This week, Clara, Amanda, and Doug chat with Josh Varnell, Hairy Tornado, and learn about the growth of his YouTube channel, his online selling, and more!
The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly is the ecommerce resource for the seller community across all platforms and hub for information on growing your business. Find out more at thesellercommunitypodcast.com, leave a message or ask a question at anchor.fm/sellercommunitypodcast, or email us at podcast@listperfectly.com.
List Perfectly is the ecommerce resource for selling across multiple e-commerce platforms including eBay, Poshmark, Etsy, Mercari, Kidizen, Grailed, Depop, Tradesy, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram and Shopify.
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Links
thesellercommunitypodcast.com
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Episode Links
https://www.shophairytornado.com
Hairy Tornado YouTube
Hairy Tornado Instagram
Josh Varnell ReverbNation
Hairy Tornado LinkTree
Triple Thrift Reselling and YouTube Podcast
Hairy Tornado eBay
Hairy Tornado Facebook Networking Group
Flip Con 2022
Transcript
Doug:
Hello, and welcome to The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly. This is season two, episode 17. We’ve been working a long time to get this guy on that’s on today. Josh Varnell, Hairy Tornado is on the show. So Clara, Amanda and I, we talked to him about selling, growing his business of course, YouTube, his guest stars, his wife, Hayley, and his dog. And we talked to him about his upcoming East Coast seller event, Flip Con. So let’s get to it. Here’s our interview with Josh Varnell, Hairy Tornado.
Doug:
Josh Varnell, also, or maybe more widely known as Hairy Tornado is a well-known YouTube creator and online seller. In fact, you’ve probably not heard this before, but I thought Josh’s name was Harry up until like very recently <laugh> but we’ll get to that. We’ll clarify that whole thing. Josh and his wife, Hayley, and sometimes their dog, put out a ton of content on sourcing and more, but let’s get into it, Harry…I mean, Josh, welcome to the show.
Josh:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Clara:
Welcome Josh. We’re so, so happy to have you here.
Amanda:
Yeah. Can’t wait to learn more about you and everything that you do.
Josh:
I’m excited. Let’s get into it.
Clara:
Let’s get started. So, Josh, how did you get started selling online please?
Josh:
Yeah. So I had been flipping stuff on Facebook Marketplace locally for a couple years, maybe like five or six years and I never wanted to get into shipping cuz I thought it was gonna be too, just too complicated. And I didn’t, I just didn’t want to tackle that, that beast. And then I was just browsing YouTube. I found a Ralli Roots video and I saw they were buying shirts for, you know, four or five bucks and selling it for $25. I was like, okay, let’s try to do that, and we did, and it just started working. I started making sales and I remember when I got the first sale, like, I didn’t know what the ching sound was on eBay. I was like, “What’s that? I was like, oh, I sold that jacket I listed like two weeks ago.” It took about two weeks to get my first sale, and after that I was hooked.
Amanda:
Oh my God. That’s amazing. So I have to ask <laugh> where did the name Harry tornado come from?
Josh:
<laugh> yeah, we get asked that question a lot. So it was like my nickname/gamer tag in college. I was trying to come up with a gamer tag for online gaming. I was, it was four of us living in a two bedroom apartment, me and my three, three of my buddies. And so the apartment was just in shambles, just completely<laugh> like a tornado had come through there. And then, the first part I was, I walked out in the living room, and I was like, “Guys, what should the first name of my gamer tag be?” And I didn’t have my shirt on. They were like, “Hairy, that’s one word “<laugh>. So Hairy and we around the apartment saw what condition it was in. Hairy Tornado.
Doug:
There you go. When I was researching, I saw an interview where you said you considered yourself a part-time eBay seller and a full-time creator. Do you still think that’s true?
Josh:
Yeah, for sure. eBay hasn’t taken a backseat, but for me personally, most of my time is spent making videos. We still do three videos a week. So like the filming, editing, upload, thumbnails, all that’s pretty much a full-time job and then my wife kind of handles most of the reselling things. I did all the shipping today, but she’s been doing a lot of the listings, so that’s, I would say at this point, yeah, we’re still like resellers, but for me personally, a lot more of my time is spent on YouTube than reselling.
Clara:
So Instagram and YouTube are your main social media channels. Would you please elaborate? What do you like most about each of them and what content do you share on each of those channels please?
