact science to this.
5 Tips to Save Money at Thrift Stores Of course you want to get stuff cheaper. When you get your inventory for less money, that means making more money in your business and more money in your pocket. So let’s dive in with these 5 tips to save money at thrift stores.
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#1: Go on Half-Off Days and Sales Days Wherever you live, I’m going to venture to guess that at least a couple of the thrift stores have regularly planned sales. There are a couple types you should be looking for. Sometimes a thrift store will have big half-off sales every month or two where all their inventory is 50 percent off. Sometimes it’s seasonal, and the thrift store will, for example, have a sale at the end of winter where all winter items are maybe 75 percent off. There are also the thrift stores that utilize a system where items that come in are tagged by color. So all the items that come in during a particular week are tagged with a particular color. And maybe once a week, all tags of a certain color are marked down to a low price or a percentage off. It’s a way that the thrift stores make sure inventory keeps moving out the door so they have room for the new stuff coming in.
2: Make a Donation
Another way to save money is by donating. Many of these thrift stores have a deal where when you donate a bag of items, they will give you a coupon for some percentage off. Much of the time you cannot also combine the coupon with other sales, but sometimes you can. Just make sure to read the fine print. Donating is also a great way to get rid of your “death pile.” A death pile is stuff you have been trying to sell for a while but that just isn’t moving. We all have them. There’s no shame in donating items that you cannot sell. Think of it as making room in your inventory for more profitable items.
3: Participate in Loyalty Programs
Like any business, a thrift store loves repeat business. The more you come in, the more they sell, right? Some thrift stores like to reward loyal customers. They might have a program where you get a stamp on a card for every, say, $5 you spend. Then when you fill up the card, you get a coupon for some percentage off. Again, like the coupon you could get while donating, you often cannot combine this coupon with other sales. Just make sure to check the terms of the coupon. And do make sure to ask if they have a loyalty program; sometimes employees might forget to bring it to your attention.
4: Use Your Status
This is an underutilized tip for sure. Some thrift stores will give you a discount simply because of who you are. For example, maybe the thrift store down the road has a deal where students (college or otherwise) get a certain percentage off. Maybe another thrift store gives a discount to active military or veterans. A third thrift store might have a senior’s day each week where those of a certain higher age might get an additional discount. Again, just make sure to ask the store if they have any programs like that for you to take advantage of.
5: Build Relationships
Relationships are huge. It’s not only about going to the right line because you know that worker will always give you the lowest price possible. It’s key that the store employees get to know you and what you are looking for. You never know when a good relationship will land you an even better deal. A friend of mine was in a thrift store the other day. He said he saw a new printer—a really nice one—and that it was going for $150 on Amazon. They had it priced for $75, but my friend balked at the price. He just didn’t want to risk it at that profit margin. So what did he do? He simply asked the manager if he could get a deal on the printer. The manager must have wanted that printer out of the store (it was kind of big and bulky and taking up a lot of shelf room), because he told my buddy that for $30 cash, it could be his. There Are Ways to Save
BUSTED! CAUGHT STEALING AT GOODWILL Here’s a crazy story that happened that could have cost me $50 profit. I was at Goodwill. I was waiting to get into a dressing room because I wanted to try on a few pieces of clothing for myself. The door was locked, so I went and asked one of the workers, “Can you open up the door?” She said, “It’s going to be a couple of minutes. We’re busy.” I left my cart in front of the dressing room door, and I walked about 20 steps away to the video game section. When I was looking through the video games, all of a sudden, I felt as though I had to go check my cart. I don’t know if it was intuition or I saw it out of the corner of the eye. I left that feeling alone for one minute, but then I said to myself, “I’ve got to go check my cart.”
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A Short Culprit Well, when I looked over there, there was this little girl—probably about seven years old—flying through my cart going crazy. She picked out an advanced caller ID call waiting box. Why would a little girl want that? But she took it. I saw it happen. She took it, sprinted across the store, and ran up to her mom and dad. I realized what was going on. I ran after her. The dad was all bugged out. He looked all sketched out. I said, “What is going on here?” The mom tried to play it off casually and said to the little girl, “Oh, looks like you got caught taking something. Give it back.” So she gave it back to me, and I walked away. I was left thinking to myself, “What just happened there? Did the father or the mother set the little kid on a mission to go steal my item out of my cart or something? Was it a reseller? Am I going crazy?” What was a little girl doing going through my cart and running back and giving it to her parents? I wasn’t sure what happened. I didn’t know if I was losing my mind or had too much Starbucks and my anxiety was going nuts. I didn’t know if it was a setup or what was going on. Keep Your Eyes on Your Prizes The lesson is, regardless, don’t leave your cart alone for too long. You never know when a young girl is going to run up, steal your caller ID, run across the store, and give it to her dad or mom. If it’s the Salvation Army or the Goodwill or the Savers putting out new stuff, some people assume that any cart is up for grabs. So a lot of times, if you leave your cart alone too long, people will start diving into it. They’ll take your stuff. If you’re not careful, you can lose money. If I hadn’t had that feeling to go check on my cart, my item would have been gone. There were too many people in this store. I never would have been able to hunt this thing down. Be Aware Out There Keep your eye out. I’ve heard stories of people kind of stealing from other people’s carts and trying to sabotage others. And sometimes people just don't know; they think it’s the store putting stuff out. Your best bet is to keep your eye on your cart. It can be a little crazy at the thrift store, especially if you go around 4:00 in the afternoon when everyone’s getting out of work. It’s a zoo. It’s a jungle in these thrift stores sometimes. You can’t walk away from your cart for too long because someone might snag your stuff, and then it’s adios to your profits.
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8 Years Later…And SHE STILL Hasn’t Changed! (Story Time) The other day I was getting some groceries, and I ran into this really negative woman I used to work with. I was 29 when I was working at a grocery store called Stop and Shop. I worked in the seafood department, and across from the seafood department was the meat deli. There was this one woman there who was complaining. She was actually a manager of the deli department, and she was constantly complaining. She’d whine. She would yell at everybody. She was so unhappy and had a little sourpuss face on her all the time.
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Finding Something to Get Upset About One time when I was working in the seafood department, it was super slow. I did all my side work; I did everything—and there was nothing really for me to be doing. So I pulled out a book; it was a Tony Robbins book. I was sitting in the corner reading. She came over to me and said, “What are you doing?” She was screaming at me, and she wasn’t even my manager! But she did go over to my manager, told on me, and got me in trouble. That’s just one example of my interactions with this woman. She was always just so unhappy. She was always whining and complaining. After Eight Long Years, It’s Still the Same So today I went over to Stop and Shop to pick up some groceries. And guess what? I went to check out, and she was working at the register. And guess what was happening? She was whining and complaining. She was going on this long-winded rant to the girl who was bagging. She was going on about how she should be able to drink soda or have a drink when she’s on the cash register. It was something like that. To be honest, I don’t even know. But she had that same face again. My blood was starting to boil. I really wanted to say something. Back when I used to work with her, I never stood up for myself. I was dead broke; I needed the money. But guess what? Eight years later she was still whining. So I said, “Excuse me. Do you remember me?” She said, “No, who are you?” “I used to work in the seafood department. It looks like things haven’t changed. Eight years later, and you’re still whining. You’re still complaining. Why do you work here if you’re so unhappy?” You should have seen her face. Her face literally dropped. She had nothing to say. I said, “Why do you still work here if you still complain?” Make a Change Anyway, to make a long story short, this woman—and she may very well be a nice woman deep down—has been working at the same job complaining and whining and fighting and arguing for eight years. And she’s doing the same thing over and over again. You know what? If you’re unhappy, if you’re not happy with how things are—whether it’s your manager, your coworkers, the job environment—do something different. Change. Change your work. Create a skill. Learn something new. Move on. Don’t be like this woman, who is doing the same thing over and over again. I honestly didn’t want to hurt this woman’s feelings. But I just had to say it and get it off of my chest. Who knows? Maybe it will start her thinking about how she is living her life. Don’t be that person who stays the same place for eight years straight if you’re unhappy. Don’t be satisfied with being chronically unhappy. It’s your life, and you have the right to change it.
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If You’re a RESELLER…You Could Be Losing THOUSANDS of Dollars The other morning, I went to the gym early. I did my leg workout. When I left the gym, it was about 8:55. I passed by a Goodwill that opens at 9:00. That was when I began a conversation with myself. First, I said to myself, “I don’t really feel like going to Goodwill. I want to go home, get a meal, and get my day started.” But then I replied to myself, “Who knows what I’ll be missing out on if I don’t go in there right now?”
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What if…? The truth is that you never know until you go in and show up and see what’s there. I literally said to myself, “What if I miss out on a $1,000 deal?” It’s possible. There have been times that I’ve gone into a Goodwill or a Savers or a garage sale or a retail store and made $1,000 just because I had bothered to go inside. It certainly doesn’t happen every single time, but the point I’m trying to make is this: What does that opportunity cost? I mean, by passing by a thrift store or a garage saleand talking yourself into not going, what’s that costing you? You Can’t Make Money if You Don’t Show Up You just don’t know. You don’t know unless you go. If you’re a reseller—hitting garage sales, buying from thrift stores, going to flea markets—you make money by showing up. If you don’t show up, you are not giving yourself a chance to succeed. You don’t know how much money you could be missing out on. Now, I didn’t kill it at this particular Goodwill on that specific morning. It wasn’t like Jackpot City all day long, but I made a couple hundred bucks by just showing up and giving myself a chance to succeed. I spent about a half hour in there and found some pretty good inventory. Think about the Opportunity Costs If you’re ever in a position where you don’t feel like going to a thrift store or a garage sale—maybe it’s your day off, and you’re doing other things—what might it cost you? What might it cost your business by just not giving yourself a chance to succeed and going in for 30 minutes? It could be hundreds of dollars; it could be thousands. So go out there. Make it happen. If you’re passing by a garage sale, just go up to it quickly. Give yourself a chance. If you’re passing by a Goodwill on your way home, just walk inside. You do not know what you’re missing out on if you don’t go. It’s amazing. The opportunities are out there. You Are in Charge of Your Business You are the one who has got to go out there and make it happen. That’s the number one thing. If you don’t show up to the game, you’re never going to get a base hit. If you don’t get out on the ice, you ain’t never going to score a goal. If you don’t get on the field, you have no chance of scoring a touchdown. Now, that’s maybe one too many sports analogies, but the point is that you should go out and make it happen. Keep on picking and making that money. The profits will follow.
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Don’t Be Afraid to Negotiate with Your Local Thrift Stores (Huge Tie Haul) One time when I went thrifting at Salvation Army, I purchased a huge haul of new-with- tags ties. I ended up picking up 91 JoS. A. Bank ties, and then I picked up 115 Allan ties. The Allan ties all had really, really cool designs. I ended up picking up 205 ties in total. On average, I was in each tie for about $1.20 each. They were all brand new with tags. Here’s the only reason I got this deal. I actually saw a bunch of these sitting out for over a month. Finally I asked, “Hey, is there any way you would do a bulk deal for all the ties?” So the deal was I got them for 50 percent off. Were these ties the best sellers? Not really, but I would be able to get $12 for each, and I was in them for a bit over a dollar. And they had really unique designs, so that would be a selling point right there.
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Options and Pros and Cons If you ever find yourself making a similar deal for bulk items, just know that you have some options. The first option is to sell everything individually. You would probably get the most money that way; however, you have to take into consideration that it will be more work and will take longer to sell everything. The cashflow will take a while to get to you. The second option is you could wholesale them. Maybe you know someone else in the reselling community would who want to take on selling these individually. You could check with people in reselling Facebook groups or other message boards. In that case, you would make less money overall, but you would get your money faster and it would be a lot less work. You wouldn’t be the one taking the pictures and writing up the listings. You just need to decide what makes the most sense for your business. Do you want to invest your labor into making more money even though it will take longer? Do you want to accept less money and move onto the next deal? The answer will depend on who you are and where you are with your business. Step Up and Make the Deal The lesson to be learned here is that if you’re ever at a thrift store and see a bunch of the same item, ask them, “Hey, would you be willing to do a deal? Could we work something out?” You never know—sometimes you can grab a deal. The funny thing in this case was that the Allan ties were the only ones on the floor. When I asked for the deal, the manager went back and found the JoS. A. Bank ties. They never even hit the floor. I got the deal because I asked, but also because I had built up a rapport with the manager previously. Never underestimate the importance of that. That’s the moral of the story. Network. Don’t be scared to ask. Don’t be scared to ask for a bulk deal. Negotiate. Remember that they want to move their inventory as much as you want to buy it.
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How to Keep Track of Your eBay Inventory Using the SKU Label In one of my videos, I mentioned that I had created a new system. Essentially what I did for all my small items that I’m selling on eBay was I labeled each bin with “Bin” and then a number. So the first was Bin 1, and then there was Bin 2, Bin 3, Bin 4, and so on. I would take whatever bin that I put my product in that I was selling on eBay, and I would put it in the SKU label section within my eBay listing. A couple people said to me later, “Steve, why don’t you just put your inventory number in the title versus putting it in the SKU label section when you go to edit your listing?” Here’s my take on that thought.
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Use Your Title Wisely I think that the title portion of your listing is valuable real estate. The title portion is going to achieve a lot of different things for you. Number one, using good keywords is going to help you rank really well in the search. Say, for example, you’re selling a Ralph Lauren big bear sweater. If you use the right keywords, you could essentially outrank other sellers, get your item listed more up toward the top, and sell it quicker. Also, your title is used as a description, which means if somebody is looking through all the listings, and they see a picture they like, they will likely glance at the title. They’ll think to themselves, “Oh, it’s a large. It’s striped. It’s silk.” So in that way you can use the title as a selling point as well. You don’t want to waste your title with words like “nice,” inventory numbers, or anything that’s really irrelevant to the customer and the sale. That’s why I’m using the SKU label section. When you go to make your listing and create it, there’s a little section for you to put your inventory number. Do I Really Need an Inventory System? Right now you may be thinking, “Steve, what are you talking about?” Well, once you get to, say, 300 items listed on eBay, you’re going to have a hard time finding your items. Trust me. I have done this before. I have searched for items I couldn’t find and had to cancel the order. That’s no good for you. As I built my eBay store, I got to that point where I needed to make sure that I had a system in place for my small items. I assigned a letter or a number—it depended on item type and size—for each product. I put it in my listing so when it sold, I could easily find it. I wasn’t spending hours hunting down items—because you’re not making money when you’re shipping items out. You want to ship a sold item as quickly and efficiently as possible. You don’t want to be wasting time searching for an item, canceling orders, and this and that. Making Your Business Run More Efficiently I honestly think that you shouldn’t put the inventory number in the title. If you do, it’s probably not going to be the end of the world. But do focus on things that are going to move the needle forward in your business. Focus on things that are going to make a difference, that are going to make money, and that are going to add value in your business. You know, there are lots of little questions that come up in this business. Should I do an auction or Buy It Now? Should I put my inventory tag in the title or the SKU label? Do I need to make nine pictures or eight pictures? While things do make a difference, at the end of the day, they’re not going to make that big of a difference—maybe a couple percentage points. Focus on the things that are important—listing more, studying, going out sourcing, and putting systems and processes in place that will make your life more efficient, which is going to allow you to grow and scale your business.
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Advice Every New Reseller Needs to Follow A new seller—his name was Billy—came to me recently. I don’t think he sold anything before, but he wanted to know if he should purchase everything he needed to run his business—mannequins, lighting, poly bags, etc.—before he sourced his inventory or if he should get his inventory first. It was a good question, one that many new sellers might have too. You Don’t Need It All Right Away I don’t think having a mannequin is necessary. Having lighting isn’t necessary. Having an iPhone 6S Plus or an iPhone 7 isn’t necessary when you’re first getting started. The reason I say this is because so many people who start a business—whether it’s eBay, Amazon, real estate, or trading stocks—quit. I hate to say it, and I’m not saying Billy will quit. But most people end up giving up. Over the years, I’ve tried to help so many people. Tons of people have taken my advice or the advice of another and made it happen. But most people, it’s sad to say, quit. Most people just don’t have what it takes to run their own business because when running your own business, you have nobody telling you what to do. You have nobody saying, “Hey, you have to list today.” “Hey, Billy, you got to go out and source today; inventory is low.” “Hey, Billy, you’ve got to deal with this nasty customer in a nice way.” There are a million different things that could happen. And when these things happen, most people quit.
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Go Bare Bones at First So in light of that, I honestly think the best thing that you should do is just get started with whatever you have. If it’s a crummy little camera that takes okay photos, use that. If you’ve got some windows in your house, take pictures away from the window, obviously against the light because you’re going to get the best pictures that way. Use what you have, keep the cost as low as possible, and then go out and just buy clothing or electronics—whatever it is that you want to invest in—and buy those items dirt cheap. I want you to get started at as low a cost as possible because I want you to be able to turn a profit as quickly as possible. Once you start spending—$180 on a dress form mannequin, $400 on an iPhone, $100 here, $100 there—next thing you know, you’re in debt. And you’ve got all this inventory. When to Step It Up I want you to get momentum. I want you to turn a profit quickly. Once you turn that profit, you see it’s possible, and you’ve got some cashflow coming in, you’re going to get really, really excited. You’re going to get hooked. But if you’re in debt, and your back is against the wall, I see a lot of people quit. Then they’re stuck with all this stuff that they don’t need. They’ve got a mannequin in their bedroom, a professional backdrop, a lighting setup, and now it’s all just wasted money. I honestly think the best thing to do is go out there and learn first. Learn as much as you can. Watch all the videos. Listen to podcasts. Educate yourself. But then go out there and source as cheaply as possible. Get clothing on half-off days, get some books, and get some items that are cheap and don’t have a ton of risk. Then just start listing them. Start selling them, and start turning a profit. And then, and only then, once you’ve made a couple of hundred bucks, you’ve got a firm grip on this business, you’ve built up the confidence, and you’ve got that momentum, step up your game and get a lighting kit. You can start off with a basic one. And then maybe start with an inexpensive hanging mannequin. Use that for a couple of months, and then build up to a dress form mannequin. Slowly But Surely Slowly but surely improve the equipment and the tools, and then maybe invest in software. But I’d say keep your costs down as low as possible at first. Turn a profit, build that momentum, get a grip on the business, and really start to believe and have faith that you can do this.
The 4 Deadly Mistakes to Avoid Selling on eBay We all make mistakes when we are learning something for the first time. That’s natural. But I don’t want to see you sabotaging your business by falling into some common traps. To help you out, I’m going to go over four of the biggest mistakes I’ve noticed beginning resellers making.
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#1: Too Much Sourcing, Not Listing Enough When people start on this reselling adventure, they often find that sourcing can be a lot of fun. You go to thrift stores and garage sales and find some awesome items. But then you get home and look at this pile of stuff you should be listing. Overall, new sellers tend to source way too much without listing an equal amount. You might go out and source 50 clothing items or 50 books. It’s like a treasure hunt. You’re like a lion going after a gazelle. You’re hunting down those profits. It’s an adrenaline rush. But then you get home, and you have to list them—and that’s not so much fun. Many times we fall into the trap of just sourcing, sourcing, sourcing. We’re on that high, chasing that adrenaline rush, and we’re not listing enough items. We’re not sending in enough items to Amazon FBA. We’re not putting enough items on Facebook Marketplace or craigslist or wherever we’re listing those items. You’ve got to make sure not to fall into that trap. You’re going to make your profit when you list and sell your items. If they’re sitting in your car, your bedroom, or your warehouse, they’re not available for sale. You’re not going to make any money.
2: Not Tracking Profit
Many new sellers are happy because their overall sales are growing. Maybe they went from $500 the first month to $1500 the second and to $3000 the third. They see the sales going up and tell themselves that they are doing well. The sales are improving. They post on social media that they sold $50,000 this month, and everyone goes crazy for them. But they’re not taking into consideration the cost of goods, paying employees, payingtaxes, buying supplies, or any overhead. There are so many different aspects of your business you have to remember to figure out your actual net profit. Gross revenue may be a nice number to show off on social media, but what is your actual profit? One of the best software packages that I would recommend is called GoDaddy Bookkeeping. That’s a really good beginner software. Now, I have an accountant and use QuickBooks, but this GoDaddy Bookkeeping is a great thing that you can use to track everything in your business. You can link it up to your credit cards and your bank accounts. You can link it up even further to automatically put things in the office-supply category or cost-of-goods-sold category or all the different categories that you have in your business. Make sure you’re tracking your profit. Don’t fall in love with your gross revenue; that’s really just a number that doesn’t even matter.
3: No System for Inventory Management
If you’re selling on eBay, you need to be able to manage your inventory. You need to know where it is and how to find it quickly and easily because you’re going to be getting questions coming in left and right. As you scale your business, more and more items are going to sell. I can still remember when I was living at home with my parents—my mom makes jokes about it now. My room was a huge mess. She said it was so bad, she wouldn’t even let the cat go into it. I had a million pieces of clothes in my room. I had no inventory system. It was a mess. Items would sell, and I couldn’t find them. I would have to cancel orders, and I got to the point where I knew I needed to figure out a system. I created this masking tape system where I would put a piece of masking tape on each hanger and would associate a letter and a number to it. That would allow me to easily find my items when they sold or if there were questions. A bin system works too.
I’m Tired of Being a Loser The other day I got a message from someone who follows me on Instagram. It was a sad message that said, “I'm sick and tired of being a loser. My whole life I’ve had these big goals and dreams. I’ve had these aspirations to start my own business, have a lot of money, have the nicer things in life, and take care of my parents. I’ve always wanted to get fit and healthy.” This man went on to explain how he had been watching my videos and had seen me transform my business, my life, my fitness, and my relationships. He was essentially telling me that he was sick and tired of being a loser. He wanted tips and advice. I Was a Loser Too I want to tell you right now that I remember when I was a loser. I was losing in every area of my life. I was losing in my health. I was 240 pounds. I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. My average night at McDonald’s would consist of a double cheeseburger, two McChickens, and a large fry with all the dipping sauces. I had some relationships, but they were horrible; we were fighting all the time. I was unhappy. I was living at home with my parents. I had all these big goals and dreams, but I just kept losing. I wasn’t going for what I really wanted. I want to give you a couple words of wisdom based on my experience of how I’ve been able to transform my life. Of course, I still have a long way to go—in a way, I’ll always have the mindset of having a long way to go. But I’m proud of where I am now.
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You’ve Got to Get Going This may sound obvious, but the biggest mistake people make is they never get started. They want to lose weight, they want to start a business, and they want to get into a relationship. But they never get started. They let their minds get to them. They analyze all the millions of things they would have to do in order to, for example, start a business. They start thinking, “How am I going get the money? How am I going to source products? What about the competition? What if I get kicked off of eBay? What if I source a product from China, go to private label it, and then get a trademark violation?” They worry about a million and one different things. This is how I used to be, and I would never get started. I’d ask myself, “What if I get injured in the gym? What if I can’t eat the foods that my personal trainer wants me to eat and then I end up having a pizza? What if, what if, what if, what if, what if?” Who Are the People Who Succeed? The people who are successful aren’t necessarily the smartest. I have so many friends who are millionaires, and a lot of them are 22, 23, 24 years old. They’re not any smarter than I am or you are. I have friends who are so freaking fit, they are ripped. They are shredded. They don’t do anything special—they really don’t. They’re just very consistent, and they do the things that are necessary. Winners do what is necessary to win, and losers make up excuses—bottom line. Not too long ago, I ended up having some drinks. I ate pizza and did a bunch of stupid things. When I woke up the next morning, I said to myself, “I don’t feel like going to the gym. I don’t feel like working out.” Then I asked myself two questions. “What would a winner do? What would a loser do?” And I knew a winner would say, “Know what? Screw all the excuses. Screw feeling bloated. Screw having a hangover. Screw feeling tired. Get in the gym and make it happen. Who cares how you feel?” Who Are the Losers? Winners do what is necessary to win, and losers make up excuses. Losers justify. Losers hang out with other losers and then convince themselves that what they are doing is okay. It’s all right because other people are losing, other people are eating poorly, and other people are lazy instead of working on their business. That’s why it’s so important to surround yourself with the people you want to become. Like Jim Rohn said,
Top 10 Tips to Grow Your eBay Business to $100,000 a Year If you’re a beginner, an intermediate, or even an advanced reseller, you will be able to find some value in these 10 tips to grow your eBay business.
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#1: Source Items That Have a Strong Market This is very important. Even the CEO of eBay has said that the most important thing is the product. If you find the right product at the right price, then you have a winner. You see these items on eBay. The pictures are not good. The description is lacking. But the item still sells because it’s something that is trending and it is being sold at the right price. When you find an item, look at the sold listings on eBay to determine whether or not you even want to investigate it. Check to see if there’s any interest in the item. Don’t just buy things because they’re cheap. Do your research.
2: List Consistently
I can’t say it enough. You’ve got to list your items. You can buy all you want. You can go to all the thrift stores and garage sales or do wholesale. But if you don’t list your items, you won’t make money. I can look at your listing habit and guess how much money you make. That’s how important the consistency is. When you get into that habit, it becomes part of you. Your income’s going to grow and grow and grow. Self-awareness is so important when you develop a habit. Creating a habit is not a part-time thing. If you feel overwhelmed with all this, then start with a couple a day and just do that Monday through Friday. And then you can build slowly beyond that.
3: Educate Yourself
I’m not afraid to pay for information. I’m not afraid to share my journey and say, “This is what I’m working on.” I value education. Somebody has already done anything that you want to do, so don’t limit yourself by not learning from the experience of others. Ask around for what courses or resources others have used. You will usually find that people in this business are honest and straightforward with what has worked for them and what hasn’t been worth the time and effort.
4: Build a Support Team
Always surround yourself with positive energy. And you will find that energy by hanging out with people who are out there doing it and crushing it. A great support group can keep each other accountable. Here’s the way I look at my network: the tougher and more challenging the question is that we are asking each other, the deeper and closer our relationship is. You can have fair-weather friends all day, but if someone can call you and say, “Hey, I’m looking at your store. It doesn’t look like you’re doing things the right way,” you’re going to be really, really close with that person. Those are the friends I want. I don’t need any sugar coating. As the saying goes, your network is your net worth.
5: Use the Right Tools
For example, if you’re selling clothing and don’t have a mannequin, you can still get away with it, but you will do a lot better if you utilize the tools of the trade. Have dedicated areas for each aspect of your business. For example, you could have three stations for your clothing—one for flat laid, one for mannequin, and one for hanging. Then don’t use those areas for anything else. Keep them free from clutter. Once you have that consistent process, you look like a store. People can tell right way if you’re professional versus every single photo being in a different part of your house. That doesn’t look professional. Make sure you have an efficient storage system. Whether it’s bins or shelves or drawers, make sure everything is labeled properly. That allows you to streamline your shipping process.
6: Don’t Forget Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Make sure you are using the right keywords in your titles and descriptions. Keywords are how people find your items. If you have the wrong word in the title or you misspell the title, people will not find your item.
This Weird Loophole Is Screwing Over eBay Sellers So here is the issue. Let’s say, for example, a customer buys a large Ralph Lauren shirt. They pay for it, maybe $10 plus $5 shipping. They get the item. And they’ve inadvertently ordered the wrong size. There is something that eBay buyers are doing that is kind of screwing over the sellers. First of all, let’s say I was the person who sold that particular shirt. The buyer gets the shirt and realizes he made a legit mistake. Now, I accept 30-day returns, no questions asked. The correct procedure for that buyer would be to click on “wrong size, doesn’t fit.” Then he would print a label through eBay at his expense because he made the mistake. He would just ship it back to me.
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But There Is a Loophole The problem is one of the choices in the return field is “not as described.” Now anytime—and I mean anytime—a person clicks the “not as described” button, you are going to be paying for the return shipping even if you did nothing wrong and it’s a clear case of buyer remorse. This happened to a buddy of mine recently. He sold hubcaps to somebody. The buyer got them. He loved the item, but he said to my friend, “I ordered the wrong size. Will you take them back?” My friend said yes. And what did this buyer do? He clicked “not as described.” My buddy suspected that he did it to avoid paying the return shipping. So he called eBay concierge and explained everything to them. They looked in his eBay messages and saw he was telling the truth. Here’s Where It Gets Crazy You would think they would say, “We’ll close the case, rule in favor of the seller, and make the buyer ship the hubcaps back.” But if they do that, the seller automatically gets a defect, even though he did nothing wrong. So they said to my friend, “Go ahead and accept the return and send the buyer a label at your expense. Once you get the item back, call us up and we’ll reimburse you for the cost of the shipping.” What’s the Takeaway Here? So what’s the lesson learned? What can eBay sellers do to protect themselves? Is there anything they can do? I don’t think we as sellers have the power to do anything in this case. We as sellers need to talk to the higher-ups at eBay and let them know that this is a serious issue and sellers need better protection. Now, luckily most of my customers are honest. But occasionally even I will get a conniver, someone who doesn’t want to pay for his mistakes. And if you are selling clothing, the shipping won’t cost much. But if you are selling hubcaps as my friend was, then you’re talking $40 to $45 for shipping. No one needs to be losing that. What You Can Do So what’s my advice to a seller who has a buyer who wants to return a heavy item when it is obviously their fault in ordering the wrong item? Do you say, “Hey, listen. Can you send me some money because I think you clicked the wrong button”? No, I would never ask them that question. It’s a bad idea. I would just say to the buyer, “Hi, I’m sorry that you can’t use the items that you bought from me. Did you make a mistake and buy the wrong size? Do you maybe have 15-inch wheels instead of 14?” Once they admit it, it’s right there in eBay messages. You will be protected. Your communication with the buyer is huge. Then you call concierge. It’s all there in black and white. First, you have to agree to accept the return and pay the shipping, even if it's $45 or $50. Once you get the item back, you inspect it to make sure everything’s OK. Then you call concierge again. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of time wasted. Things Should Change To help the sellers, eBay needs to change that loophole. They know it’s there. But at the end of the day, selling on eBay is still very lucrative. Everybody buys and sells on eBay. But this loophole has got to go.
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Selling Books on eBay for HUGE PROFITS When I mention selling books on eBay, a lot of people say, “Wait a second. What do you mean? Selling books on eBay? You can only sell books on Amazon.” Well, let me give you a couple reasons for why you might want to sell books on eBay in addition to Amazon. This information could help you make some more money. There are books that people pass up on Amazon that they could put on eBay. But Why Books on eBay? With eBay, you can take photos. On Amazon, it’s one single listing that’s used. You have to piggyback on that one listing. So a buyer is not able to see the actual condition of that book. They may want a specific condition, and sometimes those conditions on Amazon are not matched with the real condition, which I’m sure some buyers have experienced. It might be that the buyer is a collector who is interested in a particular condition. That buyer might not be comfortable getting books from Amazon because they can’t see the exact pictures. Condition is really important. And with eBay, you can take up to 12 pictures of the books. It’s very simple to take photos of books. They are very simple to list as well because you’ve got the barcode already. So you take a photo of the top of the book, flip it over, and take a photo of the back of the book. Then you do side, corner, side, corner, side, corner, side, corner—so there’s eight. Someone will be able to see the wear on every corner of that book. Now if it’s a textbook, then you are also going to take a photo of the highlighting if there is any. You will also want to put it in the description that there’s highlighting. If you take all these photos and have a detailed description of any highlighting, then there is very little chance of a return on that book.
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Shipping Might Be an Issue for Amazon Another reason to use eBay rather than Amazon is if you are in a different country. You might be from, say, Australia, and your shipping costs are going to be completely different from sellers in the United States. Because of the shipping costs for Amazon FBA, there are books that you could only break even on Amazon but make a profit when selling on eBay. It might cost $5 to $10 just to send one book, even more if it is a large textbook. So in that case eBay would probably make more sense. When eBay Is Better Than Amazon When people think eBay, they often think auctions, but remember that you always have the option to list a book as Buy It Now. You can accept Best Offers too, but you really don’t need to do that. And with eBay, you can offer free shipping and express mail, so that way you get the top-rated seller badge and differentiate your listing from all the others that potential buyers might see. A lot of people think that the profit margins are too low selling books on eBay. But even if the profit margin on one book is too low for your business model, you can always try bundling books. For example, you could collect a few Rich Dad books and put them in a bundle in a listing. Then when you sell, you are shipping all those books just one time, so that saves on your shipping costs. If you had sold each book individually while offering free shipping, then you would have had to pay to ship each and every book. That’s not the case with a bundle. And the buyer is getting an excellent deal because they’re getting a lot of books. It’s a win-win situation. Another reason to sell on eBay is when you run across a first edition. For example, you might see a very popular book and pass on it because it looks run of the mill. However, when you take a closer look, you see that it is a first edition. Then the book may be worth hundreds of dollars. You will get the value of your book if you sell it on eBay. Another reason to sell on eBay if you are a book seller is because there are some restrictions on Amazon on quite a few textbooks,
6 Powerful Lessons I’ve Learned from Full-Time Resellers I went out hustling with 18 resellers. We went to Goodwill and Savers, and I learned so much during this experience. Now I’m going to share my learning experiences with you to help you in your business.
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#1: Riches Are in the Niches What does that mean? The more you know, the more you can grow. The more knowledgeable you are with various categories—whether it’s shoes, men’s clothing, women’s clothing, electronics, cameras, books—the more you can grow. And there are plenty of opportunities out there to gain more knowledge. I saw individuals go after things I would never even imagine going after. One thing, for example, is women's clothing. I just don’t mess with women's clothing. But one of the thrifters had found some True Religion jeans and a pair of Dansko women's shoes. I mean, she was just killing it. There are also people out there popping on blenders, electronic items, and items I typically don’t mess with on a regular basis. So don’t be complaining and beating yourself up: “Oh, the prices are too high. There’s too much competition.” It’s all in your head. We went out with 18 people, and everybody found profitable items. And it wasn’t just like one item here, one item there. Most people made enough to say to themselves, “Wow, I went out and made a day's pay.” So stop complaining. Yes, I get it; prices are going higher. I’m not trying to make you feel bad. But talk is cheap, and talking ain’t making you money; talking is actually just wasting your time. The money’s out there. Stop complaining, learn about all the various categories, and you’ll find plenty of opportunities.
2: The Money Is in the Fresh Inventory
At Goodwill, when those blue bins come out, you’d better rush the mountaintop. You’d better get over there because the money is in those bins. I have shared before about a mistake I had been making was when the bins come out. Don’t just dive into a single bin; give all the bins a quick look-over. If three bins come out at the same time, scan one, two, and three, and then decide which one you are going to dig into first. Don’t let the low-hanging fruit just sit there because you'll have someone like my boy who came up and popped on a hundred-dollar Monopoly game when I was making my mistake focusing on one. The money is in fresh inventory. It’s all about the race to the bins. When those bins come out, you stop what you’re doing and get over there because fresh inventory equals money.
3: A Positive Mindset Will Help You Find the Deals
If you’re complaining about prices being so high, if you are angry at YouTubers and Facebook groups for spreading knowledge, just stop your complaining. The people who are succeeding in this game right now are drying off their eyes, they’re pushing aside their little box of tissues, and they’re going out there and working hard. They’re using the tools that are available and are doing the best they can. They’re learning. They'e preparing. They’re studying the sold listings. They’re experimenting. They’re growing. And they’re finding items. I noticed this just from the thrifting outing with the 18 resellers. I’d say probably 90 percent of them did much better than the other 10 percent. That 90 percent were really happy and grateful and had an awesome mindset. The positive mindset is so key. I can't say it enough; you’ve got to be expecting success. Even though the thrift store might be a mess, and the prices might be high, and you might see some competitors there, expect yourself to be successful; expect yourself to find a deal. That little shift is going to help you to find items. If you’re all pouty and so angry with the market and how things are going, you’re not going to, for example, look at all the books because you’ve been telling yourself that there’s not enough. Whereas someone who believes in abundance is going to...
Is Reselling from Thrift Stores Dead? Are thrift stores dead? Can you even make money from thrift stores anymore? The prices are rising like crazy. It seems as though all the employees are researching the items. Is it even worth it to go to thrift stores anymore? I hear this type of talk all the time. Thrift stores are changing, and a lot of people are complaining about thrift stores. Many people are questioning if they should continue to go to thrift stores to try to find undervalued items to flip for a profit on eBay or Amazon.
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Yes, Prices Have Gone Up Since I started several years ago, I’ve seen a lot. I’ve gone to places like Salvation Army, Savers, and Goodwill. I’ve also done quite a few mom-and-pop stores. I can tell you right now with 100 percent certainty that thrift store prices have gone up like crazy. It was a slow process. It’s not as if it happened overnight. I remember the toys started to go up a little bit, then the suits started to go up a little bit, then the dress shirts would go up a little bit, and then the boutique area would go up a little bit. They had been raising the prices slowly but surely over the last five or six years. So I want to say right now that it is harder to make money from thrift stores than it was in the past. Prices are going up, and it’s becoming more challenging. More people have smartphones, and more people are able to research things. There are TV shows coming out. YouTube channels are getting a lot bigger. Facebook groups are getting a lot bigger. I think it’s more known to the general public that you can get good money for used items. These thrift stores are catching on, and they’re pricing things higher. You Can Still Make Money But the point I want to make is that even though prices are going much higher, there’s more competition, and it’s just not as easy anymore, there’s still tons of profit to be made. For the most part, when I walk into a thrift store, I typically always walk out with something. Now, I’m not a full-time reseller anymore, so I’m a little pickier. But if you’re a full-time reseller and selling all different types of items—from toys to books to collectibles to clothing—it’s pretty much nearly impossible not to walk out and have something profitable in your cart. There’s definitely money to be made out there. Do I think thrift store prices are going to go up even more? I think they are. I think they’re going to go up until they can’t go up any more. I think the thrift stores are still getting plenty of donations and selling a lot of their items on the half-off days. So until they run out of store space, I think it’s in their best interest to keep jacking up the prices. I also believe that the general public is starting to shop a lot more at thrift stores, so it’s all about supply and demand. When more people shop at thrift stores, they bid the prices up. The thrift stores notice when every time they put a certain item out, it sells, so they’re going to keep jacking the prices up. Prices are probably going to go up for a couple more years until they hit the ceiling and start to get close to the prices of Marshalls or TJ Maxx. So if you’re new to thrifting and selling on eBay and Amazon, and you’re wondering if you can do this full-time—you can. You can definitely do it full-time. It’s just not as easy as it used to be five or six years ago. You’ve got to do your research, study the sold listings, watch the YouTube videos, and educate yourself. You’ve got to get really good at taking amazing photographs. You’ve got to be really good at your systems and processes. You’ve got to know your numbers. Look for Opportunities It’s not as easy as it used to be, but I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that there is money to be made at the thrift stores. Some people out there are always crying and complaining, “Oh, the prices are going up. It’s not fair.
I’m Only Selling 5 Items Per Month on eBay! What’s Wrong? I had someone say to me recently, “Steve, I’ve been selling on eBay for a couple of months now. I’m stuck at five items per month. I can only sell five items per month. I just don’t get it. I can’t get past it. What is wrong?” Now, I don’t know where you personally might be stuck. But I’ve been there. I’ve been stuck. I have a few thoughts about what could be going wrong for you.
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You Are Not Listing Enough Items This is number one, I guarantee you. You’re simply not listing enough items. Now, when you first get started, it’s true that you will be hit with various eBay listing limitations. It will take you a month or two to get those limits raised. Just be persistent, list as many items as you can, and then continue to call eBay to request a higher selling limit. As long as you’re providing good service for the few transactions that you complete on eBay, you will be able to get your limitations raised in about 30 to 60 days. Let’s just say you’ve gone over that hurdle and have gotten your listing limits raise. Well the next step is to set daily goals. Set listing goals every single day. That’s the key. Set a monthly goal. Set a weekly goal. Set a daily goal. When I was full-time on eBay, I was listing between 10 and 20 items per day—that seemed to be the sweet spot for me—and I was doing between $5,000 and $8,000 a month. A good rule of thumb for you is if you want to double your sales, then double your listings. That’s one of the biggest keys right there. I can promise you if you take a look at your sales and how many items you’re listing, you are probably going to see a strong correlation. You Stopped Listing When Sales Were Going Well One of the problems that a lot of people have is when they start to make sales, they stop listing. They think, “Oh, things are going well. I don’t have to list anymore.” That’s the incorrect way to look at your business. When things are going well, you want to list even more. When things are going poorly, you want to double down and list even harder. When you list items, you don’t see the return on investment instantly. Most of the time, you will see it a week down the road, maybe two weeks. Think about a time when sales were slow and you just decided that you were going to kick it into overdrive and list, list, list. I’ll bet that about two weeks later you had to best sales week ever. That’s just how it works. When things are going well, keep listing. When things are going bad, double up on the listing. Now, you might want to know if you should schedule out your listings or physically do it every day. For the most part what I do and what the people that I associate with do is list every single day. I have experimented with scheduling out my listings if I were going on vacation or if I knew I would be extremely busy for a few days. So you can schedule out the listings if you really need to. Let me put it this way: I would rather list 10 items a day, seven days a week, versus listing 70 items in two days. I just find that the algorithm seems to favor consistent, gradual listing. You Are Not Listing Good-Quality Items That Have a Market If you’re listing low-quality items that don’t have a market, then really what are you doing? You’re like a hamster running on a wheel. You need to make sure that you’re getting into quality items that have a market. How do you know if an item has a market? Do your research before you buy the item. How many times is it selling? How much is it selling for? How many sellers are there? Do you feel that you can come into the market and make that sale? Is there a high enough sales velocity? Some of you will be wondering if seasonality matters when determining if something has a market. It does, but only to a certain extent. Many people won’t pick up summer items if it’s winter. I still will.
MOTIVATION…Read This if You Feel Like Giving Up in Your Business Do you need some motivation? I want to talk about the difference between the people who succeed on eBay, Amazon, craigslist, Etsy, and the reselling business versus the people who don’t. There is one distinct characteristic that the successful people have over the people who just don’t make it. This is something that we’re all going to have to deal with, and this key distinction is huge. What exactly am I trying to describe right here? The people who succeed, who make it, who thrive in business, who are in business 30 years down the road, who continue to grow, all have something in common.
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Facing Adversity The one thing that they have over the people who quit, who give up, who aren’t in business anymore, is when they get knocked down—when they get a return, or they get a negative claim against them, or a package gets lost or damaged, or they source an item and when they bring it home it's broken—they get back up again. That’s the key. They never quit. One thing I realized is that the winners actually do get knocked down a lot. But a lot of the people who want to be successful aren’t willing to take a punch to the face. They are not willing to put themselves on the line to get hit with that return or make a mistake or make an error. They’re trying to be perfect. And the key distinction is really that the successful people are willing to go for it and make it happen and take a punch and get knocked down, and they never give up. You Don’t Need Perfection, Just Persistence You don’t have to be the quickest, the fastest, and the most talented. You don’t have to be the smartest guy. You don’t have to know everything. But if you’re willing to work hard on a daily basis, put in work, grind, educate yourself, and, when something goes wrong, don’t beat yourself up, then you will get back up again and learn from your mistakes. The winners get knocked down all the time, but they’re getting back up again. Maybe you’re dealing with a situation right now in your business—whether you’re dealing with something that has to do with taxes, and you’re just super overwhelmed, and you begin to think you can’t take this, you want to give up, and it was so much easier just collecting a check. Or maybe you’re selling on Amazon and dealing with a suspension right now. Maybe you got an inauthentic claim against you or maybe you didn’t realize that canceling all those orders was going to result in a suspension. Maybe you’re dealing with something on eBay right now. The truth is that everyone is dealing with something. Keep Moving Forward If you’re dealing with something that’s bringing you down, just know you have got to keep moving forward. Keep growing; keep pushing forward. Anyone who has ever been successful and amassed a large amount of wealth or accomplished something difficult in their lives—they kept pushing. So keep moving forward. I need to remind myself this all the time too. I deal with issues as well, and I keep telling myself just keep moving forward, keep pushing, keep grinding, I’m going to get to the end of the tunnel. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Don’t Quit Right Before You Make It So many people give up right before they make it. They don’t even realize it. It’s like they’ve been digging and digging and digging for gold hundreds of feet, thousands of feet, and the gold is a foot away, and they give up. And that hurts me the most—it really does. I talk to a lot of people, even friends of mine who gave up, and I think to myself, “You were there. You were there. You were so close if you would have just kept going.” If you’re on the brink of quitting or feel as though you’re failing, just keep going. Because you want to know what? Success may be just a foot away or right around the corner.
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3 Tips to Wake Up Early in the Morning Every Day So many people have been asking about my morning routine and waking up early. I’ve heard people say to me, “I’ve been trying it and have been really enjoying it.” Somebody messaged me the other day saying, “I’ve been waking up early because of you and going to the gym, and I’m feeling great.” So I want to give you a couple tips to wake up early and some ways to assure that you actually get up.
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#1: Get Enough Sleep You need to realize that not everybody is a Gary Vaynerchuk. If you don’t know who that person is, look him up. He runs a bunch of businesses. He’s operating 18 hours a day on three or four hours of sleep. Most people can’t do that. You need to get enough sleep. If you want to wake up at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning—which I highly recommend for the many benefits—the number one thing you need to make sure you do is get enough rest. So if you want to wake up at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, you want to get to bed by 9:00 or 10.00—11:00 at the latest. I know some people can get away with four or five hours of sleep, but for me personally, after about week or two, I’m going to burn out. So make sure you get to bed early. There's been so many studies that have been proven that people who get to bed earlier are more productive, they feel better, and they get a better rest. You can look into that for yourself, but get to bed early so you get plenty of sleep.
2: Put the Alarm Clock Out of Reach
So you are going to want to set an alarm clock, but don’t put the alarm clock next to your bed. Put it so you have to actually get up. You don’t want it next to you on the dresser. You don’t want to be able to smash it and go back to sleep. Put it across the room on a table so you have to get up. If you wake up, stand up, and walk, there’s a much better chance you are going to stay up. So put your alarm clock on the other side of the room.
3: Drink Water Immediately When You Get Up
Drink water immediately because that’s going to wake you up. Throw some water on your face, drink some water, brush your teeth, and get into your actual morning routine. For me, once I drink some water and brush my teeth, I start immediately reading my goals and going through my affirmations and my declarations. That’s really big right there. Start moving and getting your mind working, and that’s going to help you a ton right there to wake up early. Bonus Tip: Just Give the Routine a Decent Chance You’ve got to give it a chance. You can’t just try it for a week or two. You’re going to feel terrible the first week or two, especially if you’re only getting four or five hours of sleep. But the more you do it, the more you build it into your lifestyle and you turn it into a habit and a routine. It becomes a ritual for you. It becomes easier and easier. I never would have thought in a million years I’d be getting up at 5:30 in the morning to work out and make YouTube videos. I was the type of guy who would roll out of bed at 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning. Trust me, you’re at a big disadvantage when you start your day at 10:00. I credit a lot of my success in terms of my health and my business to waking up early and getting a lot done and being at a psychological advantage over the competitors. So get up and get out of your bedroom if you can because when you’re in your bedroom, you’re just putting yourself at risk of wanting to lay back down in that bed. Don’t; don’t lay back in that bed because I tell you, after about 15 minutes of being up and awake, you’re going to feel a lot better. If you want to give it a shot, do it; make it happen. You can do it. And at the end of the day, you’re going to feel like you got so much more accomplished. A lot of people say, “There’s no difference to waking up early. I wake up at noon and go to bed at 2:00 in the morning.” I don't know about that.
5 Beginner Tips for Selling on eBay Here are five tips that I wish somebody would have told me when I first got started selling on eBay.
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#1: Listing Is King This one is short and sweet and vitally important. If you want to make more money on eBay, you’re going to have to list more. Bottom line—the more you list, the more money you’re going to make.
2: The Sell Similar Button Is Your Friend
Instead of creating a brand-new listing, find the item that you want to sell, a comparable item, and hit Sell Similar. It’s going to fill out all the blank spots, a lot of the item specifics, and the title. It’s going to generate a lot of information based on the previous listing. All you’re going to have to do is take pictures, make your description, and then switch up a few of the item specifics if it’s something different than your item. That’s going to save you a lot of time.
3: What’s Your Time Worth?
Figure out what your time is worth. It’s so important. I see people who are listing a bunch of items. It takes them seven or eight minutes to list each item, and then obviously they have to pick it, pack it, ship it, and perform customer service, and they only make a dollar or two. If you do that long enough, you’re going to give up because you’re going to think that there’s no money to be made. Make sure when you buy an item that there’s enough money in it to make it worth your time based on what your time is worth.
4: Get Around Like-Minded People
Get around like-minded people. Create master minds. I’m telling you right now when you’re new, you’re going to get knocked down. You’re going to get a return. You’re going to have an issue. You’re going to have something that you buy and lose money on. You will need to have people in your corner—whether it’s a community on YouTube or a Facebook group like the Green Room. Maybe it’s someone locally or a friend or a family member you start your eBay business with. You’ve got to have people who are in the corner with you who could support you when things go wrong because just like anything in life, it’s not always going to be a smooth ride. Are you going make mistakes? Yes. Are you going to lose money here and there? Yes. Is it going to be easy starting an eBay business? No. Is it going to take time to figure things out? Yes. I'm being 100 percent honest with you. You’ve got to have people there when things go wrong. Get a community by your side, or just have somebody who you can mastermind with from time to time, who understands where you are and what you’re dealing with.
5: Use eBay to Print Out Labels
I see people making this mistake all the time. Time is valuable. It’s the most precious asset that you have as an entrepreneur. You want to use your time wisely. So you need to make sure that you’re printing out your labels through the eBay system. Why? Because you’re going to get a discount by shipping through eBay. Also, you’re going to save time being able to pay for postage online, print your label, and slap it on your package right then and there versus having to wait in line at the post office. Take Action If you are new on eBay, take massive action, but let these five tips help you get started. It’s not going to be a smooth ride. There are going to be bumps. There are going to be issues that come up. But these tips will help you get over your obstacles when you face them. Now go make it happen.
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Don’t Make These Simple Yet Common Thrift Store Mistakes as a Reseller There is something that could save you money, save you stress, and help you to grow your business. Now, this is very simple, but this is something that I’ve dropped the ball on before in the past, and it’s just something you don’t want to do. This is a simple thing you can do. It takes one minute, and it’ll save a lot of stress and put more money in your pocket.
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A Simple Step What is this that I am talking about? Double-check when you’re checking out of a thrift store that everything is in your bag. Double-check—it’s that simple. I know you’re thinking to yourself, “Steve, really? How could doing that be such a big deal?” Oh, it is. The first reason is you want to make sure everything is getting charged correctly. You want to see that all your half-off items are actually coming up as half off. The second reason is that you need to make sure that everything’s actually in your bag. It has happened to me several times when I’ve been out thrifting and just flying around like a crazy person. I haven’t double-checked my bag or receipt. I get home excited to list a particular item I found that day, and…it’s not in my bag. I’m thinking to myself, “All right, I paid for that DVD. It’s not in my bag. What happened to it?” It drives me nuts. And it has happened because I get ahead of myself thinking about the next thrift store or pawn shop or retail store and I am not focusing on what’s going on right now in the moment. When you’re checking out, double-check everything. A Cautionary Tale I was at a Goodwill once, and the lady at the register looked down and said, “Oh crap.” She was looking down on the floor because there was a bag there that she forgot to give to a customer. It was a bag full of clothes; it must’ve been seven items. How did this customer not realize they didn’t have their clothes? I don't know, but I’ve done it before, and I’m sure you’ve done it as well. Take a Moment to Make Sure When you go to check out of a store, make sure you’re getting charged appropriately. If things are half off, sometimes the register doesn’t take that half off. Or they charge you double for some reason—it’s happened to me. Make sure the prices are set accordingly, and also double-check that everything they charge you for you have in your bag. Make sure it’s in your bag, and make sure it gets into your car. Double-check your cart when you’re putting everything into your car. These are simple things that every now and then I’ve dropped the ball on. Just take a minute to make sure everything’s charged right, that you're not getting overcharged, that everything’s in your cart, and everything’s going to be in your possession. Take a minute now to save 10 minutes, or 20 minutes, or 30 minutes of stress and aggravation.
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How to Make MORE Money on eBay Running Sales in Your eBay Store Recently, I was asked about running sales on eBay. The reseller wanted to know if I used eBay’s markdown manager, what types of sales I ran, and when I ran those sales (weekdays vs. weekends). When it comes to running sales on eBay, I absolutely do run sales. I love it! A lot of people say that they don’t run sales, but for me, I love to run sales. Take a look at any big box store. Look at Target and Walmart. They’ve always got everything on sale. Prices are discounted or slashed in half.
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People Love a Good Sale It’s something about human psychology. When someone sees that something is on sale, it creates urgency. I’ll tell you right now, if you try to sell something without creating urgency, you’re going up a hill. But if you create urgency, even if it isn’t necessarily true—such as a “discounted” price—you have that much better of a chance of selling the item. People buy when they are forced into doing so—when there’s urgency. By creating that urgency—the sale that is going to end in 48 hours—it prompts someone to act. Now, if you do want to run a sale on eBay, I believe you need to have a store. I’ve heard rumors that you could run sales without a store, but I’ve never figured out how to do it. It’s one reason to upgrade to the basic store if you can. There are a lot of benefits to having a store. By having a store, you’re going to have the ability to access the markdown manager, which in turn allows you to run sales. Also, I have a feeling—and this is kind of like bro science—that the eBay algorithm helps to rank sellers better that are running a sale. Why? I think eBay realizes that when a sale is being run, it creates that urgency and there’s a better chance of that item being sold. So, of course, eBay’s in the business of selling items because that creates more repeat customers if it’s a good experience. But also they get a cut on the fees and make a percentage and all that good stuff. How Long Should a Sale Run? The duration of a sale is really up to you. For me, I typically like to do it like a week at a time, maybe even 10 days. Typically, I like to do 10 or 15 percent off. But if I ever feel like I need cash or want to get things moving, sometimes I’ll move it up to 20 to 25 percent discount. That’s really big right there, and that’s going to help your listing stand out. Granted, I do mostly Buy It Now with a Best Offer, so I don’t necessarily have to cut it 30 or 40 percent if it’s a really stale item. Typically with the Best Offer you’re going to get people low balling you or offering what they feel is a fair price. I love to have sales running pretty much at all times. There are times where I drop the ball and for one reason or another forget to run a sale. But ideally I would like to have a sale running at all times. I like to create urgency, and I do believe it helps me in the search engine. Should You Run a Sale on a Weekend or Weekday? For me, it really doesn’t matter. Again, I like to run my sales for at least a week. I’d say ideally, Monday through Friday would probably be good. The weekends people are probably out and about or hanging out with their family. I’m just guessing they’re probably not going to be spending as much money. I’d say they’d probably be spending more money at retail stores. So if you want to run five-day sales, maybe try Monday through Friday, although I’ve heard that people do really well on Sundays. But again, if you ask 10 sellers, you get 10 different responses. The key is just to run the sale. Be sure to upgrade to the basic store. You’re going to get a lot more benefits as well, including discounts on fees, the ability to create a nice- looking store, use of the markdown manager, and a whole host of things. Don’t Be Afraid to Experiment with Sales Just run your sale. Experiment.
The Truth Behind Rapidly Rising Prices at Corporate Thrift Stores across America A lot of people think that the main goal of thrift stores is to give their customers the cheapest possible products. I’m telling you guys right now, that’s not the case at all. For the majority of thrift stores I go to—at least the corporate ones—their number one goal is to get as much money as possible for their items to donate to their charities, to raise money, to raise funds, and to generate income for the charities of their choice. If you’re only source of getting inventory for your business is thrift stores, you’ve got to realize prices are going to continue to go up. It’s just the way it is. They’re going to push it as much as they possibly can. They’re going to continue to raise the prices and charge more until their inventory stops moving out the store. It’s the bottom line.
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The Future of Thrifting Many people don’t realize it, but Goodwill is like a real estate empire. They have so much real estate all over the country in prime locations. I really believe that they’re going to go more toward the retail business model, bringing in many more private label items and wholesale items. You’re already noticing it with Savers. For all the different holidays—Halloween, Christmas—they’re bringing in all this private label and wholesale inventory from China. But even the thrift stores that are expensive are much cheaper than even Marshalls or other discounted retail stores. A lot of times they are only a little cheaper than eBay. But people are willing to pay these prices. I think most people are just trying to save some money. Even if they’re saving 15 or 20 percent, they’re happy. Are Thrift Stores Still Worth It? Now let’s take a step back. Can you still find items at thrift stores to make money? Yes. Do I find items pretty much every day when I go thrifting? Yes. Is there still a ton of money? Can you make a full-time income buying items from thrift stores? Yes. I was talking to a friend yesterday, and he was ranting, “How dare thrift stores charge $20 for this? How dare thrift stores sell untested items at eBay prices?” I said, “Listen, they’re not in business to give you items as cheaply as possible. Goodwill, Savers, Salvation Army—they don’t care about me or you. It doesn’t matter if Reseller Johnny walks into the store and wants to buy a shirt for two dollars. They don’t care about Johnny. All they want to do is raise as much money as possible for their foundations, bottom line.” Now, depending on where you live, if you live in a lower-income area, the prices are going to stay lower because it’s really supply and demand. They could raise the prices from five bucks an item to $20, but it’s going to sit. These thrift stores have so much stuff coming in. America is just an abundance of stuff that people don’t care about. They’re donating a lot of stuff. So the thrift stores do want to keep items moving and will price accordingly. The Goals of the Thrift Store I hear people all the time complaining about prices. “Why are the thrift store prices going up? Why are they not testing their items?” These thrift stores aren’t out there for your best interest. Their goal, of course, is to raise as much money as possible for their foundations. And a lot of this revenue is going to really good foundations. Goodwill, in my area, helps people find jobs. There are a lot of good programs out there. Diversify The takeaway here is that if the only way you’re getting inventory is from thrift stores, diversify. Go to garage sales on the weekends. Go to estate sales. There’s craigslist. There’s OfferUp. There’s private label. There’s wholesale. There’s creating your own products. There are so many different ways to source products. There’s liquidation. There’s buyouts and clearance and retail arbitrage. The list goes on and on.
Is It Worth Paying All the FEES on eBay and Amazon? Is it worth selling on eBay and Amazon with all the fees? I get this question all the time. So eBay’s got about 12 or 13 percent in fees. That includes insertion fees, final value fees, and PayPal fees. And don’t forget to figure shipping in there too. Then with Amazon, if you’re selling via FBA, you’re going to be looking somewhere between 30 and 40 percent in fees depending on what you are selling. But is it worth it selling on these platforms with all these fees? Let me put it this way: Where else are you going to sell these items? You could sell your items locally. Etsy’s got some traffic, but it’s mostly vintage items. There are other websites out there, but where are you really going to sell these items?
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What You Get for Your Fees The number one reason why we pay the fees to sell on eBay and Amazon is traffic. It’s a lot harder than people realize to get eyes on your offerings, to be able to have access to millions and millions of potential buyers on eBay and Amazon. That’s the main reason we’re willing to pay these fees—to get eyeballs on our listings. Without the traffic, without the customer base, you are not going to sell your items. With Amazon FBA—where the fees are definitely higher—you’re typically going to get more money versus eBay, so it kind of makes up a difference right there. But in this case, you are also leveraging the Amazon FBA warehouses by being able to ship directly to the warehouses. Then their employees at Amazon fulfill your items, deal with customer service, and ship your items for you, and you pretty much just receive a check. Fees Are Just Part of the Game If you want to be an eCommerce seller, you’re either going to use other people’s platforms to get their traffic, or you create your own website. In that case, then you drive traffic to your offerings by either using Facebook ads, social media, or content marketing. Getting into the game of trying to get customers to find your listing and utilize traffic is a whole completely different endeavor right there. Is it worth selling on these platforms because of the fees? Yes, it is. You’re getting access to millions and millions of customers. You’re getting access to all their traffic. And also, for places like Amazon FBA, you’re able to utilize and leverage their employees to fulfill your orders and ship your items. Without these websites, we’d have to rely on driving our own traffic, customizing our own websites, building our own websites, and dealing with so many issues. There are so many things that we just take for granted. Just in terms of how a website works, there are a lot of resources that Amazon has to put up to be able to get customers to your listings. I’m talking about marketing fees. I’m talking about website fees, hosting fees, and having all these people working on the website customizing the code. I am sure I don’t even know the half of it. But at the end of the day guys, fees are part of business. Think About Fees, But Don’t Let Them Stop You You do want to take it into account. When you’re analyzing deals to sell on eBay or Amazon, you need to think about your cost of goods. What will it cost you to acquire this item? You always need to consider the fees for eBay or Amazon. And don’t forget taxes. Yes, you’re going to have to pay taxes. You need to keep in mind how long it will take you to sell this item. There are a lot of different factors, but fees…well, you can’t get around them. It’s just part of the game, and you’re going to have to deal with it. Otherwise, you will have to drive traffic to your own websites, build your own websites, and manage your own websites. I’ve got a little bit of experience in that, and it’s a lot harder than it looks.
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How Much Money Can You Really Make on eBay? The other day, I had someone ask me, “How much money can I make on eBay? Can I make $10,000 a month?” I get this question so often. And my answer is always that when it comes to selling on eBay, you get what you put in. The more items that you pick up, the better you are going to do. It could be from thrift stores, garage sales, retail store, or wholesale websites online. The more you list high- quality products—products that are in demand, that have a market—the more you’re going to sell. So the more effort you put in by listing items and putting items out there for the market to buy, the more items you can sell.
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Possible But Not Easy Now there are a lot of factors. Maybe you already have a full-time job. Maybe you’ve got a family. Maybe you want to make $10,000 a month on eBay. Is it possible? Yes. Is it easy? No. Are there are a lot of people making $10,000 a month on eBay? I have a good friend who has been doing well over $10,000 a month on eBay for quite a long time—but it wasn’t easy. He built his way up to it. Three years ago, he was doing $1,000 a month. And then he slowly built it up to where he is today. That took time. It was a huge learning curve figuring out what to buy, what to sell, and how to create efficiencies in his business. Gross Vs. Profit It’s so easy for people to say that they made $5,000 or $10,000 or even $15,000 on eBay. What they don’t say is that this was not all profit. It was gross sales. There is the cost of goods. There are listing fees, selling fees, and PayPal fees. There are fees for supplies. There are cash flow issues. What do I mean by that? Well, when you invest in an item, your money is pretty much sitting there until it sells. So you’ve got to continually sell items to bring money in to continue buying. It takes time. How much money can you make on eBay? That’s up to you. There was this one woman who was a lawyer for many years. She ended up going into eBay full time doing consigning. People would send in an item. She would sell it for them and give them a cut. She got to where she was grossing more than one to two million dollars a year. The Possibilities Are Endless It’s up to you. How creative are you? How many items can you get? What’s your demographic? Say you want to focus on clothing. What are the opportunities for you at clothing stores? Here in Connecticut, I’m blessed. There’s a ton of thrift stores. Clothing is abundant, and I can get it cheap. But where you live, that might not be the opportunity for you. Maybe your area is good for electronics. Maybe you live in an area that you don’t have any thrift stores. You don’t have any garage sales. Maybe you’re in Antarctica; it’s freezing all the time, and you can’t get a hold of inventory sourcing locally. Maybe you have to look to white label or private label or wholesaling or drop shipping. There are so many opportunities. Think Outside the Box How much money can you make on eBay? It’s up to the individual. It’s up to the creativity. It’s up to the hard work. How much you put in is how much you get out. People think that eBay is easy. People think that you can just make $10,000 a month with no effort. The opportunities and the possibilities are endless on eBay. But it’s not easy; it’s hard work. You get what you put in. But it’s an opportunity. It’s an opportunity for someone out there who doesn’t want to work a nine to five, who wants to create freedom, who wants to be their own boss. If someone has that mindset and those characteristics of an entrepreneur, they can make it happen. You can make $5,000 a month, $10,000 a month, $20,000 a month. I’m not saying it’s all profit. It’s going to depend on your business model. But it’s possible.
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Best Product Category for New Resellers on eBay and Amazon I know it’s tough when you're new. I know it’s tough when you’re trying to figure out what to sell and what type of items to get involved with. You probably see all these other YouTubers and people on Facebook who are making money with eBay, Amazon, and different products of their own. Maybe you’re working a job and decide you want to make a little side cash. You want to get your hustle on. So what should you start with? What are the best items to get started with when you are brand new?
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Clothing For someone on eBay, I’d say the best item to get started with is clothing. You can get it dirt cheap. There’s not a ton of competition out there. There’re a million different types of items, and literally you could walk into pretty much any thrift store in America and find a deal. Yes, clothing is a little bit harder work. It takes some time and effort. So if you’re against that, then maybe look toward something else. But I think it’s a great product to get started with on eBay. Books Books are a great way to get your foot in the door selling on Amazon. You could sell as a merchant, which means you are going have to fulfill all your products and house all your products yourself and deal with customer service. The better option in my opinion is to go FBA, Fulfillment by Amazon, selling books. If you happen to have yourself a smartphone and have an Amazon account, get the Amazon Seller app and start scanning books. Books are a lot more competitive and have a lower entry to get into versus clothing. Amazon makes it so easy to sell books. Literally, you scan it. You don’t even have to analyze the deal yourself. You just look at the app. If it’s a good deal, you send it into Amazon. They fulfill the orders for you, and essentially you collect a check. Now, it’s not that easy, but books are a great way to get started in reselling in general and on Amazon FBA. The thing I love about books and clothing is they’re abundant. Go into any thrift store. What do you see the most of? It’s clothing and books. Books are everywhere. It’s cheap to get into. Usually you can get books for a dollar or two if you go to book sales. They’re cheap, and the margins are great. Don’t Be Afraid to Get Started Of course, all this will be based on where you live. But when someone asks me what two types of items they should start with, I always say clothing on eBay and books on Amazon.
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5 Signs You’re NOT Cut Out to Be Selling on Amazon FBA I’ve realized over the years that certain people just aren’t cut out to be selling on Amazon FBA. I’ve met eBay sellers who are awesome eBay sellers. But once they move over to Amazon, it just doesn’t seem to work. I’ve seen Amazon sellers who are kick- butt sellers, and they move over to eBay and it just doesn’t work. Here are some signs that Amazon FBA just isn’t for you.
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#1: You Hate to Let Go of Your Business FBA stands for Fulfillment by Amazon. When you’re selling via Amazon FBA, you’re going to have to let go of your business to an extent. Essentially what you’re doing is taking your products and shipping them off to the Amazon FBA warehouses, where they are stored. When the product sells, Amazon sells it, ships it, and deals with customer service issues. In a sense, you’ve kind of got to let your baby go. For some people, doing that is difficult. It’s tough for them to rely on another person to perform certain tasks in their business. So if you’re a nervous wreck about UPS getting your products to the warehouse safely and trusting Amazon to ship things out correctly, that might be a sign that you might want to stick with eBay or craigslist.
2: You Want Your Money Now
Say you have a road bicycle for sale on craigslist. In that situation you would meet up with somebody and do a cash deal. You’d get your money right away. When you sell on eBay, the money is going to go to your PayPal account, and you can get your money within a couple days. You just have to get the money transferred to your bank account. Well, with Amazon FBA, if you sign up nowadays, it could take up to two weeks for you to be able to get your money for them to wire that money to your bank account. If you need the money now and are dealing with cash flow issues, Amazon FBA might not be for you.
3: You Miss Interacting with Your Customers
Some people out there love interacting with their customers. They like getting feedback. They like writing a little handwritten note and shipping it off and getting that good, personal feedback. If you miss that and you find yourself feeling as if something is missing, Amazon FBA might not be for you.
4: You’re Getting Too Many Negatives
One thing that you need to realize with Amazon FBA is you’ve got to be able to describe your items properly and inspect them 100 percent because it’s super easy to get negative feedback. Amazon buyers are very particular. And if there’s anything wrong, a lot of times they’re going to give you negative feedback. It’s been said that most people don’t leave feedback, but the people who do tend to leave negative feedback. On eBay you can sell items for parts. You can sell items that are broken. You can sell items with issues. With Amazon FBA, you’re piggybacking on listings, and many times it’s challenging to be 100 percent accurate. You got to do the best you can to inspect the item to describe it properly. But if you’re one of those people who hate the details and just want to put it on eBay as is, Amazon FBA might not be for you.