Josh:
So YouTube, YouTube’s probably my favorite because I like the process, like the creative process of making a video and just to be Frank, I also enjoy the money that comes along with, you know, having a YouTube audience that is faithful and watches your videos and the income that’s come from the YouTube’ side of things has changed our life completely. So that’s fun, you know, and Instagram is, we don’t monetize Instagram at all. It’s just kind of for fun. So I usually give people, like, I don’t know, like my Instagram Stories are a little bit more like behind the scenes and a little bit more intimate, I guess, than a YouTube video. So yeah, YouTube is for the creative outlet and source of our income. And then Instagram’s just kind of like a fun thing we do.
Clara:
Thank you for sharing that. I always wondered about that. <Laughs>
Amanda:
Yeah. So you and your wife create content together. So I’m curious, was that always a thing with you? Did you have to convince her, like how did that all happen?
Josh:
That was definitely not always a thing. My wife is very naturally shy and timid and if you would’ve said that she was gonna be, you know, essentially a full time YouTuber one day, neither of us would have believed you. But I think her seeing me do it for so long and she was getting used to the camera being around. She would slowly start to be in more and more videos and become like first, when she first started being in videos, she didn’t want her voice to be on there. Everybody’s self-conscious about their voice. But then again, we’ve made like almost 500 videos now. As it goes on, you get more and more comfortable with it. Now she’s made a few videos totally by herself.
Amanda:
I love what you said about, you know, the voice, being voice conscious. I catch myself in that all the time and you know what I’ve had to just say, “Amanda, get over it. It is what it is” and <laugh>, but that’s great, I’m really glad to hear that.
Josh:
Some people are just embarrassed of their voice for no reason, but also like I’ve taken some Skillshare classes and watched YouTube videos about how to speak in an engaging way. Because if you don’t like to vary your voice no matter what you’re talking about, it’s gonna be boring and hard to listen to. But if your voice is good, if your speaking voice is good, you could talk about anything and people, people would like it.
Clara:
Oh, wow. I feel like, okay guys, English is my fourth language. I’m like, oh my God. Okay. I need to take that class. I’m just winging it here. Okay. <laugh> that’s great.
Doug:
That’s great. Yeah. I think we all scribbled that down.
Josh:
Yeah. I’m sure everybody’s seen bad YouTube videos where like, you know, you have a problem, like you’re, I don’t know, ceiling fan’s broken and when you try to watch a video and the guy just like the first three minutes of the video is just him talking about the problem. I’m like, “I don’t care about this. This is hard to listen to.” It’s unimportant. Your voice, like it’s just like monotone the whole time. So it’s just like, try not to overdeliver, give people just what they want and do it in a way that’s compelling and easy to listen to.
Doug:
And so there’s another star I want to touch on briefly that sometimes is featured in your videos, your dog. I was watching your video recently, the other day, and congratulations on the new house by the way. But you had a video where your dog was howling, which got my two dogs howling in my office who are always asleep at my feet. So it was very interesting. So what’s your dog’s name and how did your dog get involved and how often do you have your dog co-star in the videos?
Josh:
Yeah. So his name is Mose. We named him after Dwight’s cousin from the TV show, The Office <laugh> , and we’ve had him for almost five years. So pretty much we got him when he was a puppy, and he was born in June. So June will be five years. And, he’s the same, same as Hayley. He doesn’t know what to think about the camera at first, but now he’s comfortable with it. And we try to put him in as much as possible, but for some people that’s still not enough. We’ve had people, like there’s never enough Mose for most people. They always want to see a little bit more from him. So anytime he’s around, I try to at least point the camera at him for a second and be like, “Hey, Mose, how’s it going? And then back to the video.
Doug:
There you go. Give the people what they want.
Clara:
I love it. Hey, I’m just curious. Do you think that your mission and vision okay, of your business and overall what you’re doing, because you’re doing, you know, you’re a reseller, you have your family on it, you know, at the same time you’re sharing your knowledge with our community? Do you think that your mission and vision has changed from what it was when you originally started from where you are now? Or is it the same?