5: You’re Losing Your Mind over Price Wars
The thing about Amazon FBA is there are repricers. I guess you could call them robots. It’s software that will automatically reprice your item based on rules that you set forth for it. So, for example, you can be selling a box of Legos for $29.99, and the seller before you can be selling it for $30.00. Their repricer might have a rule set that if somebody comes in a penny under, they’re going to come under you for a penny. And it just sets this price war in motion. It drives some people absolutely crazy. Some people just can’t handle the price wars. When selling on Amazon, you’re piggybacking on people’s listings. There’s not a lot for you to do to differentiate yourself from the next guy. It’s mostly based on price. If you’re selling on eBay,
Approached by an Unhappy Reseller…He Said It’s NOT Fair What I’m Doing Have you heard this one? “It’s not fair. It’s not fair that you people are going around with scanners and scanning items. It’s not fair.” I was at Goodwill. It had been a pretty crazy day because it was half off at Savers. I ran through Savers, kicked butt, made a lot of money, and found myself at Goodwill. I met up with my buddy over there, who is a big bookseller. He’s always killing it. Every time I see him, he’s got books upon books upon books in his cart. My friend and I were chitchatting and showing each other some of the books we found. All of a sudden, this other guy comes out and says, “It’s not fair what you guys do with those scanners.” He seemed like a nice guy; I think he was joking. But he kept going on. He stared at our scanners and said, “I have to go through thousands of books to find one.” I said, “You should get a scanner then.” His reply? “Ah, technology…it’s not fair.” After the guy walked away, I said to my friend, “Do you know that guy?” He said, “No, I don’t know him.”
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Is It Fair? The point I want to make is you got to change with the times. Of course, it’s not “fair” if you are not using a scanner. There’s no way you’re going to compete if you are not using a scanner as a bookseller. I don’t care how much you know. I don’t care if you’ve been in the game for 30 years. If you’re at the thrift store, going through books without a scanner, you’re not competing with me. You’re not competing with my buddy. If we have a scanner, and you don’t, there’s no contest. It’s not fair, but it is what it is. Technology has changed. You have to change with the times. If you want to grow your business when it comes to reselling, you got to get with the times. You’ve got to have a smartphone. You’ve got to have a scanner. You’ve got to have the Amazon seller app. You’ve got to have the eBay app. Now, could you make money without the help of technology? Of course, you could. But it’s going to be very tough to compete with the folks who are utilizing all the available technology. Complaining Will Get You Nowhere You can complain and get angry with technology and how the market plays out these days, but it will do you no good. If you see yourself complaining because somebody else has a piece of equipment, then you’ve got to change with the times. If you don’t change, you’re going to get left in the dust. You are going to go to the thrift store one day and see a guy there with about 150 books in his cart, and you’re going to have one book in your hand and want to say, “That's not fair.” But you know what? You made the choice not to change. You made the choice not to get the smartphone. You made the choice not to take the time to learn how to use the Amazon Seller app. You’re either going to change with the times and grow, or you’re going to get left behind.
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Is It Ethical to Resell from Thrift Stores? I had a question the other day from a friend: “Steve, I’m not trying to disrespect you, but I’m just curious. Is what you’re doing—sourcing from thrift stores—ethical? I was always under the impression that thrift stores were for the poor, the needy, the people who couldn’t afford paying retail for clothing, electronics, and various products. I thought that thrift stores were not really for average people.” And when I heard that, I said to myself, “Wow! This is actually a good question.”
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Can You Spot the Reseller in the Thrift Store? I guarantee that many people out there—just average, everyday people—see us in the thrift stores scanning items or looking up items on our phones and know what we are doing. It is easy to tell a picker from a customer. I can always tell. So is it ethical? Is it ethical that we are buying from thrift stores to resell and make a profit? Are thrift stores only for the poor, the needy, the less fortunate, the people looking to save money? Are we taking these products that could essentially be purchased by someone in need and using it for our benefit to make money? In my opinion, I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with it. I feel that if you’re super poor and don't have a lot of money, you’re really not going to be able to afford stuff in a thrift store anymore anyway because the prices are increasing so much in comparison to a decade ago. The days of finding clothing for a quarter, for a nickel, or for a dollar seem to be long gone. Now, there are some thrift stores who have special sales, but I just don’t think thrift stores are in business to help the needy anymore. Yes, some profits and revenue go to certain programs, but by and large they are not here to supply the poor and needy with the cheapest prices possible. We Help Increase Revenue for Thrift Stores They’re in business to create as much revenue as possible to donate to their causes. Over here at Goodwill, they donate to helping people to get jobs. I know Savers donates to some charitable foundations. Different thrift stores have different purposes, but I don’t think their main purpose is to sell stuff as cheaply as possible to people who really need it. Their goal is to create revenue. So is it ethical that resellers are going into these thrift stores to source inventory? In my honest opinion, I don’t think it’s unethical. I just don’t think there's anything wrong with it. It’s a store, and their goal is to create revenue. When I purchase something from Goodwill, it is helping them create revenue to add to those programs to help people get jobs. When I purchase from Savers, it is helping people. So we are actually helping people in a sense because we are purchasing items that are going to these positive causes. We are supporting some great causes out there by buying from thrift stores.
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How to Take AMAZING Pictures on eBay WITHOUT Being a Professional Photographer If you have been selling on eBay for any length of time, then you know how important it is to take really good pictures of your items. Now, a lot of people are under the misconception that to take great pictures, you need an expensive camera. Many people just getting started in this business are on a budget, but for some reason they go out and spend $500, $800, or even $1,000 on a high-priced DSL camera. That’s not necessary.
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It’s Not the Camera! What you need to realize is that probably the biggest thing that is going to determine the quality of your pictures is not your camera—it’s your lighting. Your lighting is the most important thing when it comes to taking really good pictures for your eBay items. What I have is a couple light stands with a daylight fluorescent light and an umbrella. This setup will diffuse the light, which is going to help your photos come out more natural-looking. They won’t appear overly contrasted or overly brightened. Some people will have the daylight fluorescent lights but then turn on other lights that cast a really yellow hue, but doing that gives the photos an unnatural look. And don’t forget to shut the blinds too! You want to control the lighting as much as you can. What do you do if you don’t have light stands right now? Well, you could take your pictures in a room that has a lot of natural light. I’ve even seen some people shoot outside. Don’t Forget the Background Another important thing to take into consideration when shooting pictures is your background. Have a nice, clean, distraction-free background. One option is to go out and buy a backdrop. Go to eBay or Amazon and look up “backdrop.” You’ll see backdrops with three poles and paper or vinyl in the background. Or a cheap alternative is just to have a nice white wall, but it needs to be plain. You Probably Already Have a Great Camera in Your Pocket When it comes to your camera, you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars. I’m shooting my pictures for eBay on my iPhone 6S Plus, which creates amazing photos. I’m also loving listing on my phone now. I’ve just started doing it, and I am hooked. I don’t see myself going back to shooting pictures on a traditional camera, pulling out the memory card, and uploading to the computer. The cameras on phones are good now. They're clear. They do the job. The Essentials If you’ve got a smart phone, good light, and a good, clean, distraction-free background, you’re going to be able to take excellent pictures for your eBay business. Now, I’m not a pro. My pictures may not be top-of-the-line professional, but I’d say that they’re very good. I think they look clean and professional. And I think when customers come to my listings, they believe that I’ve provided high-quality photos. You don’t have to be a professional photographer to sell your items on eBay. Just describe them accurately, take a lot of nice, clean pictures, and be consistent with your listing and sourcing. Price competitively, and you’ll make money in your eBay business.
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New Resellers, Please Take This Advice and Give Yourself a Fighting Chance to Win I’ve been talking to a lot of new sellers lately who are just getting started. A common thing I’ve been noticing among them is something I want to touch on because it holds a lot of people back. What I’m talking about is so many people get started on eBay or Amazon or craigslist, and they’re so fearful of making a mistake. You cannot avoid mistakes when you are brand new. You are going to make a mistake—a small one, a big one. Mistakes are going to happen. You’re going to make mistakes. There is nothing you can do about it. Now, obviously you can take courses, read books, join membership sites and free Facebook groups, and watch YouTube videos. What that will do is help you minimize your mistakes, which is huge. But you’re never going to be able to fully avoid making mistakes. It’s just not going to happen.
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Don’t Let Fear Hold You Back You don’t want to approach a new business thinking to yourself, “I got to avoid mistakes. I can’t make a mistake. I got to do everything right. I can’t do anything wrong.” In doing that, you’re focusing on the negative. What you want to do is take massive amounts of action. When you do make a mistake, try not to repeat that mistake again. For example, maybe you’re just getting started selling on eBay. Maybe it’s your first month in business, and you’re excited. You’re a little overwhelmed, and one day you realize you shipped out two items to the opposite people. Maybe the Brooks Brothers shirt was supposed to go here, and the Ralph Lauren polo was supposed to go there. You think, “Oh my God, I just made a mistake.” You’re freaking out and going nuts. Take care of the problem. Fix it. And then create a solution for the next time to make sure you don’t make that mistake again. Create some type of system. Maybe when you’re shipping, you want to make sure that you take more time and not rush. For example, when you sell five pieces of clothing, maybe you want to put them all in poly bags and poly mailers and write what’s on the inside of each package and the weight. Then when you go to print out the labels, you know what’s inside each package. It might make shipping a little easier, and you’re not mixing things up. That’s a small example. The people who are most successful in any business have tried the various methods and taken the most action and made the most mistakes. But the key takeaway is when you make a mistake, realize you made a mistake. It’s okay. What can you do next time to avoid making the same mistake? What system can you put in place? What can you do differently? That’s the key right there. Getting Back Up So many people are scared to scale their business and take massive action because they’re fearful that they’re going to make mistakes. I’ll tell you right now you can’t avoid it. You’re going to make mistakes. You can do certain things to minimize making mistakes, but you can never fully take yourself out of the equation in terms of making mistakes. If you make a mistake, don’t beat yourself up. If you get knocked down, the key that will separate the winners from the losers isn’t being knocked down, but getting back up. The winners—when they make a mistake, when something goes wrong, when they’re scared—keep pushing forward. They get back up. They keep throwing punches. They don’t give up, and that’s really the key right there.
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The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches (NOT What You Think!) Typically in the morning—but at least once per day—I read. I love reading. When you read something positive or educational first thing in the morning, it really sets up your day for success. It gets you in the zone. I’ve had several people say to me, “I want to get around more positive people. I want to surround myself with people and information and ideas that align me with my goals and the places I want to go.” And I'll tell you right now, if you don’t have people like that in your life, the easiest way to surround yourself with positivity and high levels of learning and education is to read books.
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A Recommendation One book I recommend is The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches. The title is click bait; it’s not what you think it is. It’s actually very, very important. What I’ve learned from this book is how important it is to have a positive self-image. Many people, from when they were little boys and girls, have a negative self-image because of the way their parents treated them and from their values and beliefs that they were taught when they were little. When we grow to adults, we carry these things with us in our subconscious minds. It really affects our behavior, the way we feel, and the way we think about ourselves. It colors the way we see the world and plays out big in terms of what we can accomplish in our lives. If you see yourself as unsuccessful, as someone who is not smart enough, then you will be unsuccessful. If you think that because your parents and grandparents didn’t make a lot of money that you won’t either, then you won’t make a lot of money. These things are going to stick with you. The book goes into the nuts and bolts of reconditioning ourselves and having a differentself-image, which is important. Get into the Habit But the bigger takeaway here is that you should be sure to read something educational every single day. Read something that just gets you thinking positive. Don’t wake up first thing in the morning and start watching the news or listening to politics and all these crazy things. You want to start the day off right. And reading definitely helps a lot. So get yourself a good book. Start reading and make it a habit.
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Selling Expired Ink Online It always surprises me when I see it happening. Maybe it’s sitting on the shelf of a Goodwill or at a garage sale later on in the day. People pass it up all the time, and it always surprises me. What am I referring to? If you’re an intermediate or expert seller and have been in the game for a while, you likely know about this. But there are so many beginner resellers who pass it up. I’m talking about ink. And it’s ink in general, but to go a step further, it’s expired ink. And what I mean by expired ink is ink that may have expired five, six, seven, or eight years ago. So many people pass it up.
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Do Your Research Now, not all ink is going to make you money. I’m not an ink expert. You’re going to have to do your research and look up the sold listings. It’s amazing that people pass these up and they go for really, really good money. You should be aware, however, that you cannot sell expired ink on Amazon. You’re going to have to sell it on eBay (which is another reason that even if you are primarily an Amazon seller, you should still have an eBay account). I want to be straightforward with that. Take, for example, a multipack HP expired ink from August 2013. That would sell for probably $30 or $40, and it’s possible to pick one up at a thrift store or garage sale for, say, $5. It would ship for around a bit more than $3. It would be easy to package and ship. You could put it in a padded poly mailer. It would be an easy $20 or $25 profit. So do not pass up expired ink. Don’t Pass Up Ink Expired ink can bring in some excellent profits. It’s easy to ship. It’s easy to store. You likely won’t have many issues with it. As I said, if you are an experienced seller, you probably already know this, but it surprises me how many sellers don’t know. Do not pass up expired ink. Put the profits in your pockets.
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Be Willing to Help Others So many people I meet are—how do I say it diplomatically?—obsessed with the money. They’re obsessed with keeping any useful information that could help others to themselves. I’ll tell you right now, I’ve been able to benefit so greatly from lending a hand to people in need—whether it has been friends or family—who wanted to learn about how to make some extra money with Kindle Publishing, with reselling, eBay, Amazon, building a brand—different things like that. My YouTube channel has really been a blessing, as well as doing local meetups. I’ve hosted quite a few Connecticut reseller meetups, and it’s just truly a blessing.
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What Goes Around… And I can say right now that what goes around comes around. If you’re constantly giving and helping others and willing to share, it comes back to you in so many ways. It really does. It happens not only in the form of money but in happiness and being able to make a difference in contribution. It’s been amazing for me. It always stuns me how some people just want to keep everything to themselves; they’re so concerned with this money, with these pieces of paper. Here’s an example. My mom had been having a down day. I decided how nice it would be if I just called her up, she came over, and I gave her a bunch of books I had to resell. I had about $200 to $300 worth of books, and I gave them all to her. It feels so amazing to help other people out. When you get into reselling and are in it for three, six, nine, 12 months, you will develop this gift of knowing how to make money easily. It’s a skill set that allows you to be able to keep money flowing to you. It felt so amazing to give back to my mom and for her to be able to have that smile on her face from bringing home a whole bunch of books to make $300 because that means a lot to her. Make a Difference It’s just such a great feeling being able to make YouTube videos and have people say to me, “Hey, you made a difference in my life, and you helped me build a business. You helped me save up money to put my kids through college. You helped me be able to get out of my crappy job that I felt so miserable doing.” I want to encourage the people who watch my channel to go out there and create a YouTube channel of their own and help people. Create a Facebook group. Start posting on Instagram. You might think to yourself, “I don’t know that much; I’m not an expert,” but I can tell you right now that there are so many ways you can add value outside of being the expert. Just by sharing your journey, the ups and downs, you could save people so much time. You can save people so much stress and money. Being able to help others and give before trying to take is an amazing feeling. Seeing the smile on my mother's face when I gave her all those was simply wonderful. Opportunities Abound When I go picking with people, I’m not super crazy about always having to be first to get the deals. I truly do believe that there’s plenty to go around. I know that the more that I give, the more that comes back to me. My life has changed considerably—finances, my business, my happiness, my health, relationships. Everything is changing because I’m changing. I’m not focusing on me; I’m focusing on giving and helping others. This world would be such a better place if people just started thinking about how to help others. If you’re selling on eBay, if you’re selling on Amazon, if you’re doing wholesale or private label, if you have your own Shopify store, if you’re publishing your own books, if you’re launching your own products, whatever it is, the opportunities are endless. They are. And if your number one goal is to add value to others, help people, and create a solution and put systems in place, nothing can stop you. No Need for Greed Don’t feel as though you need to try to be greedy. Don’t be overly worried about the money.
Don’t Go to Bed (Late-Night Motivation #1) It was about 11:15 p.m. I had just gotten out of my little community gym, and a thought came to me. Most people were probably in bed or getting ready to go to bed. I started looking around in the parking lot. I saw nobody out there. And I thought about how most people go to sleep without accomplishing their goals, without doing the things that they know they need to be doing. One of my biggest goals was to lose weight and get fit. I’d blown up to about 210 pounds. So I took a year and worked really hard to get to the gym, to eat right, to exercise, and to make it happen. Now I’m weighing in at 177 pounds. The reason is because I put in that work. I haven’t allowed myself to go bed without doing what I know I need to do.
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Get It Done If you’re lying in bed right now and have things that you know you need to do, get it done right now. We only live one life, and you don’t know how much time you have left. Time is precious, and you deserve to be happy. You deserve to accomplish your goals. You deserve to be proud of yourself. So don’t go to bed before doing everything that you want to do because there’s no guarantee for the next day. As I stood there in the parking lot that night, I looked over at an apartment building nearby and was curious how many people had gone to sleep without doing what they knew they needed to do. Maybe they forgot to say thank you to that person who had done something really nice for them. Maybe they hadn’t gone out for a walk. Maybe that was their goal—to go for a walk every day. Maybe they had a goal of reading 10 minutes each day so they could grow, develop, learn, and get ahead in their field. Don’t go to bed without doing what you need to do. It’s Within Your Grasp That’s the message here. You can do it. You can accomplish it. It’s not pretty. It’s not beautiful. It’s not luxurious staying up late to get to the gym to make it happen, but sometimes you got to do it. And in that moment in the parking lot of the gym, I knew when I woke up in the morning, I was going to thank myself and say, “Thank you. Thank you for putting in that hard work when you were a little bit tired because that’s going to benefit you. That’s going to help you.” And knowing that made me happy. True Happiness I think that’s the way true happiness is. You attack your goals and progress in life and grow. You do things that you don’t feel like doing but know that they are going to benefit you. Go make today a great day. Get things done, and don’t let another day slip by without doing what you know you need to do. You might not have another day.
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The Honest Truth Behind Making Money Online I used to look at people who had a lot of money—maybe they were successful inbusiness or made more money than I did—and say, “Wow, I don’t know how I could ever get there. They must be lucky. There must be something special about them.” But over the last five years of running multiple businesses and earning income through about ten income streams, I learned that there’s one thing that separates people who aren’t making a lot of money or as much as they feel they should be and the people who are really killing it and successful. The key to making more money in your business or just more money in general is adding value. That’s it.
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What Do You Have to Offer? If you want to make more money, you need to figure out what it is you can exactly give; you need to give more value to get more money. Money doesn’t just miraculously come to you. It has nothing to do with luck. The people who do “get lucky” are doing the right things to put themselves in a position to get lucky. It’s what you give; it’s what you do. Look at your business. Look at your finances and your income. Maybe you are saying to yourself, “I want to get to the next level. I’ve been doing $2,000 a month, and now I want to get to $5,000.” Maybe you’ve been doing $10,000 a month and want to get to $20,000 or $40,000. Ask yourself this simple question: “What can I do today, over the next week, over the next month, three months, six months, nine months, year, or two years to add more value to the marketplace?” You want to make more money? Serve more people. You want to make more money? Help more people. You want to make more money? Find out what people are struggling with. Figure out their challenge and what they want. And then serve them—give, give, give. That’s really the secret to making more money. No Excuses Now, there are a million different ways that you can make money online. It doesn’t matter how old you are. Age is just a number. It doesn’t matter what color you are, what gender you are, your background, or your experience. It really doesn’t matter. Anyone who makes excuses based on these things is talking a bunch of BS nonsense. The key deciding factor is this: Are you going to serve a market? Are you going to serve the customers in that market really well? Are you going to figure out solutions to their problems? Are you going to give a massive amount of value? So whether it’s private label, selling on eBay, Amazon FBA, wholesale, or Shopify, it’s all just an indication of how much value that you’re giving. That’s really the equivalent to what’s in your bank account. I know I’m not offering any specific, hands-on strategies here, but I’ve actually found out over the last five years of running businesses that you can have the best strategies in the world, but if your mind isn’t in the right place, if you don’t understand things like this—the importance of adding value, making a difference, and serving people—strategies don’t really matter because it’s going to hold you back.
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How I Made $35,834.50 Without Selling Physical Products The other day a $36,000 check showed up in my mailbox. Now, I don’t share that with you to brag or boast or impress you. I just want to let you know that you could make really, really good money making YouTube videos, creating content on social media, and building up your brand. I’ve been getting quite a few people asking me, “Steve, what tips do you have? What resources? What books have you read? How can I get started so I can build up a brand, help people, and start launching products or doing affiliate marketing?"
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The Secret of Dotcom Secrets I wanted to share with you this book called Dotcom Secrets by Russell Brunson; you can get it on Amazon. Pretty much everything that I do in my business when it comes to launching products, affiliate marketing, building my brand, and creating a monetization strategy stems from what I learned in that book. You will find a tremendous amount of information in this book. I went to one of Brunson’s conferences called Funnel Hackers Live, and I learned all these amazing strategies for creating a brand, launching products, and making more money through my launches. It was just crazy. But the really crazy thing is that most of the stuff that I learned at the conference, surprisingly, is in the book. He literally took different concepts from inside the book and shared the same thing at the conference. But one thing that I’ve realized in life is that it’s kind of like karate. If you want to get really good at karate, it’s all about practicing the same things over and over again. It’s not learning a million different things; that’s not what it’s all about. It’s about getting really good at three, four, or five things and really mastering them. While I might have already known some of this stuff before the conference from reading the book, the repetitiveness of it really helped instill it in my mind. The Value Ladder But even if you cannot go to one of Brunson’s conferences, this is the book that you want to get. He talks about the concept of the value ladder. This is one thing that I wish I would have known a long time ago. For example, many people will start a YouTube channel and release a $200 to $300 course. What Brunson talks about in this book is that essentially what you want to do is start with something small. So give something away for free. Now, think of a ladder that ascends upward. Start with something free, and then instead of selling them on a $300 item, sell them something that’s like $7 or $8. That’s called the tripwire. You are trying to get them to ascend the ladder of products from free to $7 to $47 to $147 and up to your main core offer. That’s one of the concepts in his book that really stood out for me, and that’s one thing that I’m definitely applying to my business as well. Definitely check out this book. You’re going to love it. I can tell you right now that I have never found a book with more value than this one. I’ve taken courses, I’ve spent hundreds and thousands of dollars on courses and training, and this book right here has made the biggest impact. Get it today.
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The Power of Speaking Your Reality into Existence Over the years, one thing that I’ve done before I’ve actually achieved a goal—whether that was a financial goal, a business goal, or maybe a fitness health goal—is I’ve always spoken it into existence. I would repeat affirmations. I would write down goals, and I would say them to myself before I ever achieved them. There are a couple reasons you want to do this too. Why do you want to speak something into existence? Why do you want to say things to yourself before they happen? Let’s start with an example. I have one incantation right now about my health. I always say to myself, “I now weigh 165 pounds and have a thin, fit, healthy, muscular, sexy body.” I’ll just repeat it over and over again.
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Talking to Your Subconscious Mind I know it sounds crazy, but your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between the truth and a lie. And whatever you repeat to yourself over and over and over again, you’ll believe. In order to achieve, you’ve got to believe. When you believe you can do something, you’ll actually align yourself with it and take actions toward it. You need to speak your new existence and your desired reality before it actually happens. Doing this works. This is what I’ve been doing over the last three years. This is how I was able to go from 220 pounds to 170 pounds. This is how I’ve gone from earning $30,000 at the Cracker Barrel to this year, in which my goal is to do more than $480,000 in profit. I might even hit $500,000. And all this is because I believe in myself. I don’t know exactly how I’m going to achieve a lot of my goals. I just repeat it to myself over and over again, and then the opportunity always presents itself. Nonsense or Brilliance? You might be thinking to yourself, “Steve, this is BS nonsense. Brother, you’re getting weird. You’re odd, man. What are you doing talking about all this stuff? That doesn’t work.” It does work. This isn’t theory. I’ve been applying this to my life for years now, over the last three years especially. And it’s true. Your subconscious mind really cannot tell the difference between a truth and a lie. If you tell yourself over and over again that you are now earning a certain amount of money, that you have a particular body, or that you are a certain type of person, you will believe it and will start to act in accordance with it. I can promise you that. It Works the Other Way Too But it’s also true for the other side of the coin. You might be tempted to talk to yourself in a negative light: “I’m fat. I’m lazy. I am just a piece of crap. I’m always going to be broke because I’m not smart enough.” That might be your current truth, or it might notbe. Regardless, it becomes the truth because you’re saying it to yourself all the time. You’ve got to get control of your thoughts because your reality is in your hands. You can become anything you want. I know that sounds like self-help psycho-babble, but it’s true to an extent. You really can. There’s no better opportunity to design the life of your dreams than right this instant—especially with all the technology we have nowadays and the internet. We have so much information at our disposal on Google, forums Facebook groups, and YouTube. You Are Capable of Doing This I’m not saying this just to try to pump you up. It’s true. It wasn’t long ago that I was more than 240 pounds. I was smoking cigarettes. I was on Xanax and Adderall and Celexa, and I was living at home with my parents. I felt like crap. And, yes, it’s been a while, and I’ve slowly been chipping away at it. It didn’t happen overnight. But if I changed my life, then you can do the same thing. And one of the best things you can do is to start speaking into existence the reality that you desire so much.
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Working 15 Hours a Day Isn’t Sustainable (for Most People) Do you know Gary Vaynerchuk? He runs a huge social media company; he’s probably worth more than $100 million. Gary V. has been known to work for 15 hours a day, seven days a week. He’s got a crazy YouTube channel. He documents his days quite a bit. And many people out there—including myself for a while—have been really inspired by Gary. He made me want to grind my face off—10, 12, 14 hours a day. I did it for a while…and then I burnt out.
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Know Who You Are From my experience—for me personally and from seeing some of my really close friends that I mastermind with on a weekly basis over the last couple years—most people can’t do that. Gary V. is built like Gary V. And one thing that we need to realize is that we all are our own person. We all have our own tendencies. Some people are more gifted at sports, some people are quicker, some people are faster, and some people are better at public speaking. I think there are learnable skills, but different qualities and characteristics are just built into us too. We need to learn who we are and how hard we can work; we’ve got to figure things out on our own. I don’t think most people can bust their butts for 15 hours a day, and, personally, I don’t think that’s what most people want. So many people are just working their faces off, and they’re not really getting the results they want. They are too busy working, working, and working some more, and they’re never really taking time to reflect: “Okay, is this something that actually makes me happy? Am I climbing up the right ladder?” Working Hard vs. Working Smart What do I mean by that? There’s a difference between working hard and working smart. You might be working in your business, doing a specific thing, or your business might be based around a certain type of product that you’re selling. But that might not be the best product. You might not be in the right business but not realize it because you’re so busy just climbing up that one ladder or just trying to work around the clock. You might have been able to do something completely different, work smarter, and put in half the time but make two, three, or four times more money. That’s the thing. Take some time to slow down and reflect. And again, from my personal experience, I thought that the only thing I really wanted was money. I still remember five, six, seven, eight years ago just thinking about how amazing my life would be if I had $50,000. And then it was $70,000, and then it was $100,000. Then it was $200,000. Every time I make more money, my life improves a little bit more, and I have more resources available. I can buy toys, and I feel more secure. But at the end of the day, happiness doesn’t come from just working your face off and having a thriving business and making a bunch of money. It definitely helps. And if you’re in foreclosure or your life depends upon it, then you put in those 15–17 hours. But for most people, you just don’t have to work that hard. I think that many people are going to be grinding their faces off, then wake up one day 40, 50, 70 years old, and say, “Wow. I wish I would have spent more time with my family.” Maybe your mom or dad has passed away, and you say to yourself, “That would have been nice if I had gone on that trip with them.” Or maybe your kids are all grown up now, or maybe you don’t have your youth anymore. And you say to yourself, “I wish I would have run that marathon.” Or “I wish I had traveled to that place.” Don’t Be Afraid to Slow Down So take some time to slow down. Some people have asked me before to elaborate on this point. I had one person say to me, “What do you mean by slowing down? Can I pig out for the weekend? Can I take a week off? Can I take two weeks off?” Here are my thoughts on that. I think it’s okay to take a week or a couple of weeks off. Obviously,
My Friends Expect Me to Lower My Standards for Them Something I heard Tony Robbins once say during a conference really made me think about my health and my life. This is something that I feel will bring a lot of value to you and really open up your eyes, so keep reading. I don’t know about you and your past and who you hang out with, but I still have quite a few people in my life who either negative or aren’t where they want to be with their health, their relationships, their business, and their finances. They’re living under their true means. They’re living under their abilities. In many cases, they’re lazy and just not doing what they need to be doing.
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Don’t Let Others Bring You Down What Tony said at that conference really hit home for me. He explained that a lot of times, you might be doing amazing with your health or are having extraordinary results in your business or finances. Maybe you just had a $10,000.00 month on eBay; maybe you launched your private label product on Amazon; maybe you lost 30 pounds. Let’s stick with the Amazon example. So maybe you made $40,000.00 in one month on your private label product on Amazon. You’ve never made that kind of income before, and you are ecstatic. You are going through the roof with excitement; you are pumped up. You might have a friend you hang out with who maybe only makes $10 or $12 an hour. A lot of times in that situation what people do is lower their standards and won’t talk about their success. They won’t share it. They won’t get excited about it around their friends, and they’ll actually start to stoop to their level because they don’t want to make people feel bad. Self-Sabotage For example, have you ever gone out to eat with somebody who is maybe overweight or unhealthy, and you lowered your standards and decided to have a bunch of dessert or pizza or ate a bunch of food that you typically wouldn’t because you didn’t want to make them feel bad by eating something healthy? You’ve got to stop doing that. People have to learn to deal with their own problems. It’s not your job to lower your standards for other people. It’s your job to live up to your standards and your expectations, achieve your goals, and do the things that are aligned with your values and beliefs. I’ve struggled with this very thing in the past. I have people in my life who don’t have the same values as I do in terms of working out, health, the way I eat, and my business. There are people who I associate with who are broke and work minimum-wage jobs. They’re not fit. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not here to judge. I’m not judging somebody because they make less money than me or because they make more money than me. That doesn’t really matter. I’m not judging somebody because they’re eating unhealthy or because they’re overweight. I’ve been there. I’ve been broke. I’ve been jobless. I’ve been in jail, arrested. I was 250 pounds. I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. I’m no one to judge. If I judged, I would really a total hypocrite because I’ve been there and done that. Treat Your Mind Like a Garden But you don’t want to lower your standards for other people. You’ve got to be very, very careful. You have to guard the entrance of your mind and treat it like a garden. You’ve got to pull out those weeds when they pop up. You can’t let other people bring you down. That’s why you have to be so careful who you hang out with. I’ve been thinking about this because there are so many examples of people who almost make me feel as though I have to lower my standards to make them feel better. I have this friend, and any time I talk about my success and my business, it’s almost as if they get offended or upset. And I’m not rubbing it in their face; I'm just sharing my excitement. But they don’t want to hear it. This sort of person doesn’t want to hear about your success,
Is This Killing My Customers Selling on eBay? In response to one of the videos I did about starting a clothing business on eBay, I received a comment about a tip I suggested. Someone got a little worked up over my suggesting that you cut a piece from a dryer sheet and toss it in the package with the clothing you are sending. I think they made some really good points, so I want to repeat this comment here and then give my opinion after. The statement read, “Those laundry sheets are poison chemical. If you sent that ish to my house I’d leave a negative review quicker than you could cry for mommy. Nothing personal, but geez, it’s 2018, who uses poison deliberately? Ditch the dryer sheet routine, save yourself some money, save your poor buyers’ health.”
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Chemicals? This person was definitely pretty agitated, so let me touch on this. This person isn’t very happy about the dryer sheets getting thrown in, and I’m not sure if they’re poisonous or not. If I had to make a guess, I would probably say yes, they probably are poisonous to an extent. A lot of these things have chemicals—even soda, drinks, different juices, and food. You could say that everything’s poison and there are chemicals all over everything. So I definitely wouldn’t doubt it. What I have been doing—and I don’t do it every single time—is just rip a little piece off the dryer sheet when I fold up my clothing item and put it in a poly bag when I ship it. The reason I’ve done this in the past is to make the clothing item smell good. Sometimes if you’re sourcing from thrift stores and garage sales, they have a musty smell. So the piece of dryer sheet freshens it up and makes it smell good. I know a lot of other sellers do it as well. And in all the times I’ve done this, I’ve never had a problem with it. However, some people have allergies or are sensitive to certain chemicals, so this practice could get you into trouble in that way. I’ve never had anybody complain or become upset, but I could see how that could happen. Is It Really Harmful? My thought is that most people who buy a clothing item on eBay is going to wash it anyway; it’s not as though they’re going to take it out of the bag and throw it on themselves. So I don’t think it’s a really big deal. I think it’s something nice—they open up the bag and it’s just a nice, light, refreshing smell. There are tons of chemicals and different things out there in this world, and you can’t avoid it all. Sometimes sellers worry about these little things and get so caught up in these tiny details that they don’t take action. And you know what? What’s really the worst thing that’s going to happen? You might get somebody who complains. If I was to get a negative feedback, I would stop doing it, but I’ve never had any issues. So I’m still going to continue doing it. I don’t do it all the time—only if necessary. I think it’s still something nice to do. You don’t have to overpower it with a whole dryer sheet. Am I wrong for doing that? I’m open to hearing your suggestions.