Josh:
Yeah, I think it has shifted a little bit. I mean, when I first started reselling, it was almost out of necessity. Like I just needed extra income and reselling is the best way to do that in my opinion. So like, I got laid off from my last job as an insurance underwriter. And then I was like trying to focus on reselling and this side hustle, turning it into a full-time career. And that was like, everything was on the line. Like I had to make it work. And now we’ve shifted, shifted to where, like I said, YouTube’s like the main portion of our income and we’ve been super blessed and it’s very hard to get to a point where you can make significant income on YouTube. Everything just kind of fell into place for us. So now reselling is much more fun now. Like it was fun in the beginning, but it’s stressful when you’re trying to depend on something for food and shelter, you know? So now we’re able to pay up for things, we’re able to help other people, you know, if they’re in a bind and they want to sell something, we can pay them, you know, top dollar more than they could get at the pawn shop or something. You know, I still enjoy reselling. It’s just different, it’s just shifted.
Clara:
No, I love your answer because you’re pretty much saying, you know, you started pretty much like Amanda and myself out of necessity, and then you developed to something that, okay, in our case, instead of building, you know, YouTube, we decided to build software and to grow our reselling business. But it’s something that we did out of necessity. And it just became that because of the necessity and, and the passion that what we put on it. So thank you for sharing that.
Josh:
I don’t know if reselling is gonna be a full time career for a lot of people for forever. You know, like, I don’t think we’re gonna run outta things to resell, but it’s difficult cuz you have to sell enough to, if you’re gonna do enough volume to turn into like a six figure business, you probably have to have employees and an overhead and things like that. So you can use reselling to multiply your money and put that into something else. Whether you wanna start a software company or you wanna have a YouTube channel or you wanna start some other company that you can, or income source that can supplement reselling. I’ve never really been a fan of depending on reselling income solely like you can. People do it all the time, but it’s not as easy as one would think. And there’s a lot of factors that go into play. And I think just diversification is key. So the fact that we have the reselling and the YouTube, it just makes life a lot better.
Clara:
In my opinion, I couldn’t agree with you more. Diversifying, whatever you’re doing, your business and the presence of your business in multiple channels. That’s the key to growth.
Amanda:
Yeah, absolutely. Coming back to YouTube for a sec. What would you say is your favorite video that you’ve done? I mean, do you have one or maybe you have several.
Josh:
Yeah. So when we hit a hundred thousand subscribers, I did a video…that we just hit 300,000. That was a while ago and it kind of underperformed. Like I didn’t expect it to get a ton of views, but I think it only has like 30,000 views or something. But I got it a couple months later…
Speaker 5:
Oh, oh, I’m sorry. Amanda, it has only 30,000…it’s underperforming, OK?
Josh:
I remember I made a video when I hit 32 subscribers and I was super excited. And then I made another video when I hit hundred subscribers. As you grow, it’s all, it’s all relative. But that was a really fun video to make. I knew it was gonna rub some people wrong, but it was really fun to film and edit and hang out with my buds. And we basically filled up the limousine with thrifted clothing and then donated it to a homeless shelter at the end of the day. So it was, that was a fun video. I liked that one.
Clara:
Thank you for sharing. I love that, wow.
Amanda:
Wow.
Josh:
That was fun.
Doug:
What advice would you give to someone who wants to get started on YouTube?
Josh:
You know, actually I was just answering somebody’s Instagram message today that wanted to, they said they wanted to start a YouTube channel to make money. And I was like, “Well then you should not start a YouTube channel.” YouTube is rarely synonymous with making money. Probably less than 1% of YouTube channels make enough money for it to be like a career. Like our success is very atypical. Like I wouldn’t pursue YouTube for money. If you wanna start a YouTube channel for fun, then, then go ahead and do that. But I think people in this niche, the reselling niche that do YouTube videos, I’d be willing to say that their time would probably be better spent just focusing on their reselling business. Like I’ve seen a lot of people that have made hundreds of videos and they’ve got, I don’t know, maybe like a thousand or 2,000 subscribers and they may be making, you know, 50 bucks a month, but they’re spending eight to 10 hours a month making that $50.
Josh:
I’m like if you’ve made YouTube videos for a year and a half or two years, and you still haven’t seen any traction, maybe not quit, but maybe do one video a week instead of two or three, just to scale back and focus on your efforts where the money is, cuz we’re all in business. We’re, we’re looking to make money. If you can do that with YouTube. That’s great. But the reselling market on YouTube is very crowded right now. I feel like we got in like maybe right at the beginning of the surge. So the timing is really good and there’s just a lot that goes into it. So if you wanna do YouTube, do it for fun. Don’t do it with any expectation of making money.
Clara:
Well said, well said, and it’s pretty much what we always say with Amanda about reselling, you know, and finding, you know, your niche. You wanna do it for fun more than chasing the money because it’ll come along.
Josh:
Yeah, and if you start doing it for money, like it’s gonna be obvious in your videos. It’s kinda like being in sales, like I used to be in insurance sales and there would be a point where sales would be slow and I would start, like I could hear myself doing the cold calls and stuff and getting like that desperation in my voice, and that would, same thing would come across in your YouTube videos. If you are just trying to push out all this content back to back and you aren’t seeing any growth, you’re gonna start to get desperate. Maybe not desperate for money, but desperate for growth. And that’s gonna come across in the tone of your videos. You know, just do it for fun if it takes off great. If it doesn’t just do something else.
Clara:
So Josh, how do you manage being a content creator please?
Josh:
Honestly, at our new house, it’s a lot easier. Like at our old house, it was very small and like the reselling and YouTube was intermingled in themselves and also intermingled into our personal lives because like we had the guest bedroom filled up and the office was for YouTube and shipping and the whole garage was filled up. We had stuff just coming out of our ears and now at the new house, we have a lot more space. We have the ability to kind of separate all aspects like home life and YouTube and reselling, just having that physical space to separate is very healthy. I think anytime you work from home and you don’t have a clear space to work in, like if you start relaxing in the space you’re supposed to work in and working in the space you’re supposed to relax in, it’s just hard to like, you’ll either work too much or not work enough.
Josh:
So I think it’s important to have dedicated spaces to do different things, if you can. Just being a content creator, I mean, you have to, I don’t know. There’s so much that goes into it. Like I probably need to hire a manager or something. Like I have so many unread emails and Instagram DMs, like it’s getting to the point. Now, like I just, when I first started, I wanted to respond to everybody. It’s like, I’m gonna make time to respond to every message I get. And then slowly but surely, you know, it would just get to a point where I couldn’t. Like I’d spend, I don’t know, like two and a half or three hours clearing out my Instagram DMs. Like a month and a half ago, , none. I was like, I’d answered everything. And then like a week later I had like 200 more and now I have like 700 and then next week I’ll probably have a thousand or whatever, you know, it’s and it’s all the same questions. <laughs>
Clara:
How many followers do you have on Instagram?
Josh:
Like 36,000 or something. So I’m sure there’s more people than that. And it’s not just Instagram, we’ve got emails and YouTube comments and it’s just hard to do it by myself. So I probably need to look at hiring like a manager or something.
Amanda:
Between that, you’ve also got a Facebook group and you know, you manage that. I mean, I… <laughs>
Josh:
I would use “manage” very loosely. I started that group because I wanted a place for the new people to go instead of asking me like, “Hey, I found your video. How do you sell an eBay?” I don’t have time to answer questions like that. So I’m like, “Hey, go to this Facebook group and you can ask all the questions you want.” But honestly, even that’s becoming like more of, I made the group to save me time. And now I’m spending more time dealing with issues on the Facebook group than I was answering the messages myself anyway, cuz it gets filled up with like experienced sellers and then the new sellers come in and they ask, you know, very rookie questions. And then the sellers in the group are like, “Oh, why is it the same questions every week?” And I was like, I wish there was a way to, I probably need to hire somebody else to manage the Facebook group and have like a free ask questions page or something, cuz there needs to be a place for new people to ask questions like that’s normal. But it does get annoying like everyday people asking, “How do you ship golf bags” or whatever, you know?
Amanda:
Yeah. I mean you have to have a love for the community to really do all that you wanna. Tell us about how, how that is for you…
Josh:
The Facebook group?
Speaker 4:
Well, just your love of the community in general, the reselling community.
Josh:
I mean I think the reselling community is fantastic. I mean, anytime you get a large group of people together, there’s always gonna be, you know, issues here and there. But I think for the most part, most people like to look out for each other and are supportive and, you know, will do whatever they can to help anybody out. There’s been a couple cases where somebody would be in an accident or somebody would, you know, get sick or something and people would come together and do a fundraiser or buy stuff from their eBay store or something like that. So it’s all been for the most part, very, very positive, and I’m happy to be a part of that.