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My Customer Is Abusing the Return Policy Selling on eBay I have often been asked, “Steve, what do you do about repeat returners?” So this is the basic issue. What happens if you’re selling on eBay, and you notice that somebody returns an item, and then maybe a couple weeks later, they buy another item and return it? What do you do if the same person is consistently buying your items and returning them? Now, I do want to be 100 percent honest. This has never happened to me—or at least if it has, I’m not aware of it. I don’t think I’ve ever had somebody who has purchased multiple times and returned items multiple times. Is It Something You Are Doing? First of all, if it’s happening to you, I would try to investigate why. Why are they consistently returning the items? Is it something that you’re doing incorrectly? Are you taking really poor pictures? Is the lighting off? Are you editing your pictures in a funky way, and it’s showing the color differently? Are you not including measurements? Are the items not clean? Are you packaging them the wrong way? If you are not sure why someone is continually returning the items, figure it out. At the end of the day, when you’re selling on eBay, your goal is to make your customers happy. Your goal is to provide value to them. So, if they’re unhappy, there could be a reason.
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Block Only If You Have To If you think you’re in a situation where the customer is just screwing around or messing with you, well…I don’t actually know why somebody would do this. This has never happened to me. You could go in and block them. I have done this a couple times. And you could do it when you honestly believe that someone is trying to scam you or mess with you. Because I have a YouTube channel, I sometimes have people who mess with me and go through my eBay store. That’s why I don’t even release my eBay store anymore; some people are just freaking crazy. But if you’re not on YouTube, well, you probably don’t have to worry about that. But, yes, you can block buyers. Again, I don’t do this all the time, but every now and then, you're going to meet somebody who is just a little wacky, a little crazy…and it just is what it is. That’s the simple answer. But, first and foremost, figure out why they are consistently returning the item. There’s probably a reason. There’s probably something that you’re doing that’s putting them off. I’m going to guess it’s probably the photography or not including enough item specifics or details. Disclose Flaws and Issues If an item has a flaw or any other potential issue, you not only want to put it in the description area, but when you list your items, that first little box at the top that shows up next to the price and the pictures is a place to list a flaw or an issue. Always put it in there because a lot of times, people, especially customers who are purchasing via mobile device, won’t even read the description. I know it sounds crazy because I always do. I’m looking to make sure it is what I want. But some people out there are impulse buyers. They see something, and they buy it. They don’t really look at the description. They just figure, “Hey, if it’s not what I think it is, I’ll just return it.” So all you can do is investigate your items or, if you absolutely have to, block some buyers.
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How to Get 50 Percent Off Full-Priced Items at Thrift Stores (I Literally Just Did This) Let me tell you a story. I was at the thrift store the other day, and I went with my good friend Vinnie. We went out to Savers, and we were there hanging out. I was looking through some clothing and the books. Vinnie is a really successful toy seller. He sells a bunch of vintage and used toys. So he was looking through the toys. On a whim I decided to amble on over to the board game section. There were four boxes of Legos inside the board game section, and they were all brand new. I was thinking, “Wait a second. Weren’t these in the glass case a week ago?” Indeed, they had been. They had been priced at $69.99 each. The thing was the boxes were bashed up. The Legos were new in the box, but all the boxes were in bad shape. So taking that into consideration, they were way overpriced. They might have been priced at what they would sell for on eBay, but there definitely wasn’t enough room to make a profit. So clearly these had been sitting at the thrift store for a long time. They were in the glass case originally, and then they moved them onto the floor. That is a big sign to pay attention to. It’s a sign that they can’t sell the items.
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It Pays to Ask In this case, they hadn’t dropped the price. I thought that was kind of weird. None of the boxes had sold, they were on the floor now, and they were still all beat up. So what I did—and what I suggest you do if you find yourself in this situation—was ask the manager, “Hey, would you be willing to take a discount on these?” And then I explained my reasoning. That’s very important. I said, “I noticed that these Legos were in the glass case for a couple weeks and never sold, and I just saw them on the floor over there in the board game section. I noticed they’re the same price. They’ve been sitting out for a while, and they’re all bashed up. Would you consider dropping the price? I might be interested in purchasing them, but they’re just priced too high right now considering the condition.” He responded, “Yeah, sure, no problem.” Now, I know this guy. I’m not great friends with him, but I have taken the time to get to know him a little bit. And really, anybody can do that. He took the boxes of Legos to the side. I could see him looking them up on the phone. I was getting a little worried that he was going to offer me a discount of only 5 percent or maybe 10 percent. He actually discounted the boxes 50 percent. He took 50 percent off those Legos. It still wasn’t the best deal for all of them, but we did buy one of the boxes that could potentially sell for $80 or $90, and we got it for $20. You Just Never Know The moral here is that you just never know. Maybe there are some items that are sitting at your thrift store that have been collecting dust. Maybe an item started in a glass case and then was moved onto the floor, but it still isn’t selling. Don’t be scared to ask about a discount. The worst thing that’s going to happen is they’re going to say no. Don’t Go Overboard Just be polite, be cool about it, and don’t show too much interest. Don’t go overboard when you ask: “Oh my God, I really, really want this item. Is there any way you could discount it? I really, really want it. Please, it’s bashed up. It’s not going to sell.” That’s too desperate. Just say, “Hey, you know, I saw that this item has been sitting for a while, and it’s a little damaged. If you could discount it, that would be cool—if not, no big deal. Just priced way too high…don’t know if it’s going to sell.” Go ahead and put your own spin on how you ask, but do keep this tip in mind as you visit the thrift stores.
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Is It Worth Selling Ties on eBay? Sometimes people will ask me, “Steve, do ties sell well on eBay?” To answer the question really quickly, yes, ties do sell on eBay. But that’s not the whole answer. You need to find the right ties. It’s very similar to selling clothes on eBay. You’ve got to make sure you find the right brands. The Right Brands For example, one of my favorite brands that I love to sell when it comes to ties is Vineyard Vines. Pretty much all Vineyard Vines ties sell really well. Another one is Robert Talbott, but you’ve got to find the right ones. There are specific styles, colors, and models that are going to do much better than others. What I would recommend to you—and this goes for all types of clothing and accessories—is that you go over to eBay, go into the sold listings, type in “men’s ties” and check “sold listings,” “used,” “United States,” and “Buy It Now.” You can even set a standard for the pricing.
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Keep an Eye on Your Profit Margin Maybe you only want to study ties that sold between $10 and $25. For anything less than $10, you are not likely to make much of a profit unless you are getting the tie for 20 cents or something. It’s true that you can ship a tie very inexpensively because it’s going to be only a few ounces. You can ship it in a poly bag, which won’t cost too much. For me personally, I don’t like selling ties less than $10 because I like to make at least $10 to $20 profit on an item, and I like my average selling price for a tie to be at least $15 or $20 bucks. So, yes, ties absolutely do sell on eBay, but as I said, you’ve got to find the right brand. Some tie brands might only get you around $3, maybe up to $6. So the trick is to find the right brands, the right sizes, the right colors, and the right styles. Only a Small Space Needed Here’s another thing to love about ties. Some people have limited space. And with ties, you don’t need an extensive storage space. You don’t really need a mannequin. You don’t need a huge space to take photographs. You can literally just lay the tie down on a table, shine some light, take a picture, throw it in a poly bag, and then store it in a bin. All you need to do is get yourself a little plastic bin, put a number on it—maybe A1 is the first bin, then the second bin is A2—and just start filling up those bins with the inventory. Slap an inventory number on the outside of the poly bag that has the tie in it, put it in the bin, SKU it inside of your eBay listing so you know where to find it, and you can store a hundred or even two hundred ties in one bin. Now, you want to make sure you have a good system because it might be a hassle to find it, but ties are also really easy and inexpensive to ship. They’re usually very cheap to acquire too. And people are always looking for ties. But you’ve got to find the right brands. So my best advice for you is to go into the sold listings and study, study, study. Add Ties in the Mix Ties are a great item to add to your arsenal. So with your jeans, blazers, sport coats, suits, and dress shirts, get ties into the mix. Just make sure to study the sold listings. The more educated you are, the better chance that you’re going to be able to walk out of thrift stores, garage sales, and flea markets with profitable items. You do have to inspect them to make sure they’re in good shape. You might find ties with coffee stains or different rips and threading coming apart. So give a tie a good inspection. But besides that, go out there and crush it with ties.
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How Would You Handle This Situation? Is He Being a Jerk? So I was at Goodwill, and it was about 10:20 am. In this Goodwill, a couple times a week they have fresh inventory come out in these blue multitiered bins. The bins will be filled up with house goods, books, and all different types of items. Well, that day they brought out this bin of books. There’s this one guy I always see there, and, sure enough, he was there that day. He always has a stool with him. He pulls the stool up, and he plops it right in front of the bin. He’s a nice guy; I have no problem with him. But he plops himself down and almost takes over the whole thing. He puts his shopping cart on the left side of it and puts the stool down in the middle. And I get this vibe from him. It’s almost as if he is saying, “Back off. This is my territory. I’m here first.” Again, I have nothing against him. But I’m just curious what everyone else would have done. A friend of mine once told me that he had said to him something along the lines of, “Hey, I’m here first.” I’m paraphrasing, and I can’t say for sure what happened since I wasn’t there.
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There “First”? So what would you do? Is it okay if he was there “first”? What is the right thing to do? What’s the wrong thing? Is that his territory? As a reseller, should I avoid approaching him since he was there already and had started scanning books right next to him? Or do I have the right to do that since we were both in the store? What’s right? What’s wrong? I don’t know the answer. I’ll be honest with you. Part of me wanted to say, “Listen, I have the freedom to go in there, stand next to you, and take some books if I want. You don’t own the whole store.” And then another part of was thinking, “Well, as another reseller, someone who’s been in the business, it’s only proper etiquette; it’s only right that if another reseller is there scanning to keep a distance.” It’s almost like fishing. My dad is a big fisherman, and he always taught me that if someone is fishing in a spot, you don’t want to fish too close to them because you’re going to scare the fish away. Sure, the books aren’t going anywhere, but it’s almost like proper etiquette. The other seller was there first. There are plenty of opportunities at the thrift store. How to React? So what would you do? Would you make your way in and say, “Listen. Whatever. It’s a free country. I can do whatever I want.” But maybe he wouldn’t even react and I wouldn’t have to say anything. What’s right? What’s wrong? What is proper etiquette? I don’t know. The day in question, I kept my distance. I didn’t want to step on the guy’s toes. But as they say, nice guys finish last. That could be true in this case. If I would have gone next to him, maybe I would have found a hundred bucks worth of profit. Who knows? Or maybe I would have just created an enemy. But does he have the right to get mad at me? I don’t have all the answers. It’s different when there’s a huge bookshelf. Obviously you can’t control the whole bookshelf. But a bin and if he’s there first…what are your thoughts? Mama Profit’s Take I told my mom—Mama Profit—about all this and asked her opinion. And do you know what she said? She said, “Listen, I ain’t here to make friends. I’m going to barge right in and throw the books in my cart.” So, I guess Mama Profit don’t give a damn. But, for me personally, it’s still an etiquette question that is up in the air. What are your thoughts?
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Thrift Store Tips and Tricks (How I Lost $140 with a Single Mistake) If you live in an area like I do, where there’s definitely a bunch of competition and thrifters out there who are looking for books, clothing items, shoes, and similar items that you’re looking for, then you definitely want to follow this tip. Imagine right now that you’re in a thrift store, and a cart comes out with fresh inventory. Imagine you see one of those carts come out, and it’s just sitting there. What do you do? Well, I’ll tell you right now that what you need to do is rush those bins. Why? You do that because that’s brand-new inventory. Your competition hasn’t looked it over, so that’s where the money is going to be.
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Looking Over New Inventory Now, although that’s a tip, that’s not the tip I wanted to share with you. What I really want to share with you is something more specific that has to do with brand-new inventory. When you see the cart coming out, instead of just looking at one bin and thinking you are going to go through it, take a glance at all the bins before you decide. Why? I have a real-life story I want to share with you. I was at Goodwill, and three different carts came out with six bins each, so there were essentially 18 different sections that I could look in. I walked up to the first cart, poked around in one bin, saw that there were books, and just started scanning. Now, there’s usually no problem doing that if there’s something profitable like a bunch of Super Nintendo games or something amazing. Getting Scooped And what happened was that my competition came out; he’s actually a good friend of mine. While I was looking through the bin and scanning books that weren’t even worth money, he pulled out a $100 Monopoly game right next to me. And then he followed up with another $40 board game. So the lesson is that when you see the carts come out, rush to them—that’s number one. But number two is to give all the bins a quick scan. What you’re essentially doing is looking to see if there’s anything that is really obvious that is just screaming out money. You have to throw it in your shopping cart so the competition doesn’t grab it. Lesson Learned When I think about what happened, I can’t believe I didn’t look in that bin. It was right next to me. If I would have just taken two seconds, that money would have been in my possession. That was a day’s pay right there that I lost out on because I made that simple rookie mistake. Now, it definitely went to an amazing guy, and I’m glad it was him. But it does hurts when you lose out on money. Don’t let this happen to you. Start scanning everything first because the money is in those fresh bins, and if you don’t take advantage of that opportunity, somebody else will.
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Huge Pricing Mistake Beginner Booksellers Are Making on Amazon FBA I have noticed a mistake I see a lot of booksellers making when they’re selling on Amazon FBA. I’ll give you an example. Let's say you have a textbook that you found from Savers. Maybe you paid three dollars for it, and it’s selling on Amazon FBA for $130. Maybe there are seven FBA sellers, and the lowest price is $130 in very good condition. So now you’re looking at your book. You’re getting ready to list it on Amazon. You're assessing it. Maybe you see some wrinkles and a little bit of highlighting. Maybe there is a little mark on the back of the book. So you determine that you’re going to sell it as being in good condition.
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How Should You Price This Book? Well, I see a lot of sellers pricing their items incorrectly. In this example, the lowest seller is $130 in very good condition. Yours is in good condition. Let’s say the rank is 100,000. This book is selling quickly. You decide to price it at maybe $80 or $90. You’re undercutting the next-highest seller by $30 or $40. Maybe you feel that your book’s condition isn’t as good, and you don’t want to make the customer upset. You want to assure that you are creating a really good experience for the buyer. Here’s the thing though. On Amazon, yes, if you’ve got a book that’s maybe acceptable or good, you’ve got to be competitive. So there’s nothing wrong with undercutting it a little bit—maybe 1 to 3 percent. But there’s really no difference, especially with higher-end textbooks, if you undercut by 3 percent or by 30 percent. A Strong Market Is the Key If someone is in the market for that book, then the lower price won’t matter as much. Let’s consider the factors. It has a good sales rank. People are looking for this book. There’s a market for it. The book has reviews. It’s in demand. It’s going to sell just as well. Do not sell a $130 book for $80; do not take a home run and turn it into a double. With a book like this textbook, you don’t have to undercut that much. If your condition is only good as opposed to very good, then just drop it a couple dollars if you want. Now again, there are going to be people out there who say, “Never undercut.” Well, everyone has their own business model; you might be a small fish, or maybe you’re a large fish. We’re all going to have different theories and business models. Maybe you only have couple hundred books and want to keep your books moving. So, okay, you want to be competitive and drop the price maybe a dollar or two. Don’t Go Overboard on the Undercutting But in general, don’t undercut by 20 or 30 percent thinking that it’s going to be game changer for you. Because in general it’s not. You’re going to be shooting yourself in the foot by losing out on profits. Use Camelcamelcamel if you need help taking a look at a book’s price history. Selling books, especially textbooks, on Amazon can net you a healthy profit. Don’t make rookie mistakes in pricing that will take money out of your pocket.
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Garage Sale Tips to Increase Sales Selling on eBay So many people flock to the thrift stores. Maybe they hit flea markets and pawn shops too. But there are those who don’t really seek out garage sales. If you are one of them, I want to let you know that maybe you should try it out. I’m going to talk to you about how to prepare for garage sales to be able to yield the most money from them in terms of reselling.
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Apps Can Make It Easier If you’re new to garage sales, I recommend that you download Yard Sale Treasure Map or GSALR. Those are two apps that will help you locate garage sales, which will make this whole process a lot easier. These apps pull information off craigslist and other yard sale websites, yard sale websites. They aggregate the information in one location so you have it in one place; it comes right to your phone. Using these apps along with the GPS on your smartphone will help you coordinate points along your path, which will save you a lot of time and effort. Check Craigslist and Other Garage Sale Sites I typically use craigslist. If you try this site, what I suggest is that you look at where the garage sales are going to be—you’re going to have to figure out where to start. What point in the town are you going to start? Are you going to start in the southern portion, the northern portion, the east, the west? Wherever you decide to make your starting point, that is where you will have your golden opportunity, which is generally between 8:00 and 9:00 in the morning depending on where you live. That golden hour will make the most money because you will have beaten out the other resellers. You need to properly position yourself. So the night before, go on craigslist and get a feel for which garage sales are selling what and the types of items you are looking for. Maybe one just south of you is selling some bikes or video games, and you decide to start there. Maybe you are looking to build up a clothing business, so you go where the ad says they have lots of high-end clothes. Get a Jump on the Competition This is something that a lot of people don’t do. The tip here is to make offers a couple days before or the night before the garage sale. Write to the person holding the garage sale and say, “Hey, I see that you have this specialized road bike. Would you take 54? I can pick it up tonight.” Believe it or not, a lot of people will actually take that deal. When you throw cash in somebody’s face, it’s hard to resist. This is one reason I love garage sales. Even if you are brand new at this business and don’t have a lot of money, you can build up some nice inventory. You can buy items at dirt-cheap prices. It's a great way to be able to accumulate items to sell. The biggest mistake a lot of people make when they get started in reselling is to jump right into private label or wholesale or retail arbitrage right off the bat. Yes, some people can make it happen if they’re very talented or have past experience dealing with e-commerce or products or anything to do with making money online. But the average person is going to want to minimize the risk as much as possible. Have Your Cash Ready Another tip is to make sure the night before that you have cash ready. Get cash ready in your wallet. Have all different types of money from dollar bills to fives, to tens, to twenties—even change. You don’t want to find something profitable that is marked at a quarter and you only have dollar bills on you. Also, keep your change in different pockets. Don’t have all your twenties and tens and fives in one pocket. When you make an offer for something for five bucks, you don’t want to pull out a wad of tens and twenties along with that five-dollar bill. That might make the seller less likely to cut you a deal. Move from Garage Sale to Garage Sale with Purpose Don’t get into these long-winded conversations with people running the garage sale.
Do I Wash My Clothing I Sell on eBay? If I’ve heard this question once, I’ve heard it a million times. And here I am answering it again: Do you need to wash clothing before you sell it on eBay? And the answer is no, you don’t have to wash it. Now, if there are stains or odors or if it needs to be cleaned, then wash it. But most items I get from the thrift store are in decent condition. They don’t have any weird odors. There are no marks or stains or issues with it. Would You Be Happy With the Item? To help me decide if I really need to wash something, I always ask myself this question: If I was the customer and received this item, would I be happy with it? If the answer is no, then I wash it. If the answer is yes, then I’m not going to do anything with it. But really, most of the items I pick up are in very good to like-new condition. They appear cleaned and washed. Obviously if I am getting something for myself, I wash it when I get it home. But for an item you are going to sell, you don’t necessarily have to wash it before you ship it because most customers are going to wash the item when they get it anyways.
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Easy Way to Take Care of the Smell If there is any dusty, musty smell from a thrift store, one thing I do is take a little piece of a dryer sheet and put it in the poly bag when I wrap it up and ship it off to the customer. It smells great. I’ve done tests where I put a piece in the bag and leave it in there for a day or two, and when I open it up, it’s a breath of fresh air. So put yourself in the position of the customer. If you’d be happy with it, then I think you should be okay. I mean, many people will tell you to go above and beyond and do everything to make the customer happy, but really, most customers will be fine with it because they are going to wash items anyway. Consider the Time Involved You also need to consider the time invested in washing all your items to see if it is worth your time on a mass scale. If you’re listing a couple hundred items a week, that would add up to a lot of time. It’s just extra time that is not necessary. I’ve never had an issue with a customer messaging me and saying they want to return an item because it’s dirty or has a weird smell. In the end, however, you do what you need to do. It’s your business. If you really feel the need to go above and beyond and wash all your clothing, it won’t hurt. But doing so will absolutely cost you time. And when you’re in the eBay business, time is your most precious resource. Use it wisely. You need to learn to be efficient with your time, leverage your time, and be smart with your time.
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The Biggest Mistake New Clothing Sellers Make on eBay If you are new to reselling clothing on eBay, the first thing you may have tried to learn about is which brands sell best. Maybe you watched a video where someone said, “Hey, Ralph Lauren sells; Polo sells. Buy Ralph Lauren and Polo. Brooks Brothers is great. Be on the lookout for Gucci too.” And then you bought one of these brands, and your item sat and sat. You had to run a sale just to have it sell finally for $12.
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Some Sell; Some Don’t This happens with a lot of brands, even the really great ones. You need to understand that just because in general Ralph Lauren sells—or Brooks Brothers or Gucci or Vineyard Vines—it doesn’t mean that every single item within that brand will sell for big bucks. When it comes to clothing, there are so many different factors—size, pattern, material, seasonality, different styles and models, etc.—to consider. As a seller yourself, maybe you watched a video of mine where I showed you an item that sold for $120. Maybe it was a rare Ralph Lauren sweater. But not every piece of Ralph Lauren is going to sell for good money. Get to Know the Sold Listings Not everything within a brand is created equally, and not everything sells really well. You need to spend time in the sold listings. If you're a new eBay seller, spend 30 to 45 minutes every day to study up on what exactly, for example, makes one style of shirt sell for $100 and another style sell for $15. You could start with polo shirts. Every time you go to a thrift store, go through the different polo shirts—you could even have a Google doc open on your phone—and write down all the brands. When you get home, go into the sold listings and look up that Zeno polo shirt or the Canali polo shirt or the Lacoste. Look up the Ralph Lauren and the Brooks Brothers. Watch for Logos Brooks Brothers is a great example because you’re going to notice firsthand that not all Brooks Brothers shirts sell well, especially polo shirts. You will also discover that if the Brooks Brothers shirt has the flying sheep logo right on the front of the chest, it will sell better than a polo shirt without a logo. And that is true for a lot of brands. Clothing items sell better if the brand’s logo is on the chest. So the only way you will learn how to do this is by spending time in the sold listings. You can watch all the videos you want and can study as much as you want, but nothing beats studying the sold listings. Put in the Work At the end of the day, you have to realize that you’ve got to do your research. Build that time and effort into your selling routine. Start with a category—for example, polo shirts and study the heck out of polo shirts. Then move on to jeans, to button-front shirts, then maybe to accessories such as ties, belts, or hats. There is so much out there. There is so much opportunity. This is an amazing opportunity that we all have. It takes hard work and focus, but if you’re willing to take the time to study and research, hit the thrift stores and garage sales, and be prepared, you are going to get lucky and make some money. You will have put yourself in the position for the wealth to flow to you.
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My Advice to a Friend Who Is Dealing with Haters I got a message from a friend with a YouTube channel. I’m not going to mention his name—this situation could apply to just about anyone—but he sent me a message saying, “Hey, my YouTube channel is starting to grow. I’ve got a bunch of followers and subscribers who love me. But I’m also getting hated on all the time, and people have been making up fake stories about me and lies and trying to ruin my reputation. What should I do? I’m a nice guy. I just don't know how to handle this.
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Crabs in a Bucket From my experience, when you start becoming successful, when you begin to stand out from the crowd and move ahead, people start throwing shade your way. They start taking shots at you. It’s kind of like the crabs-in-a-bucket mentality. If you have a whole bunch of crabs in a bucket and one tries to crawl out, what happens? The crabs will pull the other crab down because they don’t want that crap to escape. The same thing happens when you start to have success and you’re surrounding yourself with the wrong people. Now, if you have good friends and people who truly love you and respect you, they typically won’t do this. But sometimes even people who love and care for you will hate on you or even subconsciously take shots at you to bring you down; your success is beginning to make them uncomfortable. People will hate on you, throw shade your way, and try to bring you down because your success is a reflection of what they’re not doing. It’s a reflection of their laziness, their inability to do what needs to be done to become successful, to take action, to continue learning and growing and pushing themselves forward. When they see you being successful, they think to themselves, “If I want to be perceived as successful as this person, I can invest in myself, grow, build, learn, focus on self- development, and take massive action. But, ugh, that seems like a lot of hard work I probably can’t do even if I tried. The easier option is to throw rocks at this person’s empire. I’ll light dynamite under it, explode it, and take it down.” And that seems like the easier way for them to appear that they’re better than you. The Evil of Egos Many people are driven by ego. They don’t like when you seem to be getting ahead in life. And the fastest way for them to take you down is to hate on you; they will try to ruin your reputation, make up stories, and gossip. I’ve dealt with this in my life. People have made up complete lies and stories that are even true pretty much to try to destroy me or take me down. That’s just what happens. It can be a nasty world out there; it can be brutal. So how do you handle this? Well, you’ve got to realize one thing. You can only control your actions. You can’t control what other people are going to say. You just can’t. So as much as it hurts, we all want everyone to like us, but it’s just not going to happen. You just can’t control what other people say, think, or believe. Do What You’ve Been Doing to Get Ahead Instead focus your time and your efforts and your mind on doing what you’ve been doing to become successful. Focus on the things that you have been doing that have allowed you to become successful. If you are having success, then you surely have certain patterns in your life, certain action steps that you take that have helped you be successful. Maybe it’s going to the gym consistently; maybe it’s spending an hour meditating or reading or learning or networking or masterminding or just listing ten items a day. You’ve done something right, and that makes you really special. If you’re having success and getting ahead in life and people are hating on you, you’re being successful because you’re an amazing person. Do not let the haters make you veer off course. If you’re getting the results, keep doing what you’re doing.
How I Use Gratitude to Overcome Depression & Laziness in my Online Business and Life I’m the kind of guy who tries to keep motivated. But you know what? Some days I am just not feeling it. Sometimes I am not feeling up to par. Maybe I don’t feel like going to the gym. Maybe I don’t feel like working. Maybe I don’t feel like making videos. Maybe I don’t even feel like doing the things I really enjoy deep down inside, things that give me purpose. And from time to time, I think we’re all going to feel that way when we just don’t feel like doing anything. I think it’s normal. The key is to find a strategy to get yourself out of that. One of the things I like to do—works like a charm every single time—is slow down, take a deep breath, get by myself, and think about some of the things I’m grateful for. Being in a place of gratitude and thankfulness is an amazing way to find the meaning in life, to rebuild your energy and your purpose. It will get you moving in the right direction again, whether it’s working on your business or going to the gym to lose weight or just dealing with a hard time in your life.
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A Talk with Yourself about Gratitude I’ll explain how I do the exercise. Say today’s been a little off for me. I just haven't felt super motivated. I know that it’s a normal thing everyone goes through, but knowing that doesn’t make it easier at the moment. I remind myself that what determines winners versus losers—the people who get up and make things happen versus those who don’t—is how they control their minds. So I get down to talking myself through gratitude. I’m grateful for anyone who watches my YouTube videos. I’m thankful for the opportunity to have a platform that allows me to be able to share the different things that are going on in my life: self-development, motivation, business, finances. I love being able to interview people and add value to the reselling community. It’s been amazing not only helping people, but building a business out of my YouTube channel. I’m just really grateful to be able to serve others. I also appreciate the opportunity to have the internet. Just think about it. What would I be doing if I had been born 70 or 80 years ago? There would be no internet. I probably would have worked a normal job, clocking in, clocking out. I’m grateful to be able to have the freedom to travel and sell things online and do E-commerce. The internet is an amazing opportunity. I’m so lucky to be able to experience the freedom I have. Another thing I’m thankful for is living in America. I am indebted to capitalism, to being able to build businesses. I have freedom. I get to do pretty much what I want. And even though I’d prefer a warmer climate, I’m grateful for Connecticut. It’s a safe place. I live in a nice apartment in a wonderful neighborhood. I get to live near my family. Another thing I’m grateful for is the money that’s flowing into my life. This has been an awesome year. I’ve made more money than I’ve ever made my entire life by actually helping people and making a difference and doing things that I love. It feels really, really good. I have the money and freedom to travel, to buy something here or there, or to take my mother out to dinner. I am able to enjoy life without having to worry how I’m going to pay my bills. I can invest in a life coach. I’ve been enjoying going to my life coach every single week, learning and growing and developing myself. I’m really thankful for the money because it has allowed me to invest in going to a gym. And that money that has been coming in from these businesses that I’m building has allowed me to hire a personal trainer. I so appreciate Noah, my personal trainer, being able to work out with him three times a week. I’m grateful for my body and for all the energy it gives me not only to be a shining light for other people, to serve and help and make a difference,
How I Use Gratitude to Overcome Depression & Laziness in my Online Business and Life I’m the kind of guy who tries to keep motivated. But you know what? Some days I am just not feeling it. Sometimes I am not feeling up to par. Maybe I don’t feel like going to the gym. Maybe I don’t feel like working. Maybe I don’t feel like making videos. Maybe I don’t even feel like doing the things I really enjoy deep down inside, things that give me purpose. And from time to time, I think we’re all going to feel that way when we just don’t feel like doing anything. I think it’s normal. The key is to find a strategy to get yourself out of that. One of the things I like to do—works like a charm every single time—is slow down, take a deep breath, get by myself, and think about some of the things I’m grateful for. Being in a place of gratitude and thankfulness is an amazing way to find the meaning in life, to rebuild your energy and your purpose. It will get you moving in the right direction again, whether it’s working on your business or going to the gym to lose weight or just dealing with a hard time in your life.
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A Talk with Yourself about Gratitude I’ll explain how I do the exercise. Say today’s been a little off for me. I just haven't felt super motivated. I know that it’s a normal thing everyone goes through, but knowing that doesn’t make it easier at the moment. I remind myself that what determines winners versus losers—the people who get up and make things happen versus those who don’t—is how they control their minds. So I get down to talking myself through gratitude. I’m grateful for anyone who watches my YouTube videos. I’m thankful for the opportunity to have a platform that allows me to be able to share the different things that are going on in my life: self-development, motivation, business, finances. I love being able to interview people and add value to the reselling community. It’s been amazing not only helping people, but building a business out of my YouTube channel. I’m just really grateful to be able to serve others. I also appreciate the opportunity to have the internet. Just think about it. What would I be doing if I had been born 70 or 80 years ago? There would be no internet. I probably would have worked a normal job, clocking in, clocking out. I’m grateful to be able to have the freedom to travel and sell things online and do E-commerce. The internet is an amazing opportunity. I’m so lucky to be able to experience the freedom I have. Another thing I’m thankful for is living in America. I am indebted to capitalism, to being able to build businesses. I have freedom. I get to do pretty much what I want. And even though I’d prefer a warmer climate, I’m grateful for Connecticut. It’s a safe place. I live in a nice apartment in a wonderful neighborhood. I get to live near my family. Another thing I’m grateful for is the money that’s flowing into my life. This has been an awesome year. I’ve made more money than I’ve ever made my entire life by actually helping people and making a difference and doing things that I love. It feels really, really good. I have the money and freedom to travel, to buy something here or there, or to take my mother out to dinner. I am able to enjoy life without having to worry how I’m going to pay my bills. I can invest in a life coach. I’ve been enjoying going to my life coach every single week, learning and growing and developing myself. I’m really thankful for the money because it has allowed me to invest in going to a gym. And that money that has been coming in from these businesses that I’m building has allowed me to hire a personal trainer. I so appreciate Noah, my personal trainer, being able to work out with him three times a week. I’m grateful for my body and for all the energy it gives me not only to be a shining light for other people, to serve and help and make a difference,
One Decision Away No matter how corny you think this sounds, it’s so true. You’re literally one decision away from changing your life. This morning when I got back from the gym, I looked in the mirror. And I see that now I have this thin body; I’m in shape. By no means am I perfect, but I’ve transformed myself in the past eleven months. I went from 211 pounds down to 176. I’m not saying this to impress you by that fact. What I want to do is impress upon you the fact that you’re one decision away. As I was looking in the mirror today, I wondered what I would look like now if eleven months ago I hadn’t decided to hire a personal trainer and change my life. The same stands true for your finances. The same stands true for your business. And I really hate to be all like, “Rah-rah, let’s get you all motivated and excited.” But it’s so true. You are literally one decision away from changing your life.
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What Do You Want to Change? Are you broke? Maybe you’re making money but you do things you just don’t like to do. You’re stressed out. Maybe you want to start an eBay business. Maybe you want to start private labeling. Maybe you want to go wholesale or start a Shopify store. It doesn’t even have to be about business. Are you overweight? Maybe you want to start a relationship with a new person. It could be a million different things. And believe me, I know it’s tough at times. It’s not easy to manage everything in your life and work on improving too. I know you want to get better. And the first thing for you to do is to understand you are one decision away from changing your life. It Won’t Be Easy Will it be easy? Absolutely not. I put in a lot of hard work to transform my body. There have been many days I really didn’t feel like working out. I didn’t always feel like going on the elliptical. Some evenings all I wanted was that slice of pizza. And I haven’t been perfect. I’ve eaten pizza. I’ve skipped some workouts. But I’ve been consistent, and it just goes to prove that you’re one decision away from changing your life. You only have one life, and you have an opportunity right now to change that life. You are just one decision away.
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How I Went from $23K in Debt to $150,000 Net Worth in 5 Years Here’s the bottom line: I went from dead broke to having about $150,000 in net worth in five years. Are you wondering how I did that? The way I can tell you is to give you four reasons why most people are broke—dead broke and not a dollar to their name. As I said, I came from nothing. I had zero dollars. I was working a slew of dead-end jobs and living at home with my parents. I was 21, getting into trouble, and hanging out with the wrong people. But most importantly, I was just dead broke. I want to share with you four things I’ve noticed about my previous self when I was dead broke. And I see these four commonalities in others who are now in the same spot I was.
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#1: Faulty Belief System The biggest difference between someone who has nothing and someone who has some money saved—be it $10, $100, or $1,000—is the belief system. Broke people tend to have the belief that money is very hard to acquire. It’s almost this underlying feeling that they don’t deserve money. Money’s just not worth the sacrifice. But it’s just a belief system. The rich have the belief system that money will come to them if they take certain actions. If they put systems and processes together and act upon them, then money will be attracted to them. I used to have the mind-set that I could never have $100,000. I could never have a million dollars in the bank. And I don’t have a million yet, but I will get there soon. That is my belief system, and I work toward my goal knowing I will get there. Even if you don’t have the money or don’t have any evidence that you can build a profitable business, you’ve got to start to believe it. It’s called having faith in yourself and your dreams.