Doug:
There’s a little room on your plate. You have a podcast as well, Triple Thrift Reselling and YouTube podcast. So tell us a little bit about that.
Josh:
Yeah. So, I started that with the two guys that were in my 100,000 subscriber video in the limo video. To be honest, we haven’t posted an episode in a while. We recorded one like three weeks ago or so. And it was a video of a podcast like this and like halfway through one of the guy’s kids came in and was just butt naked, like full frontal nudity. So I was like, “OK, I need to save this and edit that out before we post it online.” And then we moved into our new house and I just haven’t had a chance to edit that, that episode yet. But it’s fun. At the time when we started it, there weren’t really any reselling podcasts there. Uh, John Cincinnati Picker and Lonnie, Shed Flips, they had one, but they hadn’t posted a while. So we started this one and it’s fun. It’s kinda like YouTube and reselling related cuz we’re all YouTubers and we’re all resellers and it can lead to some interesting discussions at times, usually not, but sometimes it’s good.
Clara:
<laughs> So in our research, Josh, we found ReverbNation. Okay. So should we add musician to your bio? What’s going on?
Josh:
Back in college, I was playing music and stuff. There was a period of like 45 days where I was unemployed. I like quit this job at this deli that I hated. Like I just hated it so much and I couldn’t find another job. So I was like, that’s when I started playing music, like on the sidewalk down here, which in South Carolina, that’s not very common. This was like 2012 or so. So there were people that were like, “Oh this is nice.” And they were, you know, paying me money on the sidewalk just cuz I was out there. I wasn’t very good <laughs> but I mean I made enough money doing that like three nights a week. I paid my car payment, paid rent and all that stuff for about a month or so. Wow. But yeah, I went through this, I don’t wanna call it a phase. Just going through this time in life, I was like, “I’m gonna record some music.” So one of my buddies had some recording stuff, instruments or whatever in his dorm room. And we, I think it’s called an EP. I don’t know what EP stands for, but they just told me to call it an EP. So we made an EP with four or five songs on there. Honestly, I don’t know where it went. I used to have a physical copy somewhere, but I don’t know. There’s a whole YouTube channel that’s not, not very hard to find. I don’t know if I wanna advertise it, but it’s not hard to find. You can find it, with a couple of the songs on there.
Clara:
And that would be ReverbNation?
Josh:
So we put the songs on ReverbNation, but then we also have a YouTube channel with my music and stuff on there as well. I’m sure if you search my name just somewhere it’ll pop up.
Clara:
<laugh> I love it. Everything–musician, reseller, content creator. <laugh> everything.
Amanda:
Yeah. So I’m, I’m curious, you know, of course, with List Perfectly, I have to ask, how did you find List Perfectly?
Josh:
I was at the BOSS Reseller Remix in Las Vegas. I went there just to really network. I didn’t really go for the classes, I guess like we stayed for a few of ’em, but really it was just to meet people and network and I met you guys there and I was like, “Oh, List Perfectly, that’s one of those crossposting things. Right. You guys are super nice. And we just we’re like, yeah, we probably should. <laugh> probably should get to crossposting and that’s when we started.
Amanda:
It was such a pleasure to meet you. I mean, what a great event that was. I know Clara and I had a great time. Doug, you were there. You know, really looking forward to the next one.
Josh:
We’re excited. We’re definitely planning on going back this year. We’re also hosting an event, myself and Caleb, Phoenix Resale. That’ll be in, in August of this year in Charlotte, North Carolina, we’re going to do an event on the East Coast for anybody that couldn’t make it all the way out to Vegas.
Clara:
We’re so excited about the event, Josh. I know it’s gonna be life-changing for so many like BOSS Reseller Remix was for, like people like yourself, even yourself attending.
Josh:
Yeah, it was super fun.
Speaker 3:
Yeah. One suggestion I have, get more taco trucks, okay.
Josh:
More taco trucks.
Doug:
Yeah. I agree.
Josh:
Who knew tacos were that popular?
Clara:
Do you remember the line? Do you remember the line for tacos?
Josh:
I looked at it briefly and I was like, “You know what, I’m gonna drive somewhere <laughs> and wait in a line there.
Doug:
So how’s List Perfectly going for you? And what’s your favorite List Perfectly feature?
Josh:
Yeah, we love it a lot. We were doing eBay, Poshmark, and Mercari, and then we just started having a couple issues with Mercari. I started seeing a bunch of other resellers post videos about their issues with Mercari so we stopped selling on there, but we still use List Perfectly to cross post from…we list with List Perfectly and then from the List Perfectly catalog we post to eBay and Poshmark, and it’s awesome. Still waiting on the automatic delist feature once we can solidify that. I know we’re so close. <Laughs> Once we bring that into light it’ll be awesome, but we love it. Use it, use it for pretty much everything we list.
Clara:
So Josh, could you please share, you briefly just mention this great event that you’re gonna be doing for our community on the East Coast. And I think you mentioned South Carolina, North Carolina.
Josh:
Yeah. It’ll be in Charlotte, North Carolina. I believe the dates are August 24th and 25th. Don’t hold me to that. It’s like a Wednesday and Thursday at the end of August. We’re super excited. We’re gonna have a ton of, basically all of our YouTube reseller friends that we know are invited. Not everybody could make it, but we’re gonna have some really, really big names in reselling that are gonna be there. I’m super excited to hear from Kevin Commonwealth Picker. I don’t know if he’s gonna talk. He was like “I’ll come and kiss babies, but I don’t know if I wanna get up there and say anything.”
Clara:
Kevin! Kevin! <Laughs>
Josh:
Yeah. It’s gonna be really, really fun. This is gonna be like a one and a half day event. I think the BOSS Reseller Remix was like three days or so, and we just wanna make it a little bit shorter than that, and we’re excited to be able to pack a lot of networking, a lot of information and just a lot into that event, in one and a half days.
Clara:
Have you officially announced it like, can we go and get already the tickets and start making the reservations and everything?
Josh:
Yep. We have a website called www.flipcon.net. Probably should have told you the name, name of the event. It’s Flip Con. And you can go to that website. You can buy your tickets. You can book your room there. We do have a discount, like a, a block, a block or whatever you call it. It should be pretty fun.
Clara:
Josh, what was the first thing you bought online and you sold online please?
Josh:
Oh, I have no idea what the first thing I bought online was, that is a good question. It was probably around 2008, 2009. That’s when I first started buying on Amazon, I guess. So fun fact about me. I actually used to have my tongue pierced. People are always really surprised to hear that, cuz I don’t seem like the type of person that would have a tongue piercing, but I got it when I was like 18, like my senior year of high school and I remember buying a new tongue ring on eBay. It was new, not used <laughs> like the first because you couldn’t find tongue rings on Amazon. I was looking for some and the local shops only had a couple to choose from. So I’m pretty sure that was the first thing I ever bought on eBay. And the first thing I sold was an Adidas like track jacket, like a windbreaker type thing.
Clara:
Was it yours or was it like something you were sourcing?
Josh:
That, that one was mine. That was one outta my own closet. That first three things I listed were things outta my own closet. And then I took that money and went to the thrift store and bought a bunch of dumb shirts that I don’t think ever sold. But then I learned my lesson.
Clara:
<laughs> Why do we all share that, that story, that part in common <laughs>
Josh:
It’s exciting.
Amanda:
You gotta try it.
Josh:
Yeah. You gotta like it, especially when you see other people on YouTube doing it. And I would just say like, if you’re a new reseller wanting to get into it and you’re watching YouTube content watching what other people are selling, like really take that with a grain of salt, cuz one, you have to factor in when that video was made. If you’re watching a video that’s two years old, that item could be completely worthless. Now usually it is. Usually things that were selling really well two years ago are no longer selling that great now because you know, if I make a YouTube video and tell people about some hot item and that video gets 500,000 views, I mean that the market’s gonna get flooded. I share as much information as I can. If I don’t give out all the bolos that <laughs>, that we find. Occasionally I wanna keep some things to myself.
Josh:
<laughs> Don’t just copy someone else’s business because they put it on a YouTube video because what works for them may not work for you. We have things that we can sell, like we’re selling on Whatnot now. And we can sell things on Whatnot that we’re actually taking, things from our eBay store that have been listed for 6, 8, 12 months for like $10 and then putting ’em on Whatnot, $1 auctions and they’re selling for $15. I’m like, “This is great. We’re making more money on things that just literally do not sell on eBay.” And our eBay store has, I don’t know, like eight or 9,000 followers. And even with the organic search on eBay and all those followers, these items are still not selling on eBay, but they are on Whatnot. So, yeah, just figure out what works for you and your business.