2: Invest Extra Money When You Can
When I was broke, anytime I would make a little extra money—maybe I got a good tip delivering pizza—what do you think I would do with it? Maybe it was an extra 30 or 40 bucks. You might be thinking that’s not much, but to me at the time, it was good money. And I would just spend it. On nothing in particular. Nothing that would help my situation. Fast food. Going out. Movies. I wouldn’t invest it. I wouldn’t put it in the stock market or an index fund. I wouldn’t invest it in a business. I didn’t have a business at the time. I never even thought about investing it. I would figure, “Okay, I have an extra fifty bucks. Let’s go do something stupid with it.” What I notice is that people who are broke, anytime they make more money, they spend more money. They get a raise, they get a better apartment. They get an extra hundred bucks, they go out drinking. With some people, you could give them a million bucks, and they would spend a million and a half. It’s a viscous, viscous cycle. And the people who get ahead in life with their finances, what do they do when they make more money? What happens when they get a jump in salary of, say, $10,000 a year? They don’t all of a sudden upgrade everything in their lives. They invest it; they save it; they put it back in their business. They let it compound; they let it grow. It means all the difference in the world.
3: Plant Seeds
When I was broke, I wouldn’t plant seeds to grow my wealth down the road. I was too comfortable with the status quo. I wasn’t looking to the future. I’d put in my hours at whatever job I happened to have, go home, and not put an additional thought into what my life could be. I wasn’t planting any seeds. I had no side hustles. I could have been going to garage sales or thrift stores. I could have been doing all these crazy little side hustles—washing cars, raking lawns, walking dogs. There are a million things you can do. And if you want to get ahead in life, you’ve got to start planting seeds. Maybe you’re selling on eBay right now and making $1,000 or $2,000 a month. So now you plant that Amazon seed.
eBay for Beginners: 5 Tips to Make Your First $1,000 Selling on eBay If you are new selling on eBay, you may be concerned about hitting the milestone of making that first $1,000. In all the years I’ve been selling on eBay, I’ve learned a lot. And I’m not going to lie: I’ve made a lot of mistakes too. Throughout my successes and failures, I can offer you five tips that are really going to help you get moving, get growing, and start making first thousand bucks.
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#1: Lift Your Selling Limits When you’re brand new and haven’t really done any business on eBay, eBay is going to put selling limits on you. They’re only going to allow you to sell a certain number of items and a certain dollar amount worth of items as well. Essentially what that means is it’s going to take some time for you to prove yourself in the eyes of eBay until they lift your selling limits. Now, what you do is call eBay after about 30 to 45 days once you’ve listed the maximum number of items that you can. That number is always changing, so you will just have to list until you hit it. But hit whatever limit you have, conduct good business for a while, and then give them a call and say, “Hey, listen, this is what I’ve done. I’ve got good feedback. I’ve shipped everything on time. I’ve provided good customer service. Can you lift my selling limits?” Sometimes they’ll ask you questions: “What type of items are you selling? What are your goals? Where do you get your items from?” And as long as you can explain yourself, a lot of times they will lift your limits. So get your selling limits lifted as soon as you can.
2: List Many Items, and List Every Single Day
Not only should you list a lot of items, but, if you can, you should list every single day. From my experience, I’ve found that I have more success listing 5 to 10 items a day versus listing, say, 30 items one day once a week. I think eBay just rewards sellers for being consistent in putting out new listings and providing business for their customers. If you can’t list every day, you might want to consider scheduling out your listings as well. I know it does cost a little bit of money, but that might be a good option for you. Create a listing routine and schedule for yourself. When I first started selling on eBay, every single day I would wake up in the morning and get my mannequin ready. I’d get my camera ready, get the 10 items ready, bring them into the living room, and list my 10 items. That was my habit. Ten items a day, five days a week. And doing that helped me hit my selling goal.
3: Invest in a Store as Soon as You Can
Having an eBay store is beneficial for a lot of reasons. But the biggest benefit to having a store is that you can actually run sales. You can go through the markdown manager and run a sale in your store. And this is powerful. If you’re having slow sales and things aren't moving, run a sale. I typically am running sales all the time.
4: Sell Profitable Items
This tip is twofold. First, some people are trying to sell items where the profit margins are just too low. Sure, they can sell the item, but in the end the small profit just isn’t worth their time. They’d be better off going to a minimum-wage job. The second issue is that they are selling items that don’t have a market that is large enough. Some items have a huge market. Think Apple products that everyone wants. There’s a huge following. People love Apple. So not only is that going to keep the price up, but it’s also going to keep the sales velocity going strong. Some items just don’t have a large market. It might be a clothing brand that isn’t popular. Maybe it’s a type of figurine that only a few people collect. You can go onto eBay and check the sold listings to see how much a particular item is selling for and how many are selling per day. So do your research before you start listing items.
Last Night We Were Heroes…Lessons Learned: How We Unlocked Our Inner Genius My buddy and I were heroes yesterday at my softball tournament. And it had nothing to do with hitting balls and running the bases. The softball games—the tournament was a fundraiser and a pretty big event—began at about nine o’clock in the morning, and we started off on fire. We won our first three games. I mean, we were unstoppable. Our fourth game was at five o’clock. We had been playing all day for seven or eight hours with a few hour-long breaks along the way. And at that game, we got our butts kicked. It was a double-elimination tournament, and now we were in the loser’s bracket. The Darkness Dilemma It was about seven at night, and it was starting to get dark out. So during the first inning, and the umpire actually calls the game because of darkness. I couldn’t believe it. The whole purpose of this fundraiser was obviously to raise money. But we had been playing all day to find the champion too. And now darkness was going to stop us? The really insane thing was that there actually were lights at this field. So just turn the lights on, right? Well, the ump said he had to call the game because someone from the town was supposed to come into the shed, push a button, and turn on the lights. That guy never showed. No guy, no lights, no game. At this point there were about a hundred people waiting around to play or just to watch the game. The director of the tournament called the town. Nobody picked up. He tried calling his contacts. No one picked up. He called the police. The police said, “Sorry, buddy, can’t help you.” At that point, three games needed to be played, and nobody could figure it out. A half hour went by. We had a hundred adults just sitting around, lingering, and nobody was doing anything. They had made the phone calls, and people had essentially given up. I turned to my buddy Joe.
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Asking the Right Questions Joe’s a great guy. He’s actually really big into real estate. He’s a killer entrepreneur. He just has an amazing energy about him. He has these two sons, and they’re geniuses—literally geniuses. He had told me a story how they were competing at one point to see who’d get the highest score on the SATs, and they tied: 2350, which is just ridiculously high. I turned to Joe—father of brilliant sons—and I said, “If your sons were here right now, would they be able to figure out a solution to getting the lights on?” “Absolutely,” Joe said. “What’s the difference between just a normal person and a genius?” “Well, Steve, my sons will not give up. They will not quit. They will ask the right questions. They will dig deep into the problem and break it down.” “Joe, we need to figure out how to get these lights on. This is a fundraiser. There’s a great purpose for this event. Plus, we’ve been working hard all day. I want to find a winner. We need to find the champion. Don’t you think we deserve to be playing right now?” Joe paused for a moment and looked around at the field and the stands. Everyone else was sitting around drinking beer. They’d all given up. Then Joe said, “Let’s go walk around and see if we can figure this out on our own.” Taking Action We got up and started walking. And, wouldn’t you know it, within two minutes we found an electrical box. We opened it up. We saw a button. Joe said, “Hey, Steve, should I push the button?” I said, “Push the button, Joe.” He pushed the button. The lights came on. We saved the day. We were heroes. Lessons Sure, this was just a softball tournament, but there are a few takeaway lessons here. Half the battle is just showing up. Everybody else had given up. Sure, the director—the guy who was running the tournament—tried a couple things, but then he gave up. Nobody was trying to solve the problem. Everybody threw in the towel and popped open a beer. If you are going to win a battle—weight loss,
Turning $5 YouTube Super Chat into $40 Profit at Goodwill! One day a viewer of my YouTube channel sent me a $5 Super Chat in the YouTube comments, which I appreciated greatly. I told her I was going to go over to Goodwill and make some money with that $5 Super Chat. I actually ended up spending a little less than $5. It was two items: one hardcover book for $3 and another hardcover for $1. So in all it was $4 and some change. Those two books would give me about $40 in profit after the cost of the goods and fees. So how can you turn $5 in $40 quickly? Now, you watch a lot of videos and hear people say, “Hey, turn twelve bucks into twelve grand.” Sure, that could happen, but it’s not going to be your realistic, everyday flip that you could come across while going into a thrift store.
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A Tale of Two Books I ended up finding two books, and I just wanted to share them with you. One book was a hardcover textbook called Neuroscience, Exploring the Brain. I could see that this was a textbook when I spotted it on the shelf. I scanned the book, and it came in at about a 60,000 rank. Any rank—if you’re dealing with a textbook—under 400,000–500,000 is a phenomenal rank. With a rank like 60,000, the book would probably sell within three days. And this book was selling for $25. So after fees, after placement costs, after everything, costs of goods, I would make about $10 profit on this book. That’s pretty cool—turn $3 into a quick $10 profit. The better book of the two that I found was called The Creative Curriculum for Infants, Toddlers and Twos. This was the second edition. I mention that because when you are scanning books, always make sure you are looking at the correct edition. There could be a really wide gap in what the item could sell for based on which edition it is. So this book had a 172,000 rank at the time I scanned it. Just so you know, rank can change by the day. One day it could be 300,000, and the next day it could be 40,000. It just depends on the sales velocity. But 172,000 is a phenomenal rank. It’s an excellent rank when it comes to textbooks. I looked through the book, and I saw that it was very clean. I honestly don’t think this book had ever been read; it looked brand new. I would sell it as very good condition. I was selling for around $43. So I would net about $30 profit on this book. The Bottom Line Between the two books, that was about $40 net profit after expenses, after cost of goods, after placement fee, after shipping it off, and everything. So four bucks would turn into $40 profit. That would be about ten times my money. I’m grateful for these thrift stores. Where else can you go and make $40 profit just like that? I’m very grateful, and I love selling books. Books are one of my favorite items to sell because they’re easy to scan and easy to send in. The return rates are very low, and they’re in big demand. So what can you do with that $5 in your pocket right now?
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How to Get Lucky and Find the Best Deals at Your Local Thrift Stores I’ve been selling on eBay, Amazon, and craigslist for several years now. It always makes me smile when people ask me how I always seem to “get lucky” finding the best deals at the thrift stores. First of all, I don’t always get lucky. Second, getting lucky is not all about luck! I’ve definitely got some good tips to share with you regarding thrifting and finding the best deals.
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You Won’t Always Get Lucky First off, if you’re new to thrifting—if you’re new to going to the Goodwill, the Salvation Army, Savers, or whatever thrift stores you have in your area—you must realize this one thing. You can be as prepared as you like, you can know the best days to go, you can scan everything, but sometimes when you go to the thrift store, you’re going to come up empty. The deals just won’t be there for one reason or another. Maybe the donation truck didn’t come in. Maybe one of the employees called out sick. For example, at my local Savers, if the employee who puts out books isn’t there for whatever reason, the books don’t get put out that day. And sometimes it’s just the competition or bad luck. So even though you are doing everything right—growing your knowledge base, studying every single day—sometimes you’re just going to be unlucky. Track Your Thrift Store Outings One thing that both my mother and I do is that every time we go into a thrift store, we have a little notebook. We track the day and mark the time, and we keep tabs on how we did. Did we find a bunch of great deals? Was the competition there? Was there an influx of new items of a particular category? Was another category completely picked through? Did employees bring out bins of fresh items at a certain time? If you do that for a couple months, you’re going to find out quickly what days will be the most advantageous for you and which days it will be almost pointless for you to go. Attack the Rack When you’re going to thrift stores, if you see the new clothing racks come out, don’t be afraid to attack that rack even before the employee sorts it and puts it in with the rest of the clothing. You might try saying, “Hey, excuse me. Do you mind if I look through this? I’m looking for this type of clothing.” The rationale here is that it will take you five times longer to sort through 5,000 clothing items trying to find the fresh inventory than it would just to attack the new stuff. Always go for the fresh bins; always go for the new clothing racks. That is where the goodies are hiding. Go Often Another tip is that you just have to visit these thrift stores often. I’m blessed to have a couple thrift stores in my area that are right on the main route to a lot of places that I go. So sometimes I’ll frequent these thrift stores twice a day. And a lot of times I’ll find new inventory in the morning, in the evening, and in the afternoon because there’s so much inventory coming in. So go often; you never know when the deals will be there. Build Relationships Remember to build relationships with the people there. Ask them, “Hey, I’m just curious—are there any days that you don’t stock new inventory?” A lot of times they’ll say yes, and those are the days you want to avoid. Talk to the people who are working at the thrift store. One time I went to a Goodwill late at night. I’m friends with the manager there, and when he saw me, he said, “Hey, man, good to see you.” We started chatting. He told me, “We got a bunch of books in the back. You want me to bring them out for you?” Of course I told him yes. I ended up finding several hundred dollars in books that evening. The other good thing about building relationships is that when I walk into a lot of thrift stores, I get to feel like a celebrity. It has nothing to do with my YouTube channel. I feel like a celebrity because I’m good with all these store employees.
STOP Sweating the Small Stuff Selling on eBay When I was a new eBay seller, I used to get so stressed out about little tiny things—like a return. I would always include measurements for my clothing and would say no returns. And some customer would want to return or a partial refund for three bucks, and I would fight him to the death. And it messed me up. Now I know not to sweat the little things. It truly is not worth the hassle.
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What Should You Do? I know if you are selling on eBay, you probably have a million little issues that pop up from time to time. Maybe a customer wants to return something or wants a partial refund because he’s not happy with something. Maybe the color wasn’t what he expected. So you wonder if you should draw a line in the sand and actually fight for something or just let it go. You know what? The vast majority of the time, I’m going to tell you just to let it go. Here’s an example. Let’s say you sold a piece of clothing on eBay, and they want a partial refund for $3. Maybe you sold a $12 Ralph Lauren, and then this has happened. So what do you do? If this were me, and I made the mistake or wasn’t sure if I made the mistake, then the answer is simple. No questions asked, I’m going to offer a partial refund and not go through the hassle of them shipping it back. Sure, every single sale is situational. But this is a generalization. It’s just not worth my headache. It’s not worth the stress or potential negative feedback. It’s Not Worth the Stress You don’t want to let that sort of stress build up in your life. You could end up letting it affect your personal life. You could find yourself taking it out on your family and friends, even your dog. You don’t want that. Just don’t sweat the little things. I think a lot of times it’s just our ego. You think you are in the right and that the buyer is the one who has the problem. You want to fight it because you think that it’s the best thing to do. But rather than coming across as “right” in the eyes of your customers, you actually might come across as a big jerk, which is something you really, really do not want to do. It stresses you out. It takes money out of your pocket. You can get negative feedback, which then can make customers question your integrity and make them not want to do business with you. It Doesn’t Help Your Business Especially if you are brand new, just keep in mind that the stress and the money aren’t worth it in the long run. You might want to fight for it at the beginning, but once you start to build your business, you will likely see that it just isn’t worth your time and energy. What you will notice about the bigger sellers who earn a couple thousand a month is that they don’t mess with these issues. They just offer a refund and go about their day. And eventually you will learn that it’s not worth the time and stress. At the end of the day, it’s your business, it’s your stress level, it’s your money, and it’s your feedback. You’ve got to do what you feel is best. But I have found that it is best not to sweat the little things. Use your mental energy to work on higher-level things. That’s the way you get your business to grow and prosper.
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eBay Drop Shipping: Should I Open a Second Store? If you are selling on eBay, you may be wondering if you should open another eBay store for drop shipping. Maybe you have been selling on eBay but have seen others have success at drop shipping. You are wondering if drop shipping should be something you transition into. So should you start a new eBay store? Well, what I did is I started a brand-new store. I did it for a couple of reasons.
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It Makes a Better Experience for the Customer If you’re thrifting a lot of items, if you’re finding items at flea markets, on Craigslist locally, through Facebook marketplace, or at garage sales, there’s a good chance that most of those items are going to be used. They’re going to be preowned. Or you might be like myself or somebody else out there who likes to really dive into a specific niche. For me, I love to do clothing. If your store is mostly clothing, and then all of the sudden you start mixing in all of these brand-new items that you’re drop shipping from Home Depot, Walmart, Kmart, it just makes for a little more of a confusing experience for the customer. I would create a new store just for that one reason. It Will Be Easier to Track Results Opening a new store will make it easier for you to track your results in terms of your thrifting, garage sale, and preowned business versus your drop-shipping business. That’s another reason why I would split it off. You really want to be able to see how the drop- shipping business is doing. Is it making money? In addition, it makes it a little easier when it comes to bookkeeping, taxes, and various things like that. For those reasons, I would create a brand-new store. First Things First Now, if you’ve never had a store before, you’re getting excited about thrifting, and you’re getting excited about drop shipping, you could create two stores. However, honestly, I would choose one thing first. If you’re going to get into thrifting, don’t waste your time with drop shipping right now. Learn how to thrift. Learn how to sell on eBay. Learn how to find items at garage sales. Don’t mess with drop shipping now, and vice versa. Find something—one thing—and focus on it right now. Side Action With that being said, if you’ve been doing thrifting for a couple of years, start drop shipping on the side. Don’t put hours upon hours into it and avoid your thrifting. Start it up on the side. Nurture it. A lot of people ask, “Steve, how have you been able to build up all these income streams over the years?” It’s been one step at a time. I focus on it, and I nurture it. Don’t just abandon the main thing you’re doing. But just nurture the new business venture. Learn about it. Put a little bit of time into it. Increase Listing Limits Another tip I want to give you as well is if you’ve already established an eBay account. I had an account that had well over a couple thousand reviews on it. What I did was I called eBay and said, “Hey, I opened up this new eBay account, and for some reason I have listing limitations.” I made it seem like I didn’t know what I was talking about. I said, “Why do I have listing limitations? I’ve already been an eBay seller for six years. Is there any way that we could link up the accounts and you could increase the number of items I could list and the overall value that I can sell?” They actually increased my limits for me. So if you already have an established account, call eBay. It took me five minutes. Link up your accounts so you can get those seller limitations increased. That’s one of the big downsides to starting a brand-new eBay account if you don’t already have an established one—because those selling limits are going to be so low. When you’re drop shipping, the name of the game, for the most part, is listing as many items as you can and optimizing those listings. If you only list 10,
Selling on eBay Full Time from Thrift Stores: How Often to Go to the Thrift Store If you are selling on eBay full time or even just thinking about it, you may be wondering how often you need to go to the thrift store to source items to sell. Do you have to go every day, every other day, twice a day, or what?
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What Sales Are in Your Area? For me personally, well, let me start off with this. It depends on where you live. Where I am in Connecticut, every Sunday there’s a half-off sale. So that’s a great day to go in and scoop up stuff at 50 percent off. At Savers, once a month or so, we have sales, so I definitely hit those. Some other stores might have fill-a-bag days, so I would go to those as well. So I would say that going on days when the store is having a sale is the most important. But How Often? But besides that, how often should you go? If you are full time, then I would suggest going every day. However, I would suggest you find and concentrate on your specificm honey holes. What’s a honey hole? Well, we all have one or two thrift stores that tend to do the best for us. Maybe it’s because we know them the most, or maybe it’s just a good opportunity. Find a couple stores where you are always finding items in your niche, and, if you can, go to them at least twice a day—there’s likely always new inventory coming out. If you only come at night, there are going to be certain resellers who come in during the day and afternoon who are going to swoop up the profits. So twice a day is optimal. However, I have seen some people who only go out maybe three times a week, and what they do is they go hard. They hit the pavement for up to 12 hours a day. They’ll make a map of up to 15 thrift stores and go through all of them. But if you’re like me and only going to maybe three thrift stores a day in your area, you may only have to thrift for a half hour or maybe up to two hours. That is what has worked for me. And if you’re part time, just pop in and out. Go to one or two thrift stores a day for maybe 15 minutes each. Doing that, you could definitely make $1,000 or $1,500 a month. Factors to Consider Just remember that it depends on where you live, how much inventory you need, how many sales the stores in your area are running, and how much competition you have. If you think about how those things relate to your situation, you will find a routine that fits your lifestyle and your business aspirations.
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7 Tips to Increase Sales Selling on eBay You’re probably reading this because you sell on eBay but you might not be happy with your results; you want to make more sales. How can you do that? Well, I can tell you right now I have some really good tips for you. Let me share with you these seven tips that will really help you in your business.
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#1: List More Items I know it’s obvious, but I can’t tell you how many people I talk to who have death piles. What is a death pile? It’s a pile of items that you purchased with the intent to resell, but for one reason or another you procrastinated or there was an issue with the item, and now it’s just a pile of just death that keeps stacking up. List more items. Get in the habit and the routine of listing. Whether it’s five or ten items a day, get into a listing routine. The more you list, the more opportunities you will have available for someone to buy—and that will be more money in your pocket.
2: Create a Niche Store
For example, if you’re selling men’s clothing, you might want to create a store all about clothing. If you’re selling video games, focus on only video games. Why would you do that? It will help you with repeat customers. Someone might come to your store and have a great experience buying a certain vintage clothing item or a certain video game, and they might favorite you and come back.
3: Try Promoted Listings
A promoted listing is kind of like the pay-per-click version of Google AdWords or even Amazon—they have a pay per click program. With promoted listings, you pay a certain percentage of your sale, and what they do is boost your search visibility for your specific item. So the more people who can see your item, the better chance you have of selling it.
4: Provide Great Customer Service
One of the biggest things you’ve got to do is if people are emailing you and asking you questions is to get back to your emails. One step further, get back to your emails quickly. If you get back within 30 to 60 minutes, your conversions are going to go through the roof. Every hour, every day that you wait and don’t answer them increases the chance that you will lose out on that sale. They’re going to go to somebody else. They may find another product or just go to a retail store. Provide really good customer service, but more specifically get into those emails that people are sending you. Set up alerts on your phone if you can, or just check eBay a couple times a day. Answer your customers’ questions. It will help you make so many more sales in your business.
5: Improve Your Photography
One thing I would recommend getting is some photography lights. Get a nice little setup if you can—you can even get one on eBay or Amazon. You don’t need to get a fancy DSLR camera or a Cannon G7X, but make sure the lighting is really good. The camera’s not as important as the lighting. Make sure that your photos are free of distraction. Don’t have a ton of things in the background, kids running around, or dirt all over the carpet.
6: Ship Your Items Quickly
I am not just talking about shipping an item as soon as a customer pays. I am suggesting that you try to focus on priority if you can. Going to some of those slower shipping methods creates a bad experience for the customer. The little tab underneath the price will show a prolonged shipping time in terms of when the customer would receive the item, which will increase the odds of them passing on your item. Do one-day handling time if you can, but do provide a really fast shipping service.
7: Focus on Items That Have a Market
Hone in on buying and selling items that people are actually interested in purchasing. An item that sells quickly has a big market; something that sells slowly is what we like to call a “long tail.” It’s something that maybe somebody buys once a month or once every three months.
Please Don’t Give Up I know there are folks out there who are struggling. I used to be one of them. About five years ago, I was dead broke. I was in debt to the tune of $23,000. I was living at home with my parents. I didn’t even have enough money to bring a girl out on a date. It was that bad. My number one priority was trying to get enough money to buy a pack of cigarettes. That was my life. You probably know that I’ve come a long way—I’ve made a lot of mistakes, had a lot of wins, and had a lot of losses. But the main thing that you need to know is that this journey of entrepreneurship, this journey of finding success, whatever it is to you, it is a journey in itself. It takes time. It’s easy to look at people who maybe have what you don’t have—health, wealth, maybe a relationship—and say, “Wow, they just got it like that, but here I am struggling.”
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Stumbling Blocks The truth is that, on this journey, you are going to encounter stumbling blocks. You’re going to get punched in the face by life. You’re going to face challenges. What we don't realize is those people who have really succeeded, the ones we are amazed by, they worked for it. They pushed themselves. They went through negative situations and came out the other end. They made it happen. They survived. It Takes Time You’ve got to learn to be patient. Becoming a millionaire doesn’t happen overnight. Losing 40 to 50 pounds doesn’t happen overnight. Finding your soul mate doesn’t happen overnight. If you want to be successful in business, if you want to lose weight, if you want to get a great relationship or just create a great life or build happiness, it’s going to take time. I think a lot of us have these expectations that it’s just going to happen all of a sudden. We live in a society where everything is boom, boom, boom, quick. But real success and happiness takes time. This journey is a journey in itself. You’ve got to take each step one at a time. So many times we’re trying to find shortcuts and get there quicker and find loopholes. But that’s not how this journey works. The Vision I know what it’s like to be struggling. I know what it’s like to think to yourself, “Can I ever quit my job? Can I ever make it work on eBay? Can I ever fire my boss? Could I ever wake up and look at myself in the mirror and feel proud of my body? Will I ever have that person there who I really care for and love?” I know what it’s like to struggle and go through hard times, but I want to encourage you to have that vision of where you want to go. Have that ultimate vision, allow yourself to go through that journey, and know that you will be going up and down, up and down, slowly but surely. You’re going to keep going up, but you’re always going to get knocked down once in a while too. It always happens. That’s the journey of life, especially in entrepreneurship, whether that’s eBay or Amazon, or in other areas of life as well. Believe in Yourself If you’re struggling right now, stay true to yourself, believe in yourself, and have that vision, but ultimately you will need to understand that that journey is going to be one of many ups and downs and setbacks and wins and losses and peaks and valleys. It’s just part of the game. That’s why it’s so important to have that circle of positive people you interact with, whether that’s on Facebook or just in the YouTube comments or some type of membership site or a course you’re a part of. Maybe you have a local meetup group. It’s so important to have that strength by your side, that inner circle, to help you when things get tough—because it is tough. Life is tough, and we’ve got to learn to be patient and keep going.
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How to Never Lose Money Selling on eBay Time and time again, I hear sellers talking about items that they lost money on. Maybe it got refunded; maybe it broke; maybe it just never sold. I’m going to give you five tips so you never again have to lose money selling on eBay. Now, of course, there very well may be a time when you do lose money on something. Things may be out of your control. But, in general, 98 percent of the time, I don’t lose money on an item, and I’m going to share with you why.
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#1: Inspect Your Items A lot of times people lose money because they get excited when they see an item. They pick up the item and then right away tell themselves, “Yeah, I’m going to make 25 bucks on this.” And they get home and something is wrong with the item. Maybe a shirt is missing a button or a jacket is stained. Maybe some piece of electronics doesn’t work. You’ve got to spend an adequate amount of time inspecting the item before you purchase it. There were times I would buy up to a hundred clothing items in a day. I’d get home and find four or five items that were destroyed, and it was my fault because I got too excited. So one of the best ways to minimize losing money selling on eBay is to make sure that you inspect the item thoroughly before you purchase it.
2: Make Sure the Item Has a Market
How do you go about determining if an item has a market? Go into the sold listings. If you’re selling on eBay and going out sourcing without a phone and the eBay app, you’re living in the past. Make sure you’ve got a smartphone. Make sure you have the eBay app installed. When you find an item, what you’re going to do is fire up the eBay app, type in some relevant keywords (model, brand, size, color, etc.), and start to look through the sold listings to see how many are selling and how much they’re selling for. You’re going to get some really good information that will give you an idea of whether you should make the purchase. I rarely lose money from picking the wrong items because I always make sure if I buy an item that it has a market. So many people will say to me, “Oh, I just left the thrift store and bought that item.” I ask them, “Well, how much is it worth?” They respond, “I don’t know. I didn’t look it up.” Look up the items. Some people have an ego and feel that they have to do this without the technology. Use the technology; use the phone; use the sold listings. I know sometimes it’s uncomfortable to look things up in front of people, but just do it.
3: List Your Items
This seems like a no-brainer, right? But so many people buy items, get them home, and put them in a little pile, where they sit and “die.” List your items. If you’re going to get into selling on eBay or Amazon or Craigslist, list the items you buy quickly. When those items are sitting at your house in storage, the potential money is sitting there and doing nothing. So get those items listed because the quicker they’re up for sale, the better chance you have of them selling and making you money.
4: Don’t Buy Items That You Know Nothing About
When I was new, I would invest in these overly complicated items that I knew for sure I was never going to test or figure out if they actually worked. For me, it was certain VCRs, video game systems, or maybe complicated electronics I didn’t know anything about. Try to stay away from items that aren’t in your lane. If you’re really good with lawnmowers and leaf blowers and electronic items, that’s great. But if you aren’t knowledgeable with that sort of thing and you’re not sure if it works, don’t buy it. Stop getting into items only because you think they’re going to make you money; if something is broken or doesn’t work properly or is missing a part, that’s one of the easiest ways to lose money. So stay in your lane or get the knowledge and learn exactly how it works, how to test it, or how to fix it.
Best Books to Sell on Amazon from 5 Years’ Experience If you are selling books on Amazon, of course you are going to want to know what kinds of books are most likely to sell for more—education or business. To be honest, all of them do. You just have to find the right ones. Now, I know that answer sounds like a kind of cop-out, but I’m giving you that answer for one reason. Why? Because I don’t want you to go out looking for specific types of books. It’s great to be aware of textbooks in general. Textbooks are probably the best books to be on the lookout for. Textbooks are very encompassing. It could be business books; it could be educational books. It could be accounting, biology, political science, history, or literature books. Textbooks in general are probably the number one thing that you want to be on the lookout for.
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The Amazon Seller App I can’t say it’s educational based, or business based, or accounting based. The top piece of advice I’m going to give you is to go out there and download the Amazon Seller app. First and foremost, if you’re looking to sell books, don’t sell them on eBay. Now, if you have a huge business, and you’re selling boatloads of books, and you’re getting thousands and thousands of books into your warehouse every day for pennies on the dollar, then, yes, you could sell them on eBay. I know some successful eBay sellers who put their books on eBay for $4 or $5, and they make maybe 20 or 30 cents per book. They do high volume, and they make that work. But for the average person, I would recommend selling them on Amazon FBA—which is Fulfillment By Amazon. What you’re going to want to do is to download the Amazon Seller app. That app is going to give you the ability to scan books. The app will be able to tell you a couple different pieces of information—the rank (which indicates how fast of a seller it is, or its sales velocity) and the number of reviews (which speaks to its social proof). Usually the more reviews you have, the better a seller is typically going to be. But that’s not always the case. Rank is probably one of the best things to look for. It's going to tell you the new price, the used price, how many FBA sellers, and how many merchants. Which Textbooks to Pay Extra Attention To I don't want to give you the advice to look out for specific books because in the end you’re going to make a lot more money by scanning all the books, or, at least, picking and choosing specific textbooks. But in general, if I had to give you advice about what to look for, things that are weird, textbooks, or weird educational books. For example, take a really specific textbook like The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance. Now, you’re going to find a lot of books on low-carb dieting, which is normal. But when you match two things together—low-carb dieting and performance—then things get interesting. So that would be an interesting book I would scan. Why? Because you’re matching two different themes up together. For example, if you find a book about exercise but for grandmothers, well, that would be just different. Just look for books that make you say to yourself, “What? Who the heck would want that?” Yes, you want to scan that book. Finding Books to Scan Where do you go to find books to scan? I would recommend starting with library sales if you have them in your area. Why? They are dirt cheap. But be aware that because they are so inexpensive, you will have a lot of competition. You want to get there early. Secondly, I would look at thrift stores. That is another great place to find textbooks. Obviously if it’s garage sale season in your area, go to the garage sales. Most people are not buying and reselling books from garage sales, so the competition for them won’t be an intense. Be Cautious about Dates Now, I’ve learned over the years not to get very excited when I see a bunch of textbooks.
How to Respond When Strangers Ask If You Are a Reseller “What are you doing with all those books in your cart? Are you interested in accounting and biology? Are you interested in learning how to lose weight in your seventies? Are you reading all those books or are you selling those?” Maybe it’s a worker at a thrift store, someone having a garage sale, or just a random stranger. But at some point, you might have someone coming up to you and asking, “What are you doing with all those? Are you a reseller? Are you selling those for a profit?” How do you handle that situation?
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How I Used to Handle It Well, I’ll tell you right now, when I was brand new, I did not want anyone knowing I was reselling when I was at a thrift store. If I was scanning books and somebody walked up next to me, I would put my phone down and pretend as though I was looking at the book. I didn’t want anybody to see. If anyone ever asked me, “What are you doing with those books?” I’d literally lie. You know, I’m building a bookshelf. I’m taking some college classes. How Should You Handle It? But what should you do in that situation? For me personally at this stage now, I’ve been in the game for so long and a lot of these people know what I’m doing already, so I just tell them the truth. With books, sometimes I tell them, “Hey, I like to read, I like to learn, but I also resell as well.” And that is accurate; it’s not a lie. When it comes to clothing, I will sometimes say, “Yeah, I got a full-time eBay clothing business. I’ve got a store with a thousand items in it.” But What Will Others Think? Some resellers don’t want to tell the truth because they’re scared that the shops will raise their prices or that other customers will judge them. I used to have a limiting belief that if I told somebody at a thrift store that I was reselling, they would think that I’m a bad person because when I first started at thrift stores, I always thought the thrift store workers there were there to help the poor. I thought thrift stores were just for people who needed cheap products. The thrift stores were just undercutting everything and selling things so cheap because they’re really trying to help people. But the thing that I’ve realized is that a thrift store is just a moneymaking business. Yes, some thrift stores have charitable goals as well—and that is all well and good—but they are also out to make money. So I’ve come around to thinking that they don’t really care who may be buying their items. Garage sales are a little different. Sometimes I won’t be 100 percent honest because I have had instances where somebody actually didn’t want to sell me an item because they realized that if I wanted their item to resell, it must be worth more than what they had priced it at. Honesty Is the Best Policy In general, if you’re at a thrift store and someone asks, just tell the truth. It actually will help you build relationships with the workers. For me, I’m friends with a lot of the managers, and they’ll tell me, “Hey, we got a whole bunch of brand-new books in the back. Do you want me to wheel out the bins for you?” Or they will say to me, “We got some new vintage clothing. You should check it out. Hey, did you know that we got a couple Diesel jeans?” That happens all the time at the smaller thrift stores. Don't be ashamed if you’re a reseller. You don’t have to feel as though people are going to be judging you. Curiosity Sure, many times people will stare at you when you’re looking things up, scanning things, or maybe going through the sold listings. People don’t think you’re a bad person; they’re just curious. Most people don’t realize that you can make money online selling stuff on eBay or Amazon. They are just curious. When you pull out your phone and scan something, they don’t know what the heck you’re doing. A lot of times, people will stare at you and ask questions,
Shipping on eBay: 3 Huge Mistakes to Avoid When Selling on eBay So you’ve listed an item, and it has sold. Great! Now for the shipping part. As it turns out, knowing how to ship the best way doesn’t necessarily come without having to go through a learning curve. There are a couple of common shipping mistakes I see beginners and even intermediates making all the time when they’re selling on eBay. Correcting these simple mistakes will save you time and money.
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Mistake #1: You’re Using an Inkjet Printer Trust me on this one. Don’t use inkjet printers. That ink is expensive, and the printing itself is just super slow. Get yourself a nice printer that uses toner. It’s cheaper, and it’s faster. An inkjet printer will take up to 30 seconds to print out each label. A laser printer will literally take a few seconds. It may not seem like a big time difference, but it does add up. Go check out some laser printers. There are some great ones out there, and they honestly are not that expensive. So just save yourself some time and money and do it. Mistake #2: You Aren’t Getting Shipping Boxes from the US Postal Service There’s nothing more frustrating than getting ready to ship but first having to scrounge around trying to find a shipping box. The secret is to go to a website—the USPS website. Yes, I’m talking about the good ol’ US Postal Service. You can order a whole bunch of free shipping boxes. You can get the regional A boxes and the regional B boxes—they ship based on weight and location. You can get flat rate boxes and flat rate padded envelopes. You can get all different types of priority shipping boxes. The best part is that this is all free—literally free. If you don’t have the proper boxes at home when you’re shipping, you’re going to be wasting money in extra shipping costs. You might be thinking yourself, “Steve, who cares if I pay an extra dollar or two?” Well, when you are running this like a business, those are the margins that can either make or break you. If you can save yourself some money and have a convenient, free supply of boxes, why wouldn’t you take advantage of that? Mistake #3: You Have No System for Storing Inventory OK, you’ve sold an item and even have that great USPS box to ship it in. Now, just where did you put it? If you have any kind of inventory, you don’t want to be taking forever to find your items to ship them out. Time is money, and if you are regularly taking 25 minutes to find one item, well, that’s just wasted time when you could have been listing more items and making more money. You need some kind of system to keep track of where things are. For example, you could get some boxes or bins. And then when you list your item, just record the box or bin number inside the eBay listing. That way you won’t be scrambling to find an item every time you get a sale. The Learning Curve I can tell you about these mistakes because I’ve made them too. I’m sure you’ve made these mistakes. Maybe you’re making these mistakes currently. But it’s no big deal. Choose one thing that you can improve on and work on that. And then maybe a couple of weeks later, focus on something else. Pretty soon your shipping operation will be running much more smoothly.
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The Pros and Cons of Selling on eBay from 5 Years’ Experience How do you know if selling on eBay is a good fit for you? Well, there are definitely some pros and cons to consider. I’ve been selling on eBay since 2013, and I give a lot of my credit to eBay because it really allowed me to get into this online world of making money on the internet. It led me to making money with a whole bunch of different online sources. But it does have its benefits and its drawbacks.
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Pro: It’s a Low Investment I think one of the big reasons why a lot of people get into eBay is because it’s a low investment. It doesn’t take a lot of money to get started with eBay. It’s actually free for the most part, though there are some listing fees and fees when you sell something. And if you get a store it can cost you a certain amount a month. (The eBay fee structure is something that does change from time to time, so go to the eBay website for the latest on fees). But for the most part, getting started with eBay doesn’t cost a lot of money. In fact, most people have a couple thousand dollars of inventory just lying around the house. Maybe you have a tripod or some electronic device you are not using anymore. Most people have thousands of dollars of random electronics, clothes, or shoes around the house. It’s easy to list, say, up to 30 or so items and start making a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars. So the low investment and the low capital to start this business is very attractive to a lot of people. Pro: Anybody Can Do It Another thing that is really attractive when it comes to getting started selling on eBay is that anybody can do it. You don’t need to go to school for four years. You don’t have to go to college to sell on eBay. It’s actually pretty simple. You find an item in the back of your closet gathering dust. You take a couple pictures. You create a title and a description, and essentially it’s up for sale. When it sells, you just ship it to the customer. It’s very easy to do. Obviously, there are a lot of ins and outs to it. But it’s not rocket science. And really, there are so many instructional videos out there. It’s really easy to get started. Pro: It’s Actually Pretty Fun Another thing that I’ve always loved about eBay is that it’s fun—really, really fun. OK, actually listing the items can be a grind, but going out and finding items is actually a really great time. You go to thrift stores, garage sales, flea markets—there are so many cool and creative ways to find items that are undervalued. Pro: Working from Home Another benefit is being able to work from home. I just love it. I love having the freedom. I love being able to work whenever I want. I don’t have to clock in. I don’t have to clock out. It’s that F word: freedom. Pro: Fast Money Of course you know you can make money on eBay, but the really great aspect of that is it’s quick cash for the most part. If you find something that is in demand, it can sell within a couple hours on eBay. Now, how can you determine if something is going to be a quick seller or if it has a market? There’s a functionality on eBay called the “Sold Items.” It’s this little box that you can click that will show you all the items of that type that have been sold and for what price. So that will give you a good idea of what items you should list and how much you are likely to get for a particular item. Now let’s get into the things that aren’t so great about selling on eBay. Con: It’s Time-Consuming There are always drawbacks to any business, and eBay isn’t immune to them. Here’s one: It's very time-consuming. Going to thrift stores and garage sales to source your items takes a lot of time. If you’re the only one running your eBay business, it takes a good amount of time to get your item ready to photograph, take measurements, look up relevant information for your item description,
Please Don’t Give Up I know there are folks out there who are struggling. I used to be one of them. About five years ago, I was dead broke. I was in debt to the tune of $23,000. I was living at home with my parents. I didn’t even have enough money to bring a girl out on a date. It was that bad. My number one priority was trying to get enough money to buy a pack of cigarettes. That was my life. You probably know that I’ve come a long way—I’ve made a lot of mistakes, had a lot of wins, and had a lot of losses. But the main thing that you need to know is that this journey of entrepreneurship, this journey of finding success, whatever it is to you, it is a journey in itself. It takes time. It’s easy to look at people who maybe have what you don’t have—health, wealth, maybe a relationship—and say, “Wow, they just got it like that, but here I am struggling.”
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Stumbling Blocks The truth is that, on this journey, you are going to encounter stumbling blocks. You’re going to get punched in the face by life. You’re going to face challenges. What we don't realize is those people who have really succeeded, the ones we are amazed by, they worked for it. They pushed themselves. They went through negative situations and came out the other end. They made it happen. They survived. It Takes Time You’ve got to learn to be patient. Becoming a millionaire doesn’t happen overnight. Losing 40 to 50 pounds doesn’t happen overnight. Finding your soul mate doesn’t happen overnight. If you want to be successful in business, if you want to lose weight, if you want to get a great relationship or just create a great life or build happiness, it’s going to take time. I think a lot of us have these expectations that it’s just going to happen all of a sudden. We live in a society where everything is boom, boom, boom, quick. But real success and happiness takes time. This journey is a journey in itself. You’ve got to take each step one at a time. So many times we’re trying to find shortcuts and get there quicker and find loopholes. But that’s not how this journey works. The Vision I know what it’s like to be struggling. I know what it’s like to think to yourself, “Can I ever quit my job? Can I ever make it work on eBay? Can I ever fire my boss? Could I ever wake up and look at myself in the mirror and feel proud of my body? Will I ever have that person there who I really care for and love?” I know what it’s like to struggle and go through hard times, but I want to encourage you to have that vision of where you want to go. Have that ultimate vision, allow yourself to go through that journey, and know that you will be going up and down, up and down, slowly but surely. You’re going to keep going up, but you’re always going to get knocked down once in a while too. It always happens. That’s the journey of life, especially in entrepreneurship, whether that’s eBay or Amazon, or in other areas of life as well. Believe in Yourself If you’re struggling right now, stay true to yourself, believe in yourself, and have that vision, but ultimately you will need to understand that that journey is going to be one of many ups and downs and setbacks and wins and losses and peaks and valleys. It’s just part of the game. That’s why it’s so important to have that circle of positive people you interact with, whether that’s on Facebook or just in the YouTube comments or some type of membership site or a course you’re a part of. Maybe you have a local meetup group. It’s so important to have that strength by your side, that inner circle, to help you when things get tough—because it is tough. Life is tough, and we’ve got to learn to be patient and keep going.
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How Long Does It Take to Sell Books on Amazon? Someone once said to me, “Steve, I’ve got a bunch of books in Amazon FBA, and most of the ranks are around 400,000. It’s been about a week, and the books haven’t been selling. So how long does it take for a 400,00-ranked book to sell?” Good question. How long does it take for a 400,000-ranked book to sell? Quite a few different factors come into play here. To be honest, sometimes it’s random. I’ve had 2- million-ranked books sell in a day. Then I’ve had hundred-thousand-ranked books take a couple weeks or more. Sometimes they never sell.
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Factors to Keep in Mind You’ll have some factors to consider. Even if your book has a good ranking—say, ranked at 50,000—you may be fifth or seventh in line in terms of the lowest price; so it might take a while for your book to sell. But if you’re the lowest price and there’s a market for that book and it’s selling and there are a lot of people who want to buy it, you’re going to sell fairly quickly. Another thing to consider is the condition. If you’re selling a textbook, does it include a CD? Is it in an acceptable condition? Is your competition selling it in very good condition? Price is going to play a role. Are you selling it as a merchant or are you selling it FBA? That’s another big thing to take into consideration as well because you could have a 50,000 ranked book, but people might not want to buy from you as a merchant because they might want that two-day shipping through FBA and the hassle-free returns. But really there’s no exact science to all this. It really, really depends on a number of factors, but even that is ultimately unknowable. Sometimes the competition will come in and knock the price down. Sometimes people have repricers as well, so they’ll undercut you by a penny. If there’s not a big enough market, it can just take some time. Be Aware of Your Competition It could take a couple of days. It could take a couple of weeks. What I would advise you to do is check in on your competition and check in on your price to make sure that you’re competitive with other sellers. You don’t necessarily always have to be the lowest price. But if there’s not a huge market and you’re not the lowest priced—if you’re third or fourth in line—it could take a while to sell. Keep an eye on things. Keep an eye on the price, the competition, and your condition. You want to be competitive with the condition. If all the other sellers are Like New and you’re Acceptable, you’re going to have a tough time. If you’re a merchant, it could take a lot longer versus going FBA. But just hang in there. Keep on shipping books. If you are new, just know that there’s a little bit of a learning curve associated with it. Be patient. Success in selling books will come to you!
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How to Get Started Selling on eBay with Very Little Money Let me guess. You want to start making money online, but there’s just one problem. You don’t have the funds to invest a bunch in a business endeavor. Well, this is one problem you only think you have. I get asked about this all the time. And to be honest, I would say eBay is probably one of the best ways to start making some quick cash with very little financial outlay. Gradually after you get started, you can save up and then invest into other ways. There are a million different ways to make money online, whether it’s Amazon, some other online platform, or building your own brand. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start nice and cheap and simple—eBay. Selling on eBay is a great option if you don’t have a lot of money. So how can you get started making money on eBay if you’ve only got maybe $100 or $50 or even zero dollars to spend? I have five hands-on strategies for you to get started making money.
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#1: Start with Your Own Closet Seriously, look around your house. The average person probably has a couple thousand dollars’ worth of resale value in products they have around the house. If you start listing this stuff on eBay, you could start making some quick cash. Take a look in your basement, in your attic, and around your bedroom. There’s money just lying around. You’re probably thinking to yourself, “Who would want that crappy old bicycle seat? Who would want that outdated iPod?” Believe or not, there’s that saying: There’s an ass for every seat. It’s so true. Even if you don’t think something you have has value, I guarantee you that someone else will. Start looking around your house, and then just pull out your phone, download the eBay app, and start looking at the sold listings to see what these items are selling for.
2: Sell on Consignment
What do I mean by consignment? OK, maybe you don’t have any items around your house. Maybe you truly are dead broke. The second option is to add value to other people. If you don’t have items around the house, you can bet your bottom dollar that your friends, your family, or the people you work with have things in their homes they would like to get cash for. But maybe they are too busy or just don’t want to go through the steps of selling their items themselves. So you offer to sell the items for them. Start asking around. Start putting out the word that you will help others sell their stuff. What do you charge them? You can work that out with the individuals, but a 50/50 or a 60 (them)/40 (you) deal usually works well.
3: Hit the Garage Sales
If you don’t have much money, you can go to a string of garage sales with five or ten bucks in your pocket and usually find a lot of items. Many items you can find for a dime, a quarter, a dollar, or a couple of bucks and turn that into $40, $60, or $100.
4: Get to Know Your Local Thrift Stores
Going to thrift stores is a great way to get your hands on really profitable products, whether it’s clothing, electronics, books, or really just about anything else you can think of. People donate items all the time that are worth so much money. And make sure to find out when the items at a particular thrift store are going on sale. Many thrift stores will have half-off days or days when a certain tag color is a huge percentage off. Some stores have bag sales where you get to fill an entire bag with stuff for a flat fee. Think about how much great stuff you could get for so little money!
5: Check Out Craigslist
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made money on Craigslist. You have a couple options on this site. You can regularly peruse the free section for some potentially profitable items. You can also just look over the for-sale section. So many people are just trying to get rid of their items. Maybe they are moving. Maybe they are having a baby and need to free up more spac...
This Is the Secret to Success Most people don't realize this, but everything that you have in your life right now is because of your brain; it’s all the thoughts in your mind. Your thoughts lead to your feelings, your feelings guide your attitude, your attitude dictates your behavior, and your actions become your results. Do you want to change your life? If you want to make more money, feel better about yourself, have more confidence, build your business, or transform your body, you need to get control of this one thing right here—your mind.
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What Is Your “Why”? You've got to ask yourself, “What’s my ‘why’? What is that one deep reason I want to build a business?” A lot of people think they want to build a business because of money—essentially pieces of paper. People don’t want pieces of paper. They think they want that, but what they want is the reason. It is what the money can give them. That’s the reason. They don't want the pieces of paper; they want to be able to take care of their family. They want security. They want to be able to make a difference and contribute. They want the freedom that money gives. People don’t want to lose weight just so they can step on a scale and see that the number says 177 instead of 209. They want the feelings that come along with that. They want to feel good. They want to have more energy. They want that energy to be able to spend more time with their kids and their friends. They want to play sports or live a longer life. Control Your Mind You can take all the actions in the world that are aligned with success, but if you don’t have control of your mind, if you don’t believe in yourself, if you don’t understand what your values are, if you don’t understand what your driving force is, then what will continue inspiring you to get up in the morning? You are never going to change your life that way. Over the last year I had been making leaps and bounds in terms of progress in my business. I’d made more money than I’ve ever made this year, I’ve gotten into better shape than I’ve ever been this year. I felt better about myself. I put systems in place. I’ve hired more people. Everything is just changing in front of my eyes. I don’t say this to brag or boast or impress you because there are people out there still who have lives that I dream of. I’m still striving, and I’m still learning. And I am still getting in control of my mind. I’m educating myself every single day. I’m reading books. I’ve hired a life coach. I’m taking action. I’m masterminding with people. I’m networking. And I really, really do believe in myself. Reprogramming Your Life I’m reprogramming my mind in terms of what I believe. When a negative thought comes in my mind—“You’re not good enough to make that much money”; “You’re going to give up with your weight loss”—I immediately cut that off and reprogram my mind with a different thought. Maybe sometimes I think to myself, “Oh, I'm a slob. My house is unorganized.” And then I’ll say to myself, “No. My house is always organized, and it’s always clean.” I keep repeating it, and over time the house gets clean. You need to get control of your self-talk—what you say to yourself and how you believe. You have to be conscious of the driving forces in your life. Before you’re going to change anything in your life, you’ve got to change yourself. It All Begins with Your Thoughts You can’t change the outside world without changing your thoughts. Because once you change your thoughts, you change your feelings. When you change your feelings, you change your attitude. When you have a different attitude, you have a different outlook on life. When you see things differently, you believe in yourself. And when you believe in yourself, you start taking actions in all different areas of life. The amazing thing about life and taking action is if you do certain things, if you model success,
5 Ways to Find More Profitable Items from Thrift Stores to Sell on eBay & Amazon Reselling, especially from thrift stores, was at the foundation of my humble beginnings. Along the way, I’ve learned quite a few tips—some very useful ones—that will really help you out if you’re just getting started in this business of thrifting to resell. Let’s dive into this!
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#1: Be in Attack Mode Say you’re at Goodwill or the Salvation Army, and you spot a staff member bringing out a couple bins of new inventory. What do you do? You want to attack. You want to dive into that new, untouched inventory. No other resellers or customers have gone through it—unless there’s a sneaky little guy or gal who visits the back room, which does happen (more on that later). But for the most part, when that new inventory is getting wheeled out, it’s going to be untouched, and there will be a lot of great opportunities there. Don't be shy. Put some stuff into your cart. If there are seven or eight things that you are unsure whether they are profitable, then just bring your shopping cart over and put them in. You’ve got to do this because if there are any other resellers there and they’re smart, they’re going to attack the new inventory as well. So you want to grab it, analyze it, and then if it’s not a profitable deal, you can put it back.
2: Pay Attention to Color
When I tell you to focus on the latest color, I’m not talking about the color of the item. I want you to see the color of the tag. Many thrift stories will have tags of different colors and will run sales depending on the color of the tag. They might have a day a week when a certain tag color is some huge percentage off or selling for a low flat cost. Maybe they have a weekly color that is, say, 30 percent off all week. Different thrift stores do it in various ways, so you just need to figure out how your local stores do it. Paying attention to tag color is not only helpful in finding that one, unique item that had been too expensive to snatch up earlier. It’s also good to know which group of items has been likely picked over already. You see, thrift stores generally tag items in a certain order of color. If you know that, for example, green tags were brought in this week and blue tags were brought in two weeks ago, then you can be pretty sure that the items with blue tags have been gone through a few times by some resellers. How do you figure this out? No problem; just ask an employee of the store.
3: Find Your Store’s Secret Hiding Spots for Overflowing Inventory
Let me give you an example. I have a Goodwill in my area where they have this big countertop where they display all the DVDs, CDs, video games, and all kinds of media. Well, there’s a little storage compartment underneath that has two doors. When the top area is fully loaded, they actually put the items underneath. The doors are closed, but they are not locked. I always make sure to open those doors up. I never know what I’ll find there! So don’t be afraid to look around your store. Browse through every corner. It may be that they keep, for example, men’s ties where you wouldn’t expect them.
4: Build Relationships with Thrift Store Employees
Why should you build relationships with the people working at the thrift stores? You want them on your side. Say you resell clothing, and your favorite store employee knows it. The next time you walk in, maybe that employee will say, “Hey, check out the men’s shirts. We just got a whole bunch of Pendletons in. I know that you like that brand.” Also, if you know the employees and maybe even the manager, one day they might be willing to bring out some new inventory early they know you are interested in. It’s something that an employee might do for a friend but not someone he doesn’t know.
5: Take It Slow Sometimes
When I got my start in reselling clothing,
How to Stop Listening to the Negative Voice in Your Head A few times I’ve found myself sitting in the car at the gym and procrastinating. Moments like these define us. Now, what moments am I talking about? It’s the moments where you decide if you are going to make the right decision, which is hard, or if you are going to make the wrong decision, which is easy.
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Excuses, Excuses Here’s how it works. I am driving to the gym and playing out a million excuses in my head as to why I don’t have to go to the gym. I’m tired. I don’t feel good. I can go later on when I feel better. I’m not meeting my personal trainer today, so no one will know if I don’t show up. Being successful is all about our thoughts, which then lead to our decisions and our actions, which lead to our results. Our minds are constantly trying to find the easy way out. And the easy way out is never going to bring us success. Being successful is about doing the right things at the right time in every moment, each and every day. Today is what matters. Your Mind Playing Tricks on You We as individuals aren’t defined by the thoughts that go on in our minds. The human mind is millions of years old, and it’s always trying to protect us from things that really don’t even exist. A bunch of BS plays out in our heads. And if you’re trying to lose weight or start a business or are just struggling something, maybe you see somebody who is massively successful and you think it’s easy for them. I can tell you right now that these battles play out in all of our minds. When these thoughts come into your mind, don’t take them at face value. Take four or five minutes before you make a decision and meditate on it. Think about it. For example, those times I find myself sitting in my car in the gym parking lot and hesitating, instead of reacting and saying to myself, “Oh, I’m just going to go to Starbucks and ignore my workout,” I pause and think about my decision. And then I know that when I wake up tomorrow, if I don’t do what I need to do today, which is go to the gym, I’m going to feel regret. I’m going to feel bad. I’m going to feel sluggish. I’ll know I am not moving toward my goals. What Goals Are Really All About Reaching my goals is more than just me reaching my goals. It’s about inspiring people, being a role model, getting fit, getting healthy, and getting in shape. And all that is going to give me more energy to build my business. It’s going to give me more energy and passion to share my message regarding entrepreneurship and making money online and health and fitness. If I don’t get fit and healthy, there could be somebody out there who I don't inspire and they could die prematurely because they didn’t lose the 30 pounds. Sure, these may be extreme things that I’m thinking about, but you have to play tricks on your mind. Your mind is constantly trying to sabotage your best intentions. Your mind is not out to do what you really, truly want to accomplish. It’s out to protect itself from millions of years of wiring. Do not let it play tricks on you. So when I hesitate going to the gym, I go anyway and crush it. Why? Because I want to be successful. I want to inspire people. I want to have the energy. I want to be fit. I want to live a long life. I want to inspire. I want to be a role model. Where Will Today’s Decision Take You? I know I can take a moment of decision right now that can define where I’m going to be six months, 12 months, 18 months down the road. In 18 months, you may turn to my YouTube channel and say, “Holy crap, this guy got jacked. He got fit. He got healthy. How did he do it?” I’ll tell you how I did it. I made the right decision every single day. Even when it was tough, even when my mind was playing tricks on me, I made the right decision. Now, I’m not going to be perfect. I know I’m going to fall off here and there. But overall,
He Sold $1.3 Million Drop-Shipping on eBay in 18 Months Paul Lipsky, who has a course called Drop-Shipping Titans, was able to scale his drop-shipping business on eBay to $1.3 million within a year and a half. What were the most important things that allowed him to get there? What were the pillars of his operation? What made up the foundation that allowed him to scale his business? What was the difference between him and the average Joe who just gives up? Leverage Software The first thing is that leveraging software is crucial. So much of this drop-shipping business can become automated, and that’s not just a luxury. It’s really necessary in order to scale up. As soon as you automate a process that’s repetitive, you can focus on the more important things that are going to grow your business. When you’re stuck working in the business versus on the business, you’re not really making more money. By using software as your workflow systems, you free yourself up to work on the big picture. Paul uses software called DSM Tool, which stands for Drop Ship Management. It does so much, but one of the most helpful things it does is automatically lists items for you. It monitors your stock for you, so if an item goes up or down in price, it’s going to change it on eBay for you. It also marks items as out of stock as necessary.
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Build a Team Another big one that helped Paul in his business was building a team. The right software will be all you need at first, but at some point, you need humans behind the software to operate it. And that’s where the virtual assistants come in. They fill in those gaps for you. Paul utilizes them for everything. They can run up to 95 percent of his store for him. They do product research, get items listed on eBay, fulfill orders, and do customer service. They do everything you can’t automate. Sometimes you’ve got to have that human interaction. Document Your System The next crucial part of building Paul’s business is workflows and documenting systems. As you build your business and find your team, you need to take care of things like customer service, product research, fulfillment, and returns. And it will feel as if there are a million steps for each one of those roles. And you are going to want to document each one. How do you do that? Why is that important? Well, Paul will tell you that you just have to do it. The first time you go through everything, write down every step that you took. The next time you do it, go back to see if you did anything differently or if some other process worked better this time. After a few times, you’re going to find a system that works and then just keep doing that. You don’t want to have to think about these routine things as you do them. And then at that point you can send that system to a virtual assistant to do it for you. Look at the Big Picture The next pillar that allowed Paul to scale to over seven figures was the mindset of looking at the big picture as he was drop-shipping on eBay. He realized that it wasn’t the single item that mattered; it was the high volume that was the key. When you get started, it’s easy to get hung up on every single order: “Oh, this item—I didn’t make that much money on it,” or, “This item—I made so much money. But these other items I’m not making as much money on.” You’ve got to look at the big picture here. With eBay drop-shipping, the key is volume; it’s selling a lot of products. You’re not going to get the high margins, but the key to making money is selling more of those items with the lower margins. That’s what you’ve got to focus on. Even if you are only making a dollar off of the sale of one item, you have to remember that you are actually not doing anything. Your virtual assistants are doing it. If they can make you a dollar, then it’s worth it for you. Once you’ve done your product research, listed that item,
5 Tips to Survive as an Entrepreneur and Avoid Going Back to the 9–5 I see so many people get started on eBay, Amazon, or Shopify, or they start up their own businesses. And then if you ask them two or three years down the road how things are going, they admit they are back at their day jobs. I know deep down that is not where they want to be. So here are five tips to survive as an entrepreneur and keep from going back to the 9–5 world.
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#1: Manage Your Projects Closely Each and every day, you want to be aware of what projects you’re working on. The goal shouldn’t be working 15 hours a day to make progress. You want to survive and not burn out. Let’s say you have multiple projects going on. Maybe you have your hand in Amazon FBA, a YouTube channel, and a Shopify store. Every day you want to make sure that you’re doing something to move the needle forward. Making progress is what it’s all about. If you make a little bit of progress each and every day, then three months, six months, or nine months down the road, you’re going to have massive results. If you only work a couple times a week on things and are inconsistent, it’s too easy to forget about a project. Two weeks can go by and maybe you forget to list or monitor your correspondence. You need to be consistent every single day and make a little bit of progress. You can use different software to help you manage your projects daily whether it’s Trello, Google Drive, or some other Cloud-based systems. Then nothing will get lost. You can access the necessary information from your phone, from your computer, and in different locations.
2: Have Multiple Streams of Income
Don’t listen to those people who are telling you only to focus on one thing. While that philosophy does stand true to a certain extent—if you want to build a $100 million company, start your own eBay, or have your own Google—most people just aren’t going to have that much success. A more reasonable expectation is to have multiple projects and multiple businesses that you’re running. I don’t like the word backup, but in a way that’s the point here. Because when you’re selling on eBay, you’re playing in their sandbox. When you’re selling on Amazon, you’re playing in their sandbox. When you’re running your Shopify store, you might think to yourself that, yes, you have your own website and have all the control. But if you take a look at how you’re achieving your sales, it’s probably 80 to 90 percent Facebook ads. What happens if Facebook shuts you down? You always want to have multiple streams of income. The people who are in the game for longer periods of time tend to have various things going on. The ones who give up after a year usually only have one thing. They have one platform that they get kicked off of or fail to have success at, and they can’t make it work. If you have multiple projects, you have a better chance of succeeding. What has allowed me to survive as an entrepreneur over the last five years is having multiple income streams. A lot of times I’ve had more than 10 streams going at once. And not all of them have required active effort every single day for me. A lot of them have been passive. But that’s the beautiful thing about being an entrepreneur. You can have projects that are very active, such as eBay or Amazon. Then you can build up side projects, such as having a YouTube channel, selling products on Gumroad, or building email marketing campaigns.
3: Always Be Planting Seeds
Many people don’t typically try to start planting a new seed until their specific section of the garden—whatever business or project they currently have going—is dying. And then they start thinking about planting seeds. That’s not what you want to do. You want to start planting seeds when things are going well. Maybe you’re doing $500,000 a year on Amazon FBA as a retail arbitrage seller. You’re going to Target,
What I’ve Realized about Success and Failure I’ve noticed one big difference among people who succeed and those who fail. It doesn’t matter what area of life you are looking at—business, finance, personal relationships, health. And what it really has to do with is mindset. Successful people look toward the tiny actions they need to take each day, and they do them—each and every day. For example, they will set their minds on listing 10 items a day, five days a week. They understand that the small actions every single day compound and create huge effects. People who don't accomplish their goals glance at the daily tasks and actions and regularly make excuses.
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Doing vs. Meaning to Do Say you want to lose 30 pounds. You know you need to eat 1,800 a day to accomplish that goal. But then you tell yourself that eating 2,000 this one day—or, if you are being honest with yourself, most days—is good enough. Or you know you need to get in daily exercise, but you are always finding “good” reasons to skip it that day. One day isn’t a big deal, right? Maybe you are trying to build an eBay business. Well, if you skip a day of going to the garage sales or the thrift store or don’t list one day, your business won’t crash and crumble. It’s only one day, after all. But for people who don’t accomplish their goals, that “one day” often turns into a string of days. It’s the Little Things Successful people know that the tiny, seemingly insignificant actions every single day add up and compound into huge things. The tiny things make the big difference between success and failure. The small actions we take every single day—whether it’s listing five items, getting yourself out for a walk, or following some system or process to aid your business—will ultimately mean your success or your failure. In the moment, the individual actions may not look very important. And in reality, if you skip one or two days, there really won’t be any massive consequences. But over a longer duration, whether it's a month, or three months, or six months, skipping one thing here and there and developing patterns of not doing what will lead toward your goals makes all the difference in the world. Doing the tiny things every single day will make you successful no matter what your goal is. Starting Out Isn’t Easy When you start doing something new, it’s uncomfortable because you are still learning how to do it. Maybe you want to sell books; you have to figure out how to scan them and how to use the Amazon Seller app. There’s a tough learning curve because it’s all new to you. But those small steps of sourcing and processing get easier, especially if you do it every single day, even if it’s for an hour a day. You don't have to go crazy and do it 15 hours a day. Just build up that simple discipline of showing up and doing little things, moving you toward your goal every single day, until it becomes a habit. It gets easier, and it actually becomes more fun and more enjoyable; it's not such a hassle. The Magic Is in the Process Focus on the little things. Focus on the process. That’s when the magic happens. Taking steps every single day is going to get you closer to your goal. I mean, it’s great to have a goal, but don’t be so attached only to the outcome that you forget how vital the process is. Do the little things every single day in your business, and watch as everything changes. You’ve got to be willing to give your goals your time and patience. Live for the process more than you live for the goal.
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Morning Ritual for Entrepreneurs People ask me, “Steve, what do you do first thing when you wake up in the morning? How do you begin your day before you dive into work, listing items on eBay and Amazon, jumping into YouTube videos, doing product launches? What’s your routine before you get started?” It’s an important question. As you get more into the entrepreneurial lifestyle, you will find your morning routine is crucial because how you start the day is typically how you end the day. If you get yourself into a good mindset and a high-energy state, you’re going to have that momentum to have an amazing day, building, creating, and adding as much value as possible to your life and the lives of those around you.
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Get Up Early I typically shoot to get up at 6:00 a.m. It might be a little later than that occasionally, but three days a week—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday—I absolutely have to get up that early because I have a standing appointment with my personal trainer. Otherwise I do usually get to the gym by about 7:45 and work out for a couple of hours. Rehydrate But immediately upon waking, the first thing I do is drink water. Often when you wake up, you’re dehydrated. And if you’re dehydrated, your energy is going to be down, your mood is going to be down, and you’re not going to be in a state where you can be productive. You’re not going to feel as good as you could be if you were hydrated. Get Your Body Moving The next thing I like to do is jump on my rebounder. I keep a trampoline right behind my couch, and I jump up and down on it for about six or seven minutes. It’s great for clearing out your lymphatic system, which is the system that cleans out toxins and bad things that are in your body. It helps with the immune system and adds energy. Think About Your Life While I’m jumping on that rebounder, typically I’m mentally going through a couple different things. Number one, I’m thinking about all the things I’m grateful for. I’m grateful to have my YouTube channel. I’m grateful to have my health. I’m grateful to have two arms, two eyes, and two ears. I go through these little things, and then I think about the big things: my family, my loved ones, my friends. Being in a state of gratitude and happiness for what you have is a great way to start your day. If you’re not grateful for what you have now, you’ll find it a challenge to build something more, to attain more, and to grow as a person. Ask Yourself Some Questions While I’m jumping on that trampoline, I’m also asking myself power questions: What am I excited about? What am I happy about? What am I committed about? If you do this, you are putting yourself in a very positive place. If you want to feel better about yourself, happier, more confident, and more excited, ask yourself questions that direct you toward that state of mind. When I ask myself what I’m excited about, I might respond, “Well, I’m excited to build this new sales funnel,” “I’m excited to list 15 items,” “I’m excited to go to the thrift store,” or, “I’m excited to attend the Tony Robbins conference.” I get focused on all these things I’m excited about, and what does that do? It makes me excited. Revisit Your Goals Lastly, when I’m on the trampoline, I think about and repeat my goals. It’s a sort of combination of an affirmation and an incantation. One of my goals is that I’ll easily earn $480,000 profit by the end of the year or sooner. I repeat that to myself and get really get pumped up. Another goal is that I will have a thin, fit, ripped, muscular body by the end of the year or sooner. Again, I repeat that and feel myself get excited about it. Breathe and Meditate After I jump off the trampoline, I sit down, get into a meditative pose, close my eyes, and focus on my breathing. I practice a couple different breathing techniques. One of them is breathing in and out quickly.
Why Most of My Old Friends Are Broke and Unhappy Over the years, I’ve drifted away from many of my old friends. There are also other people around me, and I notice that they’re not living up to their expectations. They’re out of shape and unhealthy. They’re not making a lot of money. They’re in debt. In my life, I’ve seen the qualities that have made me and other entrepreneurs successful in certain areas. I’ve also seen what causes people not to be successful. The number one thing—and this may sound harsh—is that the unsuccessful people are just plain lazy.