Clara:
I’m curious, Josh, with you being so creative at doing content, have you ever considered having your own website for reselling?
Josh:
Yeah. I mean we have a website for some of our merch shophairytornado.com. And I experimented with listing some things on there because when we make a YouTube video and we buy, you know, a plush or something, we always get comments or Instagram DMs, or emails like for multiple people wanting to buy that item. And so it probably makes sense for us to list our stuff on our own website, but that’s just a lot of work. We get a lot of viewer sales, probably like 30-35% of our sales are viewer sales. But if we list stuff on our own website and take away the organic search from eBay, the only sales we would get would be viewer sales, cuz we’re not gonna pay any money to drive organic traffic to that website. So I think overall that would hurt our sales. It would save us on fees from the viewer sales. We’re probably at a size where we could do that if we wanted to, but just don’t think it would be worth it.
Amanda:
Yeah, and it just goes to show everybody has a different business model. You know what works for you may not work for someone else. And you know, we talk about this all the time. Everybody has a different way of selling online and they’re all valid.
Josh:
Absolutely. Yep.
Doug:
What’s one thing, you know now you wish you knew when you started selling?
Josh:
I think new resellers, myself included, overthink everything like, “Oh, I’ve gotta get this background perfect.” I used to be obsessed with white backgrounds, like obsessed. I’m like, “Oh we get this white paper and we’ve got all these lights. So there’s still a little bit of shallow shadow. Let’s bring it into this editor and edit this out,” whatever. And it doesn’t matter cuz the stuff I was listing is just garbage. Anyway, It wouldn’t sell even if it was on, you know, pictures taken by professional photographers. So once you get past the overthinking phase and just start realizing like it really is all about the items like the algorithm and the white backgrounds and the keywords. None of that matters if you’re selling Jordan’s like if you got a good pair of Jordan tennis shoes, nobody cares what the pictures look like. As long as they’re authentic, like you’ll see Jordan like Jordan Ones, people just take a picture like on their carpet, in their bedroom with junk in the background and like two pictures and they sell for 500 bucks because people want that product. So I would just focus on sourcing, sourcing better products and not worrying so much about the backgrounds and the algorithm and all this stuff. Cuz if you got a good item, none of that matters.
Clara:
Absolutely. And if I was starting now, okay, and I needed it, can you give me one tip about sourcing? What would you advise me?
Josh:
I think it’s becoming necessary to get used to paying up for items, cuz with all the resellers and thrift stores and recent prices and inflation in general, I think the days of consistently finding items for a dollar and selling them for a hundred, that’ll still happen, occasionally. We bought some shoes at a garage sale this past weekend for four bucks, they should sell for a hundred, but I would not depend on finds like that. You need to get used to paying, you know, $30 for something that’ll sell for $60 or paying a hundred dollars for something that sells for $300. You know, if you’ve got Goodwill Bins, then you might be able to get by with buying stuff for a dollar and selling it for $20. For example, a TI-84 Plus calculator. That is a great item for eBay. They sell like hotcakes. They sell thousands of them every single day. And I know I can sell ’em for about $55 free shipping. So if I go into a pawn shop and I can get ’em for 30 bucks, I’ll do that. Like I’m not gonna make much money, but I know it’ll sell within 24 to 48 hours. So like focusing on products like that, like products that’ll sell really, really fast, but net you less money in terms of profit, like a more realistic ROI. Like some people in our Facebook group, they’re talking about sourcing and they’re like, “Oh I, I don’t buy anything unless I can make five or six X my money.” I was like, “That is so unrealistic. That is crazy.’ Like you cannot have that expectation. You got Walmart, the biggest retailer in the world, they operate at a 1% profit margin, 1% and that’s, that’s good for them because they’re doing so much volume.
Josh:
They’re still making billions of dollars a year. You know, if you’ve got a retail establishment, somebody with a brick and mortar store, if they make 10% profit margins, that’s really, really good selling online. And like the thrift to eBay business setup really puts like a toxic mindset into what your expectations for your profit should be. You know, businesses will spend $10,000 on a wholesale order and if they can sell that for $13,000, that’s great. That’s a $3,000 profit, you know? And so just take that into account. Like you, I don’t think you can build a large reselling business by going to the Goodwill Bins and buying stuff for 25 cents and selling it for $20 maybe, but it’ll be a lot of work.