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What Have You Been Doing? I’ll talk to some old friends and ask them, “What did you do during the weekend?” They say, “I went out drinking. I went to the bar. I partied. I had fun. I went on a trip.” They never tell me, “I read a book. I went to a conference. I applied this new thing. I joined a Mastermind.” It’s never anything constructive. It’s always about having temporary fun. So if you’re not getting the results you want, it might be that you are lazy. You have to be brutally honest with yourself. Maybe you are not doing what you need to be doing. You’re not taking action. You’re not learning. You’re not growing. You’re not developing. You’re busy flailing around in mindless pursuits. Or you could be afraid. Many people are scared to try new things. They fear going outside the box and trying something different that might cause people to judge them. Experiments, Mistakes, and Lessons Learned Looking back at my journey, I’ve tried a lot of things. I’m by no means perfect; I’m no role model. I’ve made my mistakes, but I’ve learned. One thing that I’ve done really well is that I have tried a lot of things and experimented. I haven’t always succeeded, but I’ve absorbed lessons from my setbacks. Most people do the same thing over and over again and expect to get different results. I know some people who have YouTube channels who are dead broke. People follow them, and they’re great people, but they’re dead broke. They’re in debt. The truth is that they’re not as happy as they wish they would be. And it is because they’re doing the same thing over and over again. They expect to get different results by doing exactly what they’ve been doing. They go to the same thrift stores and sell the same items on eBay. They follow the same business model and wonder why their income is not going up. I ask them, “Hey, how many books did you read? How many courses did you take?” They say, “Oh, no…books, courses—that’s nonsense. Why would I spend money on something that I can get for free on the internet? Why would I invest in a course? That’s such a scam.” Whenever anyone says that to me, I know that there is a 95 percent chance that he or she is dead broke. That person is a pessimist and believes there is no value in books and courses. The person thinks everyone is out to get them. Everything is a scam. You’ve Got to Grow But what happens is that these people don’t grow. They don’t learn. They don’t apply themselves. They don’t do things outside the box because they’re so worried about what people will think about them. I have many old friends who I really want to help, but I can’t say anything to them. What am I going to say? “You’re lazy. You’ve got to take a risk and apply yourself. You’ve got to go take a course. You’ve got to read the books of successful people. You need to try new things. You’ve got to stop doing exactly what you’ve been doing.” So I’ll say this to all of you now: Try new things. Grow. Learn. Develop your knowledge base. I’m not the brightest bulb out there. But what I have going for me is the willingness to take a risk. I’m willing to invest in myself and do things that are a little bit different. If deep down inside you are wanting to take things to the next level, think about what I have said here. Ask yourself, “Am I being lazy?
I Had an Epiphany (Why I’m Having So Much Success Lately)! Part of my morning ritual is going through my goals and affirmations. And one morning I learned something about myself while I was thinking and reflecting. The two most important aspects of my success in life are my fitness and my business. I’ve lost a ton of body fat. I am getting in shape, building muscle, and feeling great. With my business, I’m making more money. I’m helping more people. I’m adding more value than I ever have in my whole life, and it’s giving me purpose.
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What Has Made the Difference? And the one thing that I realized has made such a big difference is that every single day, I don’t focus on what I am going to do in one week, in two weeks, or in three weeks. Yes, I do plan. Planning is important. But each day I ask myself a few questions: What can I do today to test my body, build my endurance, and build muscle? What can I do today to build income and add value? What are three, four, or even five things that I can just crush today to make a difference? So many times in the past, I told myself, “I’m going to do this tomorrow. I’m going to build this amazing product, make this video, and list these items—tomorrow.” I would make up stupid excuses as to why it had to be tomorrow, but all these things forever remained “tomorrow.” But then I realized it. I had to focus on today. I had to focus on this moment right now. Today Is What Matters Don’t worry about tomorrow, the next week, or a year down the road because you never know what the future will bring. Today is the number one day that matters. It’s this moment right now. If you want to do something, do it now. Stop waiting. Stop making up excuses. Stop creating reasons and justifications for why you can’t do it right now. That’s nonsense. Right now is the only time that matters. So if you want to do something, build something, or even start a YouTube channel, do it now. So many people say they want to start a YouTube channel, but hardly anybody does it because they always say they have to get their editing perfect. They have to work on this or that. They have to get something else done. Take Action! But all that doesn’t matter. Just do it today. Today is the day that counts. It’s not about how long you work; it’s about taking action. You can work an hour a day and be mega successful with your health and your business. You just need to be smart and take action every single day. If you are consistent, the compound effect will take control in your life and you will see your success grow.
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I Have No Motivation to Continue Selling on eBay From time to time, you may discover that you are saying to yourself, “I just don’t have the motivation to list on eBay.” A lot of people have told me this very thing too. I know what it’s like to struggle. When I talk to people about this, I see myself from six years ago—how much I struggled and how much I hated my life. I was depressed, overweight, and tired. I didn’t have a purpose. But when I talk to people who are committed and serious about starting a business on eBay or Amazon, it still gets me excited and motivated. I remember what it was like when I first started having success.
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The Biggest Key to Success What did I find was the biggest key to my success? Simple: listing my items. The more you list, typically, the more you’re going to sell (assuming the items are profitable and have a market demand). What should you do if you aren’t motivated to list? We’ve all been there. We get so hooked on sourcing—going to thrift stores, pawn shops, garage sales. Then when it comes to putting in the hard work of processing that pile and listing it—doing all the stuff necessary to get it to market—sometimes we drop the ball. What should you do? The number one thing that I would recommend doing is spending some time asking yourself a few questions: How would your life change if your business doubled? How would your life change if you went from 300 to 500 listings and were selling $4,000 a month? How would your life change if you had an extra $2,000? Cultivate Your Vision Envision what it would be like if you were able to travel or had more free time. Or maybe you would be able to spend time with your friends and family. Maybe you could have an extra $200 of disposable income to give to your mother who just retired. Think about seeing that smile on her face and not having to hear about her financial worries. Go deep within yourself to find your internal motivation. What drives you? What gets you excited? Once you find that reason, write it down. Say it to yourself. Repeat it. Envision it. Think about it. Doing all that will get you moving to do the things you need to do when you don’t feel like it. An Object at Rest Stays at Rest Another important thing to remember is what happens when something (in this case, someone—you) is at rest. When you stop doing anything, you stop listing. A week goes by; and then two weeks go by. It becomes hard to get moving again. When something is at rest, it takes so much effort to get it going again. It’s like a rocket getting off the ground. So much energy is needed to get a rocket in the air, but once it starts moving, it almost seems easy. Have you ever been in a situation where you’re just on fire? You’ve been listing everything for weeks or even months at a time. You’re having all this success, and then you think back to when you were in a slump for a month. And you ask yourself, “What was wrong with me?” Or maybe you have been eating healthy for the last two months, losing weight, and getting fit. You look back on your previous unhealthy lifestyle and ask yourself, “Why was I so hooked on ice cream? Why didn’t I just exercise? It’s so easy.” When you’re creating good habits, moving, and performing well, it’s easy to keep going. But when you are at rest, not doing anything, and being lazy, it’s so hard to turn your act around and get going. You’ve got to create that habit. You’ve got to construct that routine. And you can do that once you find that driving force—your motivation. What gets you excited? What gets you pumped up? Getting Going Isn’t Easy Yes, you will have to tough it through the initial period. It won’t be easy to get started. You will need to go through your items, take pictures, and write up the listings. The first day, you will be watching the clock–10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes.
How to Find an Opportunity Selling on eBay Many people who get into selling on eBay start going to garage sales, thrift stores, flea markets, and consignment stores. They look for items that they see YouTubers like myself are selling. For example, I love to sell books. I love to sell clothing. But when these new sellers go out, they may not find those items. Then they are left thinking, “Clothing doesn’t work for me. Books don’t work for me. I see other YouTubers selling these things, but I can’t find them. What’s going on?” You need to know your area and know your opportunities. This took me a while to figure out. It is a combination of where you live and your knowledge base.
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Every Area Has Its Unique Opportunities You need to understand that each geographical area is going to have its own opportunities. So you’ve got to start visiting your thrift stores. You’ve got to start visiting your garage sales. You’ve got to take a look and figure out what will be your opportunity. It may or may not be clothing. For example, if you live in a college town or have a university nearby, there’s a good chance that you can make an absolute killing selling books on Amazon. If you live in a town like Austin, Texas, you are going to find a lot of sporting equipment and fitness and health-related items because in Austin people are health conscious and spend time outside being active. They’re working out. They’re exercising. If you live in an area that gets a lot of snow, you might have a great chance to buy North Face, Patagonia, snowboards, and similar cold-weather items. You need to understand what opportunities you do or don’t have. It’s great to watch videos of the many amazing YouTubers out there buying and selling various items. But you’ve got to learn what works best for you. Go Out There and Experiment Look around. Each thrift store is going to be different. Each garage sale is going to be different. Some thrift stores have fill-a-bag sales where you could load up. Some thrift stores are outlets, and it’s a weigh-and-pay system. You might have an amazing opportunity to buy and sell ties. I love selling ties on eBay. But some thrift stores are going to charge six bucks a tie, and that may not be the opportunity for you. All the different selling sites—eBay, Amazon, craigslist, Poshmark, and so on—have so many categories that you can mess with, from books to clothing to electronics to sporting items. In fact, just look around your house. Look at your appliance. Look at your furniture. Look at your clothing. Look in your hall closet. All these things have opportunities. Say you have a suitcase in your closet. You look it up, and it’s not selling for a lot. That doesn’t mean you should avoid all suitcases. I can guarantee you that tons of suitcase —whether they’re rare or vintage or specific brands—will sell for awesome profits. Take the time to learn what is selling, and then take that leap forward and start experimenting in your geographical location to figure out where your opportunities are. What items are being underpriced and undervalued at these thrift stores? What are people just giving away? What types of items could you come in and grab for a lower price, put on eBay or Amazon, and flip for a hundred-dollar profit? There are so many opportunities out there, but you’ve got to go out there and work. You’ve got to go out there and grind. Study up. Research. Learn what’s selling. Find Out What Works The resources are available. Just go out there, figure out what works for you, and scale the heck out of it. That’s the best advice I can give you. Scale what is working. If you can’t find clothing, stop worrying about clothing. If you can’t find books, push that category aside. But if you notice that electronics are abundant where you live and they’re selling really well, go for that. If you’re struggling,
Are Tony Robbins Seminars a Scam? Tony Robbins is a household name, and pretty much everyone has heard of his seminars. I’ve gone to a few, so I often get asked, “Steve, like…why do you go to a Tony Robbins event? Does it really help? Is it a bunch of rah-rah stuff just to get you motivated?” The reality is that it is a little bit of everything. They share a lot of strategies with you in terms of business, health, self-development, and motivation. Tony Robbins isn’t speaking the entire time. Various speakers come onstage to talk about different topics.
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You Get to Network with Like-Minded, Motivated People When you get to be around motivated people who want to become the best version of themselves, it’s contagious. Hanging out with people who are on another level and who are grinding, hustling, and busy being positive just brings you up. It makes you a better person. And any Tony Robbins seminar will be full of these people. The energy you get from these awesome people makes you want to go out there and crush it and make it happen. These events are also great for networking. I’ve met some really cool people through attending these seminars. Several contacts I stay in touch with today. You never know whose brain you will someday need to pick about a particular aspect of business or who will be helpful as you are leveling up your game, so having a cadre of smart, motivated people is essential. It’s a Good Place to Gain Clarity These seminars have many goal-setting activities and workshops. There are opportunities to find the driving force in your motivation behind your goals. Anybody can set a goal, but that’s only half of it. Through these seminars you will be able to put strategies in place to remember that goal, get excited about that goal, and continue going toward that goal when your back is against the wall. Tony Robbins is really good at that stuff. It’s not only the motivation but the concrete plans you can utilize to help achieve your goals. I’ve done one-on-one activities at these seminars too. So in this room full of some 5,000 people, Tony Robbins told us to find one person, sit down with this individual, and share five insecurities. With an exercise like this, you start to really dig deep into why you haven’t been succeeding, your limitations, and all the little things that are going on in your mind that are holding you back. And then at the end of the event is the walking on hot coals. The purpose of doing this isn’t to burn your feet and get blisters. It’s to realize that you’re capable of doing a lot more than your mind is allowing you to believe. Many of us believe that we can only make a certain amount of money or can only lose so much weight or attract a certain type of person. But that’s nonsense. It’s BS. We are powerful, limitless creatures, but many times our minds hold us back. When faced with the idea of walking on coals, most people think, “I can never do that. I would burn my feet. I would die.” But in doing it, you are training your brain to understand that you’re very powerful and can do more than you think. You can blast through those limitations. An Intense and Powerful Experience Of course, I can’t give you every detail about these seminars. But overall, let’s just say over the three days, it’s really, really intense. That is another thing I like about these events. They train you to grind. They’re long, long days—12-hour days for three days. Something special happens when you invest in yourself three days in a row for 12 hours a day. It’s a powerful feeling to know that you’re willing to do that to reach your goals. I have learned a lot at these events about clarity and goals. I get motivated. I meet awesome people. I’m investing in myself. I’m getting around so many like-minded people, and we are bouncing so many ideas off one another. It’s an amazing thing when you get around people wh...
The Secret That Changed My Life and Exploded My Results You may feel stuck in one of these situations: You are not making as much money as you’d like. You don’t have the body you want to have. Your energy is not at the level you want it to be. Or maybe relationships with your family and friends don’t feel ideal. How can you turn these things around? The key is in the tiny decisions you make all day, every single day. Waking up in the morning and getting in a good workout is easy—when you feel like doing it.But when the alarm goes off and you tell yourself, “I don’t feel good. I’m groggy. I’m tired. I ate too late last night,” what happens then? It’s far too easy to ignore your good intentions and hit the snooze button.
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Making the Right Decision Is Easy—But So Is Making the Wrong Decision I can look back over my health journey of losing more than thirty pounds and getting into the best shape of my life. I can also look at my business and income and remember when I was making $16,000 a year at a dead-end job, and now I’m having launches that do anywhere from $50,000 to $85,000 in a month. How did I do that? How did I go from out of shape and overweight to having a fit, lean body? How did I go from essentially broke to having a thriving business and all these multiple income streams? It’s been all those tiny decisions. I’m not saying this to boast and brag. I’m nothing special. And when I think about how I went from having nothing and feeling unhealthy to having a flourishing business and being fit, I know it is all a cumulation of good decisions. Keep It Simple And now you are thinking, “Wow, I want to get fit. I want to be healthy. I want to explode my business. But how do I do any of that?” Don’t overthink things. Don’t overwhelm yourself. Just realize the steps to success are made out of tiny decisions. Those decisions stem from your thoughts, so you need to be very clear in terms of what you want. You need to keep your garden—which is your mind—clean. You need to pull out those weeds, those negative people. The haters. The people who say you can’t do it. Get away from those people and get around people who are making moves. I have some mornings when I wake up and do not feel good at all. Maybe I ate a bunch of food the night before. Maybe I have a 15-hour day ahead of me. The first thing that comes to my mind is, “I don’t have to work out this morning. My stomach hurts. I have a crazy schedule today. I’m exhausted already. I shouldn’t do it. I’ve already lost weight. I’ll be find skipping the gym just this one time.” But all that is my mind trying to trick me. It is trying to keep me down. When I have all these excuses, I get up and work out anyway. And then afterward I jump into the shower and feel like a million bucks. Again, I’m not bragging. I’m not special, and the technique is honestly nothing complicated. I just don’t let my mind get in my way anymore. When Your Mind Isn’t in Your Corner Don’t negotiate with your mind. It wants to trick you. It wants to hold you down. It doesn’t necessarily want you to succeed. It would rather keep you comfortable—keep the status quo—than let you do what is better for you and for your life. So just make the right decision in the moment. The steps of success are made out of those tiny things. Get around positive people, figure out what you want, and just go for it. Don’t let fear of getting out of your comfort zone get in your way. You can do it. If I can do it—somebody who had nothing and who was overweight and smoking two packs of cigarettes a day—then you can do it. I was broke out of my mind, and now I have a thriving business, multiple income streams, and passive income. I am helping thousands of people. And you can do the same thing.
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The 3 Biggest Myths about Selling on eBay If you are just getting started selling on eBay, you may have come across a few myths that many people believe are true. But these things are just that—myths. They are not really true. People like to “talk the talk” about eBay, but they don’t really “walk the walk.” I’ve been selling on eBay for quite a few years now, and I want to break these myths down for you because you are liable to find a lot of nonsense out there.
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#1: The Fees Are Too High You will hear people tell you not to sell on eBay because the fees are too high. They’ll say that eBay takes too much money from you. Yes, there are fees. There will be selling fees, insertion fees, and maybe a few random fees. Depending on if you have a store or some other plan, the fees will come to about 9 or 10 percent. And then when you actually sell your item, you have to use PayPal, which comes to about 3 percent. So all in all, it’s only around 13 percent in fees, give or take. That’s not really that much. I already hear people saying, “So that means out of every hundred bucks I sell, they are taking $13! And there’s still the cost of my goods, taxes, overhead for a warehouse, and employees!” OK, fair enough. But if you want to build your own Shopify store and drive your own traffic and pay for advertising, it will cost you a lot more than 13 percent. With eBay, you get to access literally millions and millions of customers a month. How much money would it take for you individually to connect with that many potential customers? As an eBay seller, you are part of this humongous network. When you look at it like that, 13 percent is nothing.
2: There’s Too Much Competition
I’ve heard people say, “Don’t start an eBay business. There are too many competitors.” Sure, many, many people sell on eBay, but that is one thing that actually makes eBay great. If you have a lot of competitors within your specific niche, then you need to learn and focus on finding the right items. Some people try to sell clothing and get frustrated because they don’t seem to be making money. But they are probably going after the wrong brands, the wrong styles, the wrong sizes, or the wrong materials. They are probably not taking good photographs or doing adequate keyword research. And this is where having “too much” competition can actually help you. Look to your competitors to see what works. Study the sold listings. See what brands, styles, sizes, or materials fetch the best prices. Look at the pictures in others’ listings. Get ideas about upping your photography. Figure out the keywords that will attract the most buyers.
3: You Cannot Make a Full-Time Income Selling on eBay
Thousands of people right now selling on eBay are making full-time incomes. Plus, there are thousands of people making money selling full-time on craigslist, Poshmark, Amazon, and Shopify. There are so many opportunities out there—and eBay is one of those great opportunities. I started with eBay. It was my stepping stone, and now I do a bunch of different things. But eBay is what allowed me to go full-time and make enough money to move forward in my life and invest in different things. So check out the YouTube channels of eBay sellers. Join some of the free Facebook groups. Trust me, people are making full-time incomes out there. If you’re not able to make a full-time income, it’s probably because either you’re lazy, you haven’t found a creative way to find enough inventory to sell, or you don’t have the right strategy that works for your particular situation. But you can make it happen. It just takes hard work, a good business plan, and quite a bit of effort. It also takes time. If you want to make a full-time income, you’re going to be putting in at least 30 and up to 60 hours a week depending upon how hard you want to grind. Don’t Listen to the Myths
Advice to Anyone Who Feels Stuck in Life A close friend of mine is trying to figure out what to do with his life. He’s been working different dead-end jobs. He doesn’t like them, and he’s never made a lot of money. So he’s trying to figure out what to do. The problem that he’s facing is that he has so many different options. He’s looked into becoming a security guard. He’s looked into opening a restaurant. He’s thought about working in the family business. He’s hesitating getting started with something because he feels as if whatever he chooses will be what he does for the rest of his life.
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Are You Hesitating? Can you relate to that? You don’t get started on eBay or Amazon or even YouTube because you tell yourself, “I don’t know if that’s what I want to do the rest of my life. I don’t know if that’s right for me.” Or maybe you have such a huge dream that you convince yourself not to take a lower-end job right now because it’s not the field you want to go into. It’s almost as if you have a key that will essentially unlock your future. But what you are doing is only driving around and looking at houses without actually walking up to a door, sticking the key in, and turning it to see if the door opens up. You look at all these opportunities, but then you tell yourself, “Well, that kind of looks interesting. But what if it doesn’t work out? What if I am sick of it five years down the road?” So you just keep driving on and on. Open Your Mind to Opportunities Living is learning. Living is doing. Be open to trying different things. Start different businesses. Take different jobs. Experiment with different opportunities. You never really know what’s going to be right for you or what will be a stepping stone to something better. You may have to unlock one door in order to see another door that is maybe a couple miles out. It may even be in a different direction, but the only way to get there is to go through that first door. Many people say to themselves, “I don’t want to start an eBay business because my ultimate goal is to be making a hundred grand a month.” But here is something to keep in mind. Starting that eBay business might be a good opportunity for you because it’s going to allow you to make enough money to make a move eventually. Maybe you’re dead broke right now. Maybe you don’t have any money. Maybe your ultimate goal is to open a restaurant. Well, to open a restaurant, you might need $100,000 or even $500,000. How are you going to make that move to get that restaurant if you don’t have the money to invest in it? Sometimes you’ve got to take a step back to take a step forward. So go ahead and start that eBay business. Or take a job as a security guard. Or work your way up as a line cook. Then 12, 24, or 36 months down the road you may be ready to make your move. You Never Know Unless You Try Don’t be scared to try new things. Don’t be afraid to give an opportunity a shot. You never know if that just might be your dream job. You may have an idea and a vision, but they are so black and white in your mind. Take a chance on opportunity. Over the last five or six years, I’ve done so many different things—a YouTube channel, personal branding, internet marketing, Kindle publishing, eBay, Amazon, private label, wholesale, dropshipping. I’ve learned quickly what works for me and what doesn’t work. Sometimes one opportunity led to another opportunity, and then I met some particular person and started a business. Give Yourself a Chance You will never know what can happen until you give yourself a chance to succeed. Put that key into multiple doors and open them all up to see what happens. The worst thing is regret. The worst thing is thinking back and realizing that you have been like a hamster on a wheel spinning in place for the last five years. And then you are left asking yourself what would have happened if you would have...
7 Ways to Escape SLOW SALES Selling on eBay Are your sales slow? Are you grinding your teeth and wondering what the heck is going on? If you’re freaking out about your inventory being at a standstill, let me share these seven tips.
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#1: List More Items I struggled with this for years. Things would get slow, items wouldn’t sell, and I would almost say to myself, “Screw this. This isn’t worth it. I can’t do this.” I would stop listing my items. Well, sometimes sales just get slow. But they always pick back up again. These things go in cycles. However, if you are not listing even when things are slow, when they pick up again, they will stay slow because you weren’t working on your business when you had the time to do it. When you list like crazy one week, for the most part, sales will spike in another week or so. If you’re not listing your items the week prior, the next week, sales will sink even more. Don’t stop listing!
2: Run a Sale in Your eBay Store
Much of the time I am running sales anywhere from 5 to 10 percent off every single day. When things get really slow, I’ll run 40- to 50-percent-off sales to boost rankings in the algorithm to get things moving. I can’t prove it, but it seems inevitably that when you run a big sale, other items in your eBay store that weren’t selling start to sell. It seems as though the algorithm loves it when you’re selling more—which you will because of the sale you are running. It feels like a snowball effect. You run a sale and get items moving. Then the rest of your items get promoted, and you sell even more.
3: Revise Your Listings
To break out of one of those dreaded eBay slumps, go back into your listings and start revising and optimizing them. For example, maybe you have a rare Ralph Lauren big bear sweater that’s been in your eBay store. It’s priced competitively. The pictures are awesome. But it’s just not selling, and you have no idea why. Sometimes you might have something that’s off in the listing. Maybe you forgot to include the measurements. Maybe you pasted the wrong template in. Maybe there is an obvious typo in the description that is making potential buyers hesitate. Maybe you forgot to photograph something important to the item, like the bear on the big bear sweater! Research comparable sales. Make sure you have relevant keywords in the title.
4: Pay Attention to Your Seller Metrics
Pay attention to your seller metrics and always work to improve them. If your seller metrics are bad—if you’re getting negative feedback, you ship late, you are starting to get a lot of returns—this will affect the way eBay promotes your listings. If this is starting to happen to you, you might have to stop trying to bang everything out as quickly as you can and slow it down to improve the quality of your services and your customer service to improve your metrics. Better promotion by eBay means your listings will be more visible in the site’s search engine.
5: Offer Free One-Day or Same-Day Shipping
Many sellers only offer three-day shipping and handling. However, we live in a world where people want their item now. I don’t want to buy something and have to wait five days. This is the way the world is becoming. With two-day shipping for Amazon Prime, customers are becoming accustomed to getting their items very quickly. If you extend your handling time beyond a couple of days and if you are not offering free one-day shipping or same-day shipping, it will put off a lot of customers. I know we all have different lifestyles and lives. Some people are working full-time jobs and feel they just cannot do anything faster than a three-day handling time. It is what it is, but just know that you’re going to lose out on sales because of that. Do the best you can, but try to lower your shipping and handling time. Doing so will definitely attract buyers, help make more sales,
Are You Only Selling on eBay? You may have heard about people selling on multiple platforms such as eBay, Amazon, Etsy, Poshmark, and craigslist. Why do people sell on multiple platforms? What are some of the benefits in doing so? First of all, let me say that I do believe you should sell on multiple platforms. And here are five reasons why.
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#1: Different Items Sell Better on Different Platforms Customers tend to flock to certain platforms to buy particular items. The demand for a type of item becomes higher on a specific platform. Then it’s up to you to sell your item on the platform that attracts the most customers for it. Let’s say you are an eBay seller, and your main focus is on electronics. Or it could be antiques. Or rare coins. Or a multitude of other categories. But every now and then when you are sourcing your inventory, you come across a rare and profitable textbook. And because you are an eBay seller, you put it on eBay. But here is the problem. Books do better, in general, on Amazon. It’s just the way it works. Maybe you’ve inherited a closet of vintage clothing from your great aunt. As an eBay seller, should you put it up on eBay? Well, in this case Etsy is really the better option. For more modern clothing, Poshmark might be your go-to.
2: You Reduce Your Risk
When you’re selling on eBay, Amazon, Etsy, or any of these venues, you’re selling on a third- party platform, which means you don’t have control. If a particular platform wants to kick you off—for something bogus or something you did accidentally—then you can be kicked off. You cannot sell on that platform anymore. I’ve seen it happen. But by building up stores on various platforms, you reduce your risk of being put out of business completely if something goes wrong. Say, for example, you get suspended on Amazon. If you are on multiple platforms, you can still have some positive cashflow to get you through the tough times as you fix your account. You have reduced your risk of putting yourself out of business completely.
3: Every Platform Has Its Peaks and Valleys
As I have sold on various platforms, I’ve noticed that there are cycles. They are hard to predict, but every platform has its ups and downs, its peaks and valleys, its times when things are just flying out of the shop and times when you are left wondering if sales will ever pick up. By selling on multiple platforms, you minimize the negative impact of any particular slow cycle of a specific platform. You have a better chance of keeping a more consistent flow of revenue in your business.
4: You Get To Experiment
I’m a big fan of experimentation and trying new things. And there is more to life than just making a pile of money. If you can’t stand just packing boxes and shipping orders to Amazon—well, that does not have to be your whole life. If you want something more, something different, maybe something more personal, eBay or Etsy or Poshmark might be a better option for you because you are dealing one on one with the customer. You also get to experiment to find out what your geographical area has to offer in terms of items to sell. Maybe where you live it’s easy to find outdoor equipment. Or you discover a lot of rare books. If you sell on multiple platforms, you can experiment with different markets as the opportunities arise.
5: You Can Make More Money
I know I just said that making a pile of money isn’t everything, but you have to admit that it is a thing. There are two schools of thought. One says that you should master one thing and go all in. The second recommends having multiple streams of income. I have always been the multiple streams type of guy. I like to experiment, and I want to reduce my risk. I want to play the whole field, and I don’t want to get burned out on one thing. And above all, I want a consistent stream of income no matter what particular platform is outperfor...
How to Achieve Incredible Results Let’s keep this simple. The number one thing that will make you successful is taking action. And you need to take that action on a regular basis. Absolutely nothing can replace taking action. You can read all the books, watch all the YouTube videos, hang out in all the Facebook groups, and become best friends with millionaires and people who are crushing it. But if you don’t take action, you are not going to succeed. This took me a long time to figure out. I’ve always had this inner feeling—this urge—to want to make more money, build businesses, reach more people, and help others. The first couple of years, I was steadily growing, and things were going well. However, I wasn’t getting the results that I wanted. At the end of the day, I just wasn’t taking enough action. Nothing can replace action. Very few people continually take massive amounts of action, and they ultimately fail. Now, you may take action and get results that aren’t optimal. Maybe you were shooting to make a certain amount of money, and you fell a little bit short. But if you are taking action repeatedly, you’re going to get results. Very few people ever take any amount of action. And guess what? They get nothing. It just doesn’t happen for them.
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The “Secret” of Success That’s the secret: take action consistently. You want to make more money? You want to get fitter and healthier? You want to feel better? Take action and keep going. When you take action, you get results. When you get results, you feel good. That good feeling inside leads to more action and more momentum, and that’s the key to the game. Get that momentum going and start to stack achievement on achievement. Then you are getting pumped up and excited. People start noticing. You feel good. You have become that person you wanted to be. You have created this self-identity where you’ve leveled up. You’re not going back down. You’re on fire and so pumped up. Roadblocks along the Way The journey won’t be perfect all the time. Sometimes it will be tough to take action. You might feel burnt out. At times, I am just grinding my pedal to the metal, going hard, hitting the ground running, and sometimes I burn out a little bit. Taking a rest here and there is OK. The truth is that most people are not able to work full-out all the time. Don’t beat yourself up over that. But remember to take action on a consistent basis. If you look back on your life over the last couple of years, and you take a look at how hard you’ve been working and your results, you will see a strong correlation between how much action you’ve taken and the results you’ve gotten. Don’t Forget to Evaluate Your Action Too But say you have been grinding and grinding, taking massive amounts of action. You might be working up to 50, 60, or 70 hours a week. But your results seem to have just capped off. The problem is that you’re taking action, but you’re climbing up the wrong ladder. Certain ladders are only going to go up to the second floor in terms of income. You might not be climbing up a big enough ladder. If you want to get to a higher floor, you might have to climb another ladder. You might have to switch up your business model. You may need to leverage your business model by hiring people—virtual assistants, for example. Maybe you need a physical location to hire physical staff to be able to scale and grow. The Recipe It isn’t enough only to take action continually. You need to take action, and you need to be smart about the action you are taking. That’s the secret recipe right there. In terms of my business, when I level up, make more money, and get better results, it’s typically because I’m taking massive amounts of action on a regular basis but making sure I am combining it with the right types of actions that will yield the results I’m after. Take massive amounts of action,
The Sad Truth about Success and the Mistake I Made In terms of our goals, each and every one of us has a reason. We have a driving force that is the motivation for why we are going toward our goals. But that’s not the whole story. There’s an honest part of moving toward our goals that we keep in our minds, and then there’s a dishonest part as well. It’s a part that we don’t often admit to ourselves. Many people will say, for example, that they are trying to lose weight for their health. Or they say they want to start a business to support their families or to have the freedom to live a life of choice and design.
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Why Do You Want to Succeed? But the truth is that most people are really doing it just to impress other people. They’re doing it to appear important. They’re doing it because they want to feel unique. In my case, so many times I wanted to grow my income and build my business to make my family proud. It’s not that I really wanted to show off. But for once I just wanted to be the Man in their eyes. But when you’re trying to succeed for other people, you’re always ultimately going to be disappointed. There was a time when I wasn’t making more than $25,000 a year. I was driving a broken-down car. I was $23,000 in debt. I was out of shape and unhealthy. I felt like the epitome of a loser. And I didn’t want to look like a loser in the eyes of the world. And so I made progress toward my goals. This Is What Happens When We Reach Our Goals Sure, when you succeed, people will congratulate you. But most people you think are your friends—even your family members—are not going to throw a party for you. They’re not suddenly going to say, “Wow, you’re so amazing! Congratulations, you lost all this weight! You just purchased your brand-new dream car? That’s awesome! Like, oh my God, you are such an extraordinary human specimen!” We often think that when we accomplish our goals, the world is going to throw a party for us. From what I’ve observed, most people are focused on themselves. Most people are busy working on living their lives. Everyone has problems and challenges and things that they are fixing or improving. In short, most people aren’t fixated on you. Doing It for Yourself When you are accomplishing your goals, you’ve got to do it for yourself. The reasons you are working so hard need to be internal and real so that when you get to your accomplishments, you feel a sense of pride in yourself. You will be fulfilled by having achieved the goal, not the congratulations you think are coming. Yes, others may be happy for you, but most people aren’t going to be as happy for you as you think. Remember that other people are also on their own paths to success. They may not have the time or energy to pay a lot of attention to what you are doing. So find a reason that really makes you proud. For me, one of the reasons I love to accomplish my goals is that I can help people and serve others. I can make a difference in the lives of others. You’ve got to find your reason. It may be creating a college fund for your children or helping your parents with their mortgage or retirement savings. Your life needs a driving force that is honest and real—and not just so others will be impressed by the fancy new car you got.
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3 Accounting Mistakes to Avoid Selling on Poshmark When you sell on Poshmark, you not only have to wear your selling hat, but you need to be something of an accountant too. Sounds intimidating? Don’t worry. To help you out, here are the top three accounting mistakes that Poshmark sellers make.
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#1: They Don’t Report Their Poshmark Sales on Their Tax Returns Some people sell on Poshmark part time as a hobby. There’s nothing wrong with that. But they feel that because it’s a hobby they do for fun, they don’t need to report their income. However, even if this is just a “hobby income”—you sell stuff in your closet, maybe for a friend—you need to report it as income. If you are selling on Poshmark as your main business, then you obviouslyhave to report it. If it’s income, then the IRS says you have to report it. Poshmark currently does not send 1099 forms to sellers, but you can email them through their support center and ask them to send you a copy of your sales. Or you can easily track your sales by using a spreadsheet program like Excel. Whatever you do, don’t dismiss the tax issue just because you think you’ll get away with it. You never know if the IRS will decide to audit you.
2: They Don’t Track Their Expenses
Keep track of everything you pay for—every single expense. Then you can check the IRS code to see if that expense is deductible. Set up an expense spreadsheet. Mileage, for example, will be one category that you add to each time you use any mileage in your business. And there are a bunch of apps that you can use that will track miles for you, which makes things much easier. Say you are out at the thrift stores and get a bunch of receipts. You can collate that information by using an app like Genius Scan. It makes it much easier then to put that information in your spreadsheet. Even just taking good pictures of your receipts and sending them to yourself is helpful. Receipts do fade!
3: They Don’t Use a Separate Business Credit or Debit Card for Business Expenses
Do yourself a favor and make it easier on you to keep your personal expenses separate from your business expenses. And whenever you are out doing business, use that business credit or debit card. Not only does it make your accounting easier, using a separate business card may protect your personal assets should you get sued. Bonus Tip: Relax Everyone starts out small. You may be just getting your feet wet and are feeling a little overwhelmed about the accounting end of selling on Poshmark. Relax. Concentrate on tracking expenses on a monthly basis. Read up on apps that can help you get information on mileage and receipts. Get a spreadsheet going. It may be a struggle at first, but there are others out there who have gone through the same thing. Don’thesitate to reach out to Facebook groups or other resources. Learn from the experience of others.
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Poshmark Selling Tips: Boost Your Sales with This Cool Trick If you sell anything on Poshmark, then you already know what a profitable platform it can be. But to boost your sales and take your business to the next level, you need to know about this cool trick. I’m talking about the “Offer to Likers” feature on Poshmark. If you are selling on Poshmark, this is definitely something very interesting that can help you to generate more sales and make more money. What Is the Offer to Likers Feature? The smart folks at Poshmark introduced this new feature early in 2018. Basically, when people like an item in your store, you can send them a private offer. You have to offer at least 10 percent off your lowest offered price of the past 90 days and $4.99 shipping or free shipping. But anyone else viewing your listing (who has not liked the item) will see it at the same price you had it before. So from the view of the likers you are making the offer to, it's kind of like you’re doing a sale—but a private one.
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How Does Offer to Likers Work? Let’s say I decide to sell a pair of Jimmy Choo sunglasses. I put them up for sale for $75 on Poshmark. However, a week goes by, and I haven’t gotten any takers. I really want to make this sale! So I have an option. On the listing is a Like feature, and I notice that a few people have liked it. Now I can send them a private offer. In order to give the offer, I do have to take money off the shipping and offer at least 10 percent off my listed price. I really want to move these sunglasses, so I decide to offer $60. When I send the offer, each liker sees “Steve offered you $60 plus $4.99 shipping.” Many customers on Poshmark are used to their Closet Clear Out, which is where Poshmark offers reduced shipping for $4.99. So when they see that $4.99 shipping, they get excited and feel like it is a Closet Clear Out happening—but it’s only for them. Offer to Likers Helps You in Several Ways Potential buyers will be motivated to snatch up this deal because the offer is good for only 24 hours, and if a buyer declines the offer or decides to counteroffer, the discounted shipping is off the table. Remember that even though the Offer to Likers goes out to all the people who have liked your item, it’s still worth it to use the feature even if only one person has liked the item. It only takes one buyer to make a sale, after all! This is especially helpful when you have a unique niche item. So do use the Offer to Likers feature on Poshmark. You can use it when sales are slow. Or you can price some more valuable items on the high end to leave room to make offers to the people who are sure to like that item. The trick is to know how the Offer to Likers feature can help you boost your sales and make you that money!
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STOP Feeding Yourself BS My entire life growing up and even into my early adulthood years, I had this belief—this ultimately limiting belief—that the things I wanted were outside of my reach. This belief—this BS, if you will—held me back from learning and going for the things I truly wanted. I always thought I wasn’t smart enough. I wasn’t good enough. You might think you don’t have the smarts to start a drop-shipping business or a book-selling business on Amazon. Maybe you’d love to tackle Poshmark but fear you’ll never understand how it works. Or maybe, like myself, you want to learn about how to invest in real estate. But you hesitate to buy that first rental property.
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Self-Defeating BS A basic belief that you are not good enough will limit anything you want in life. You may think you are not physically able to get a fit body. You just aren’t built to feel great, to be happy, to have satisfying relationships, or to have an amazing life. All these things feel like traits that others are just born with, and you were just doomed from the womb. But that is not true! Everything you want in life is a learnable skill. Go out there. Start watching YouTube videos, start reading books, and start immersing yourself in these various experiences. Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be scared to try it. There are people out there you can learn from through books and audio programs. You can do a whole bunch of free things as well. Interact with people on the YouTube comments and Facebook groups. Attend meetups. There are endless ways you can go out there and learn whatever it is you want to get a handle on. Do you want to learn how to start a YouTube channel? Go out there. Figure it out. Do you want to learn how to give your first presentation? Go out there and learn. Any goal you have is a learnable skill. If you have ever felt inadequate or that you are not smart enough, I’m here to tell you that it is all nonsense—it’s BS! It doesn’t matter if the beliefs are internal—things you are telling yourself— or external—things others are telling you. What is holding you back isn’t real—it’s just BS. Putting in the Work Now, some people learn a little quicker than others. Me, I'm not necessarily the brightest bulb out there. It takes me a little while to learn things and fully grasp certain concepts. You guys are probably quicker than I am. But that’s not what makes the biggest difference. What makes the difference is realizing that whatever we want, we can have—but we have to be willing to work for it. How do you work for it? You put in the effort to learn. You gather various resources. You experiment with things and go out there and be patient. Take the steps and keep learning and working, and the things you want in life will come to fruition.
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Are You Planting Seeds for a Better Tomorrow? In one of videos, I was testing out a brand-new phone. It was an Apple iPhone 8S Plus that I upgraded from the iPhone 6S Plus. The reason I wanted to get a new phone was, well, first and foremost, I am always on my phone with my business. I’m a content creator. I’m always using the phone to scan and analyze deals. And the new iPhone 8S Plus definitely had some more space. I upgraded from the 64- to the 256-gigabyte model. There was a better battery life as well. The camera was nicer. All these benefits meant that I was planting seeds as an entrepreneur.
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The Seasons of Your Business When you’re an entrepreneur, there are going to be certain times of the year—certain seasons of your business life—when you will focus on planting seeds. When I’m planting seeds, for example, I spend a lot of time working on courses and product launches. I spend time traveling to various seminars. I learn. I am planting a lot of seeds. I’m putting effort into my business that is not necessarily going to pay me today. But three months, six months, 12 months, or 24 months down the road, these little income streams start to pay me every single month. So if you are looking to grow, scale, and take your business to the next level, you need to ask yourself something. Are you taking the time now to plant a seed that can eventually grow up to pay you down the road? Think of a person who wakes up one day and goes out to the garden. There are all these fruits and vegetables—corn, potatoes, peppers, green beans. The one and only reason the person is reaping those benefits and enjoying that harvest is because this gardener spent the time gathering seeds and preparing the soil. The gardener planted the seeds, took care of them, and watered them. The gardener pulled weeds. This individual took care of the plants throughout their life cycle to enjoy that harvest. As an entrepreneur, it’s the same thing. Planting and Grinding Very rarely is money going to flow into your business without you making a conscious effort to plant that initial seed, to nurture it, and to let it grow. So as an entrepreneur, there will be times where you’re just planting seeds and grinding. You’re not going to be harvesting; you’re not going to be making a ton of money. You might be working hard, but you might not be getting the rewards. That’s OK. You are in the season of planting. Other times the money will just flow in like crazy. You’ll ask yourself, “Where the heck has all this money been coming?” It’s because you took the time to plant. That’s a different season. So if you’re ever going through that situation, and you are feeling frustrated, you are working hard, you are grinding your face off but just not seeming to be getting the results you want, be patient. You’re planting the seeds; you’re cultivating; you’re taking care of it; you’re nurturing it. Your time will come. It’s just not that season yet. It’s not that part of the year. What Season Are You in Right Now? Is it January, February, or March for you in your business? Is it May, June, or July? is it the end of the year? Are you slowing down? Are you hustling hard? Are you picking all the fruits and vegetables out of your garden? Are you planting your seed? Be aware of an appreciate this time of nurturing and cultivating. The harvest will come.
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Start Waking up Early One of the best habits that you can start building right away is waking up early every single morning. Now, yes, you are allowed to give yourself a day here and there if you want to sleep in. You don’t want to fall behind on sleep—say, getting less than seven hours a night. For the most part, waking up early will transform your life as it has done for mine. When you start your day early, you rise and shine and can really get something done. For me, it’s always going to the gym. Good health is essential. It is my number one value because if I do not take care of my health, I cannot take care of my friends, my family, my business, or my finances. I would just not be in a position to do that to my fullest potential. I would be depressed. My self-esteem would be all out of whack. So in my eyes, my priority is waking up early to take care of my health. Start waking early every single morning and get that one big thing done. It will transform your life. Especially if you live in a warm climate, there is nothing more beautiful than waking up early and feeling that sunshine against your skin. Wake up early, go outside, and drink some water—it is just an amazing feeling.
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The 30-Minute Method This does not mean you have to wake at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning. You can take baby steps. If you’re usually waking up at 10:00 and want to start waking up a little earlier, get up at 9:30 or 9:00 and slowly work your way down in 30-minute increments. There was a time eight or nine years ago that I would wake up at noon. I slowly worked my way down 30 minutes at a time, and now I usually wake up around 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning depending on what time I went to bed. I do notice that if I get less than six hours of sleep, I perform 50 percent worse. I try to get at least seven hours of sleep every single night. What Could You Get Done? I have experimented with this, but I can tell you right now that it is a game changer. Wake up early and get that one big thing done that is going to move your life forward. Imagine that one area of your life that you want to start taking care of and make progress in. How would accomplishing success in that one area make everything else in your life shift? As I said, I knew I had to take care of my health. I have been documenting my health journey on YouTube. I share different things about my life outside of just business because then you can see the real effects these other aspects have. If you look back at my videos from over a year ago, I’m a completely different person. You could see it in my attitude, on my face, in my facial reactions, through my energy levels, and even in my results in terms of income and business. Start waking up early and take care of that one thing. A simple and great tip for waking up early is getting an alarm clock off Amazon. Get a really loud and annoying one, and move it all the way across your room so when it goes off, you have to get up. Because if you get up and are standing, there’s a 90 percent chance you’re going to stay awake. But if the alarm clock is right next to you, it will be so easy to hit that snooze button. The Game Changer Start waking up early. It will be a game changer for you. Go out, drink some water, get some sun on your skin, take care of that one thing, and watch as your life changes in front of your eyes. So what’s my plan tomorrow morning? You know I’ll be going into the gym to take care of my one big thing. And after that, I plan to have an amazing day, and I hope you do too.
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7 Things I Desperately Wish I Had Known When I Started on Amazon If you are looking to start an Amazon FBA business, you will have many things to learn. Right away, allow yourself to be receptive. Be receptive to everything that people have to say out there. Keep your ears open, and don’t try to prejudge the opinions you encounter. That’s what I did, and it really hurt me. I would have been more successful sooner if I had just stopped judging what I heard people around me saying.
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So here are the seven things I wish I knew when I first got started on Amazon FBA.
1: You Can Get Negative Feedback Removed
For a long time, I had negative feedback on my account. I had told myself, “You know what? If I get a negative, that’s the way it is. There’s nothing I can do.” However, there are actually many ways to get negative feedback removed—but that is the subject of another blog post. Honestly, the bottom line is that it is not overly difficult to get negative feedback removed. If I had just taken the time to learn how to do it, I probably would have made that much more money. Truthfully, negatives on your account don’t look good. People hesitate to buy from somebody whose positive feedback is at 70 or 80 percent.
2: Rank Doesn’t Mean Everything
When I first got started, I thought that rank was the be-all and end-all. Really, rank is just a number floating in time—a snapshot in time based on when the last time an item sold. If you have a book ranked 9,000,000, it doesn’t mean that book won’t sell tomorrow. If that 9,000,000-ranked book does sell, it might drop down to a million or 300,000. Nobody really knows. Amazon has a proprietary algorithm that they really don’t tell sellers about. The point is that rank doesn’t mean everything. What outranks rank? Pay attention to the overall feedback, how many stars it has, and the number of customer reviews.
3: Invest in the Right Equipment and Software
Getting the right equipment and software would have saved so much time and allowed me to scale my business faster. I recently picked up a Scanfob scanner. This was something I knew I should have had a long time ago, but for one reason or another, I was just lazy. All it is, is a really fast barcode scanner. Normally when you scan 100 or 200 items a day, it might take two hours. Imagine scanning two, three, or even four times faster. Think about the time you would save and the more money that could come rolling in. Do your research in terms of the best software for your business, whether that’s Inventory Lab or Scan Power or ScanLister. So many software packages can speed up your time. Take a look at the equipment out there. Maybe you need a PDA scanner. Maybe you need a new phone. I can’t tell you how much money I probably lost out on and how many weekends I wasted because I didn’t have the proper equipment to speed up my business processes. Look at it as an investment. Don’t tell yourself, “That’s going to cost a hundred bucks. I don’t have the money.” When you use that piece of equipment, how long will it take to recoup your money? How quickly will you start showing a profit or return on your investment? And how much money are you missing out on by not utilizing the best equipment?
4: Get Approved in the Gated Categories as Fast as Possible
What does this mean exactly? Well, Amazon is closing off—“gating”—specific categories, such as groceries, clothing, health and beauty, watches, and sexual wellness. They are blocking so many categories and limiting them only to certain sellers. Sellers are having to apply to get past these limitations to sell items on the Amazon platform. Getting into gated categories is getting harder and harder day by day. Getting “ungated” is becoming increasingly challenging. Sellers are having to jump through more and more hoops to get ungated. For example, I now wish I would have gotten approved in grocery much...
Transforming Your Dream into Your Reality One of the dreams I had over the last year was purchasing my dream car. I have it now and have been loving it. And now I want to break down for you exactly how I made acquiring my dream car a reality. Dreams come in all flavors, and they are different for every individual. Maybe you want to live in your dream house or drive your dream car. Maybe taking your spouse on an exotic vacation is your dream. Perhaps you have in mind a certain amount of money in your bank account—and that’s your dream. Is having a beach body what you dream about? Or maybe you’re a college student—a modern millennial—and you’ve got a dream report card. As for me, I am in a new 2018 Corvette Stingray. I’ve had people come up to me and say, “Wow, Steve, that was so spontaneous. All of a sudden you bought a Corvette in cash.” And I did—took out $52,000 and just paid cash. But it wasn’t exactly out of the blue. Whatever your personal dream is—a material possession, an experience, or some other goal—I will let you know the formula of how to accomplish it.
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Step #1: Develop a Vision of Your Dream You need to see your vision in your mind before you can get it. This may seem like a no- brainer step, but many people neglect it. You will never in a million years accomplish a dream if you don’t know what it looks like. To begin, you don’t have to know exactly how you are going to accomplish it, but you must have that vision. About a year ago, I started developing this vision in my mind of owning my dream car— a Corvette Stingray. I looked at pictures. I looked at Corvette advertisement. I perused Corvette forums online. I was starting to envision exactly what I wanted. The car was white. It had the black rims. And red seats—I wanted the red seats. I envisioned the car’s every detail. I thought about it all the time. When I was at the gym on the elliptical, I would look out the window and stare at my Honda Sonata in the parking lot. And I would think to myself, “When I look out this window in the future, I will see my brand-new Corvette Stingray.” I let myself experience how I would feel seeing my dream car out there waiting for me to finish my workout. How was I going to get it? I didn’t know. I didn’t have a plan. But I had done step one. I knew what I wanted. You want that new house? You want those straight As on your report card? You want that ripped body? Envision it. Immerse yourself in it. I went out to test drive the cars. I started to notice them more when I saw them on the street. I researched them. I surrounded myself with that vision. Step #2: Reverse Engineer the Path to Your Dream
Start at the end and work your way back. Reverse engineer the way to your dream. So if you want that brand-new dream car, you’ve got more research to do. How much will a loan cost you monthly? How much is the insurance going to be? The maintenance? How much money do you need to save if you are going the cash route? How much more income do you have to earn? And finally, what do you have to do to put yourself in a position to bring that vision into reality? For me, I started to make moves and began to grind. I worked different angles in my business. I ramped up various aspects of my revenue streams. I went to different conferences and learned and networked and applied the things that I was learning. I had that vision. I wanted that Corvette. But What Does It All Really Mean? It was never just about owning a Corvette. I wanted that symbol, the representation of how hard I worked and that my dreams were possible. That was what obtaining this car was about. Whatever your vision, it’s not only about accomplishing it. It’s the person you become on the journey of bringing that vision into reality. So first you create the vision. Do not worry about how you are going to accomplish it at this point.
In this episode we discuss how to start a private label business on Amazon with Nick Landowski of The Private Labeler Show. Nick has built a successful private label product business on Amazon and shares with us his best tips and tricks for how to make money selling on Amazon. In this episode you will learn:
How to get started with Private Label Selling on Amazon FBA The best products to sell on Amazon The biggest mistakes to avoid What most sellers fail to do when it comes to product research And much, much more!
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In episode #037 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with Kam Jennings about how he was able to quit his job and work full time as an internet marketer. Kam made $60,000 profit in 2017 selling digital products through his own website and the warrior forum. During the show you will learn:
How to make money selling digital products How to build an email list The best ways to monetize a YouTube channel How to build an audience that will buy products from you The biggest mistakes to avoid when selling products online
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In episode #036 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with Chris Dupuis about how to create a healthy lifestyle while building a business. During the show we will touch on:
His story of how he built an impressive physique How to manage your time to workout The importance of maintaining your health in business How to eliminate excuses Healthy lifestyle options & diet plans
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In episode #035 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with Joseph Demarco about the state of selling on eBay in 2018. Joe has been selling on and making money with eBay since 1999 and is an expert when it comes to the subject. During the show we will touch on how to make money with:
Tips for selling on eBay How to increase sales on eBay The biggest traps to avoid The best eBay conferences coming up His story of how he built his successful eBay business
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In episode #034 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with Chris Green about the best ways to make money selling on Amazon. Did you know that there over a ton of different ways to make money on Amazon outside of the traditional FBA program? During the show we will touch on how to make money with:
Amazon Video Direct Kindle Publishing Merch By Amazon Amazon FBA Amazon Custom
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In episode #033 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with Glen Zubia from the Hustler Hacks YouTube channel about his journey making passive income with Merch By Amazon. Over the last two years Glen has earned over $100,000 creating t shirts designs and publishing them on Amazon. If you want to learn how to earn passive income and build an additional income stream then be sure to check out this live show. If you enjoyed this video be sure to like, comment, and subscribe for more videos! Follow Glen Zubia Here:
Merch Minds Podcast Hustler Hacks on YouTube
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In episode #032 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with my good friend Oak Dragt about bitcoin and cryptocurrency investing. Oak has had some pretty awesome success trading over the last year and drops some gold nuggets. In this show you will learn: 1.) How to get started investing in cryptocurrencies and bitcoin 2.) Where to buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies 3.) The truth behind risk and why this game isn’t for everyone 4.) What are alt coins? 5.) What would happen if the government banned cryptocurrencies 6.) And...Much, much more!! To get started investing in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies you can get a FREE $10 by signing up for your coinbase account at the link below. http://raikenprofit.com/coinbase If you enjoyed this video be sure to like, comment, and subscribe for more videos!
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In episode #031 of The Raiken Profit show we talk with John Lawson of COLDERICE Media about the abundance of opportunities with eCommerce, how to use social media in your business, and how to live the laptop lifestyle. John is the Amazon #1 best-selling author, IBM Ecommerce Futurist and Ebay Influencer. He is regarded as a Platinum Ecommerce Powerseller who has generated millions through online selling. John is the CEO at ColderICE Media, a Cognitive College adjunct professor and he is celebrated as one of the Top 100 Small Business Influencers in America. Be sure to follow John Lawson below for more awesome information! www.LazyLaptopLife.com
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In episode #030 of The Raiken Profit Show we chat with Paul Apollonia about tips and tricks for selling on eBay. Paul has been selling on eBay since 2007 and has witnessed many changes on eBay and has tons of experience when it comes to flipping items on this platform. In this show we discuss:
The best way to get started selling on eBay Tips and tricks for consigning items on eBay How to part items out to sell on eBay How to deal with nasty sellers The importance of networking And much, much more!
If you enjoyed this video be sure to like comment and subscribe for more videos. FOLLOW PAUL BELOW + RESOURCES FROM THE SHOW: YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/user/PaulApollonia Raleigh E-commerce & eBay Sellers Meetup Group - https://www.meetup.com/Raleigh-eBay-Users-Group/ Life Long Learning Adult Evening Education - Learn to sell on eBay the right way https://cs.wcpss.net/index.php?route=lllcoursecontroller/course_detail&course_id=1286&cat=0 Check out Pauls ebay Online Training Class: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/sellingonebay
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In episode #029 of The Raiken Profit Show we interview Ashlin D. Hadden about the importance of having the proper insurance coverage when it comes to running your online businesses and selling on Amazon. Many people are without insurance and it’s putting creating a huge liability within their business. In this show we talk about what insurance you may want to consider getting, how much insurance costs, how to get it, and why you need it. Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe for more videos! FOLLOW ASHLIN BELOW: www.ecom.insure Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ecominsurancequotes/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ecomm_insurance_solutions/ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOrPi-4bRhaogzagMFr0ZXQ FB Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/540141032990294/
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In episode #028 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with Brock Johnson about how he made an absolute killing dominating the Amazon market selling eclipse glasses in 2017. Brock’s story is pretty unbelievable considering he had failed multiple times before having his major success. In this video we are going to share his journey from failed private label seller to multi million dollar Amazon seller. Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe for more content in the near future!
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In episode #027 of The Raiken Profit Show we interview Timothy Grapp of the Pocket Profit YouTube channel about what it’s like to sell full time on eBay and Amazon. Tim purchases the majority of his inventory from thrift stores, garage sales, and retail stores and flips them on eBay and Amazon. Timothy is passionate about helping beginners get started selling online and believes that anybody with the desire to work hard can be successful in this business. ==> Subscribe To Timothy on YouTube Here If you like this video be sure to like, comment, and subscribe for more content!
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In episode #026 of The Raiken Profit show we interview Zayne Frysinger about how he finds items from thrift stores and sells them on eBay. Many people don’t realize it but you can make a ton of money buying items such as clothing, shoes, and electronics to flip on eBay for some ridiculous profits. Zayne also shares a cool strategy in this episode that allowed him to buy an item for $400 and sell it for over $1,000 the same day on instagram. This is a show you will not want to miss. Take notes and go out there and make it happen!
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In episode #025 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with Amazon Seller Sohrab Izad about how he’s making $200,000 per month selling on Amazon FBA. Sohrab owns a construction company that generates 10+ million dollars in revenue per year. In addition he invests in real estate, cryptocurrency, and Amazon FBA. In this episode you will learn about product research when selling on Amazon FBA, how to get started with private label, and what it takes to be successful as an entrepreneur. Be sure to follow Sohrab on YouTube Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/stepstosuccess If you enjoyed this episode be sure to like, comment and subscribe for more awesome content!
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In episode #023 of The Raiken Profit show we interview my good friend Charles Leslie of Side Hustle Pros about his journey building multiple income streams online. Charles initially started making money online flipping pallets and overtime build several side hustles on eBay, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, and the list goes on and on.
This episode is going to be great for anyone who wants to learn how to get started making money online or maybe even wants to add an income stream or two to their currently money making portfolio. If you enjoyed this show or listened to the Itunes podcast be sure to like, comment, and subscribe for more content! www.YouTube.com/SideHustlePros Instagram: SideHustlePros
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In episode #021 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with Amazon Seller Seth Kniep about his journey going from $24,000 in debt to turning it into $100,000 with his Amazon FBA business. Seth is the founder of Justonedime.com and was able to turn a single dime into $100,000 within his online business. His style of teaching is extremely motivational and is one of the leading authority figures in the Amazon FBA industry. Seth also runs a popular YouTube channel and helps to coach over 1,000 Amazon sellers to build, grow, and make money in their Amazon business. https://justonedime.com/amazon/growth https://www.youtube.com/sethkniep Sick of living paycheck to paycheck? Tired of building someone else's dream? Wish you had margin to do the things you love with the people you love? Seth and his team of 8 coaches will show you step-by-step how to build passive income on Amazon: https://justonedime.com/amazon/growth
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In episode #021 of The Raiken Profit Show we interview Jordan Kilburn from the Millionaire Millennial YouTube Channel about how to build a million dollar business selling on Amazon FBA. During this show we will cover: How to sell on Amazon FBA What to sell on Amazon The best way to get started selling on Amazon How to private label products on Amazon How to sell on Amazon FBA for beginners And much, much more! If you want to learn how to make money online selling on Amazon then be sure to watch live and take plenty of notes. Follow Jordan Here: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jocoseriousjordan/ Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/add/jordan.kilburn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheMillionaireMillennial
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In episode #020 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with Kristin of Mommy Income about how she’s sold $500,000 on Amazon. Kristin initially started selling on eBay back in 2003 and moved onto selling used books in 2008. By 2010 she grew her business into retail arbitrage buying and selling items from retail stores such as Walmart and Target. Following her husband's injury at work, and some rough times in her life, she decided to take life into her own hands and went full force into selling wholesale bundles on Amazon. This show is going to be jam packed with practical information that will motivated and educate you when it comes to starting an Amazon FBA business. If you like this show be sure to like, comment, and subscribe on Itunes!
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In episode #019 of the Raiken Profit show we talk with Liran Hirschkorn about how to build a private label brand on Amazon FBA. A lot of people who start a private label business on Amazon make one big mistake, and it’s not differentiating products. During the show we are going to chat about how to create products that aren’t the same as everyone else's, how to build a real brand, how to add value and think outside of the box, and many more tips for making money on Amazon.
Liran earns a full time income on Amazon FBA through private label and is one of the leading experts in the field. Join the Amazing Freedom Facebook group
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In episode #018 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with Dan Brock about how he was able to earn $300,000 profit from his health affiliate marketing business. Dan specializes in earning money through affiliate marketing by utilizing free traffic from YouTube.com. Dan earns a full time income online, has over 100,000 YouTube subscribers, and has had his videos watched over 5 million times!
==> Learn How Dan Built a 6 Figure Affiliate Marketing Business If you want to learn how to make passive income by promoting affiliate products online then be sure to watch this video in full to learn a bunch of awesome tips and tricks to do so! Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe for more future videos like this!
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In episode #017 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with Mo Fremont of the Reseller Niche Podcast about his journey owning a shipping store for over 10 years, and his experience being a part time reseller on eBay, Amazon, and Etsy. Mo has been an eBay seller since 2001 and started off selling event tickets for the first few years. While Mo was working at his brick & mortar shipping store he started to meet a bunch of eBay and Amazon shippers that dropped off packages. This motivated him to get back into reselling and gave him the inspiration to earn a few extra dollars. During this show we will be touching on how you can start making money online through platforms such as eBay, Amazon FBA, and Etsy and also we’ll be sharing some awesome stories from when Mo was working at his shipping store. If you liked this video be sure to like, comment, and subscribe for more future videos!
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In episode #016 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with Jim Pickins about how to get started selling used books on Amazon. Jim has built a successful business selling on Amazon and is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to making money selling used books online. If you want to learn how to start making money on Amazon FBA with books then be sure to watch this video in full.
==> Learn How To Start Your Amazon FBA Book Business If you enjoyed this video be sure to like, comment, and subscribe for more content!
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In episode #015 of The Raiken Profit we talk with Joe Clay about how to start making $500 per month with Merch By Amazon. Merch by Amazon is a print on demand program through Amazon.com that allows you to upload custom designs and sell them online. The coolest thing about Merch By Amazon is that it’s a very passive income stream. Amazon will pick, pack, and ship all of your items to the customer. If you want to learn how to make an extra $500 per month than be sure to watch this video in full! If you enjoyed this video be sure to like, comment, and subscribe for more videos!
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In episode #014 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with expert bookseller Jesse Forbes about how he’s been able to build a profitable book selling business. Jesse is unique in his own way because he not only makes money selling books on Amazon FBA, but he also owns a brick and mortar book business. Jesse has found several ways to be able to source boatloads of books for pennies on the dollar and sells them for a spectacular profit margin.
==> Learn How To Start A Book Selling Business On Amazon If you want to learn how to start your own business on Amazon FBA selling books then be sure to watch live and take notes! If you like this video please be sure to show your support by liking this video, leaving a comment below, and subscribing for more future videos like this one!
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In episode #013 of The Raiken Profit show we talk with my good friend Sangmin Son about how to start an amazon fba business. Sangmin has been selling on Amazon for a couple of years and has had a ton of success. Sangmin started sourcing from thrift stores and garage sales and rapidly moved onto retail arbitrage, online arbitrage, and now private label. If you want to learn how to make money on Amazon then watch this video in full and see exactly how Sangmin is being successful in his Amazon FBA business. If you liked this video be sure to like, comment, and subscribe down below!
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In episode #012 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with Brandon Pierce. Brandon recently dropped everything and left America to live in Thailand to start and grow his private label business selling on Amazon. In this video we talk to Brandon about his journey moving to Thailand, what it’s like to live there, how to make money selling on Amazon, how to start and grow a private label brand on Amazon FBA, and everything he’s learned starting and launching his online business abroad. Many sellers such as Brandon are private labeling products overseas mostly from China and selling them on Amazon under their own personal brand. The benefit to this is control, price, and growth within the brand. This is going to be an exciting show, be sure to watch in full to learn how to sell on Amazon FBA and build a business private labeling products online. If you liked this video be sure to like, comment and subscribe for more exciting videos in the future!
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In episode #011 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with my friend Tanner J Fox about how he makes $30,000 per month selling on Amazon FBA at only 22 years old! Tanner has built a successful business selling on Amazon through importing products from overseas and selling them on Amazon.com
===> Click Here To Learn More About Tanner's Private Label Amazon Course If you want to learn how to make money on Amazon and build a scaleable business that allows you to travel, be your own boss, and enjoy the ultimate freedom then be sure to watch this video in full! Enjoy and be sure to leave a comment if you have any questions!
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In episode #009 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with my longtime friend Jason Bracht about how he makes $12,000 to $15,000 everyday month in his online dropshipping business. Jason has been running his Ecommerce store for over 10 years and has run many successful businesses including Kindle Publishing, YouTube, Product Launches, Affiliate Marketing, and much more! Watch and learn how to start a dropshipping business online and how to make money selling products on shopify.
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Thank you so much for your support, and if you have yet to leave a rating or review, please leave me an honest one on iTunes, YouTube or below on the blog. I appreciate it!
In episode #007 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk to Nic Hill about what it’s like to be a full time eBay seller. I know many people dream of running their own eBay business and Nic and his wife Andrea have been able to accomplish this by selling on eBay from their home. Watch and learn as Nic shares with you his exact strategies for making money on eBay and how you can be successful as well!
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In episode #006 of The Raiken Profit show we interview Anna Hill. Anna is a successful accountant, eCommerce seller, and admin of the popular Facebook group “Accounting We Will Go.” In this show we talk about the best accounting and bookkeeping practices for eCommerce sellers, and how to best prepare for the upcoming tax season. We know this topic isn’t the most popular topic, but it’s crucial to running a successful business online. We hope you enjoy the show!
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In episode #005 of The Raiken Profit Show we interview my longtime friend Jamison Philippi. Jamison has been traveling the country on and off for a couple years buying and selling from retail stores, thrift stores, and garage sales. He’s been flipping these items for profit on Amazon FBA while traveling from state to state. Recently Jamison stayed a week at my house and I was surprised to find that my garage had turned into a warehouse for thousands of pieces of inventory! In this show learn what items Jamison likes to buy and flip, how he is able to buy and sell on Amazon FBA while staying at hotels, and much more!
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In episode #004 of The Raiken Profit Show we talk with stage 4 cancer survivor Bob Weiss about how to make money online. Back in 2008 Bob was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Bob was able to beat the cancer and now loves to educate others on how to make small and smarter choices in life. In addition, Bob now runs multiple businesses online and also operates a small home watch and concierge business in Naples, Florida. In this episode we will talk about Bob’s journey beating cancer, how he was able to build multiple income streams online, and tips for overcoming challenges in life.
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In episode #003 of The Raiken Profit Show I interview my good friend Justin. In less than 18 months Justin has managed to sell over $4,000,000 with his various online shopify stores! If you want to learn how to make money as a teenager than this video is going to be perfect for you. Don't listen to others when they say you you must work a " normal job " and that it's not possible to make money as a high schooler. Justin has an amazing story and has been having success online for over 2 years! Personally, I can still remember having mastermind calls with Justin regarding our Kindle publishing businesses when he was only 15 years old. I still recall thinking to myself “ jeez, this kid is going to absolutely kill it one day when he gets older.” Well, it looks like that time has come, and passed, and now it’s time to share his success story with the world. I hope you enjoy this episode and if you found value in it please be sure to leave a comment down below!
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On episode #002 of The Raiken Profit show we have the pleasure of talking with expert Amazon seller Jonathan Cleator. Jonathan has made a name for himself inside The Green Room as a top notch Amazon FBA seller with specialized knowledge in retail arbitrage, legos, building systems and processes, managing multiple employees, and scaling a profitable business. One of his greatest accomplishments last year was selling over 19,000 units and $300,000 worth of product in the month of December alone! This is going to be a jam packed showed with tons of useful information so be sure to bring a pen and a pad and let’s have some fun!
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In this episode, we introduce you to our new podcast called “ The Raiken Profit Show “. Listen and learn how Steve was able to quit his job and start his own business, lose over 50 pounds, and ultimately change his entire life over the previous five years. Also, we will share with you what you can expect to learn and some of the key take aways and goals we hope to achieve throughout the life of the podcast. We are super excited to connect and add massive amounts of value to you through “ The Raiken Profit Show “. Talk soon!