Clara:
What do you mainly sell Josh? What is your favorite category to sell products?
Josh:
Favorite category is probably video games just because they sell so fast. And again, you don’t have to worry about pictures. You don’t have to worry about really just conditions and making sure they work but they sell really fast. We look for video games, shoes, and golf clubs. I like golf clubs cuz that one thing I really know a lot about, I don’t have to look up comps. I don’t have to do any research. I can just look at it and be pretty close with my estimate on what it’s gonna sell for. Wow. We do shoes just cuz that’s like the most plentiful item in our area. Like we can also find clothes, but shoes are still $6.50 at all of our Goodwills here, which is super low. That’s like from some of the lowest shoe prices in the country. So that’s just what, what we find a lot of. My favorite YouTube comment is when people are like, “How come you don’t buy more electronics? Why don’t you just buy better stuff?” I’m like, “It’s not like we’re passing over like an N64 or like some bucks. We just don’t see that stuff.” Like our hardgoods section. Our Goodwill is just junk that honestly should be in the dump. Like it’s just like, it’s just not, there’s nothing there you gotta go with what works for you, what’s available in your area. You know, people exactly see our videos and they’re like, “Oh, my Goodwills charge $30 for a pair of beat up Nikes.” I’m like, “Well it doesn’t look like you’re gonna be selling shoes. Then you gotta find something else.”
Clara:
Thank you for sharing that. That’s so well said, thank you for sharing that with us and our community. I really appreciate it.
Josh:
Absolutely.
Amanda:
Before we wrap this up, is there anything else you’d like to share? Anything we didn’t cover?
Josh:
You know, reselling is awesome. I think it’s the best side hustle you could possibly have. You know, especially if you’re working in a low paying job or like a minimum wage job these days. I saw a sign at our local McDonald’s that says “Now hiring up to $11 an hour” and they put that on their sign. Like they’re proud of that. I’m like “$11 an hour? Any dummy, just getting into reselling can make $11 an hour.” Like you can buy a t-shirt for two bucks and sell it for $15 on PoshMark and make $11. If you’re in a job like that and you want to pursue reselling, I would highly recommend it. If you’re in, if you’re making six figures and you want to quit that job to make it as a reseller, to become a reseller full-time that would need a little bit more work, a little bit more, thought to go into that process to replace that income. You know, if you’re like me, like most of my life, I worked minimum wage jobs, very low paying jobs, sales jobs that I wasn’t very good at. So like when we first got married, I think the first year we were married, I made like $11,000, like after taxes. And so that sucks. Like that’s awful.
Clara:
That’s tough.
Josh:
And I didn’t even have benefits or anything like that. It was basically worse than a minimum wage job. But now obviously we’re doing a lot better. So just, I think reselling is great for everybody, whether you wanna be, you know, just an extra side hustle income or a career, it just, you can make it whatever you want to be. Whatever you want it to be, but it does take a little bit of work and a little bit of planning to make it something significant.
Clara:
Thank you for sharing that with us, Josh. And it’s been a pleasure to have you with us today and thank you for your time. We really appreciate it.
Josh:
Absolutely. This was fun and happy to help.
Doug:
Yeah. And thanks Josh. It was great getting to know more about you. Thanks for taking the time. Thanks for answering the questions, talking about your dog.
Josh:
I dunno where he is. I thought he was gonna come in here at some point. <Laughs>
Amanda:
Well, thank you so much. It’s really been great. Getting to know you, getting to know YouTube, getting to know about your event. Definitely going online and, and I’m checking that out right after this for sure.
Josh:
I appreciate it. It should be, it should be really fun, we’re excited. You know, a first time event is always kind of like, you know, we don’t, nobody really knows what’s going on, but we’re doing our best to make this a very memorable and exciting event. We certainly want everybody to leave, really feeling like “Wow, like that was really, really worth the money to go into this event.” So that’s our main focus.
Clara:
We can’t wait to be part of it.
Josh:
Absolutely.
Doug:
And we’ll include all the links in the show notes and the link to flipcon.net.
Josh:
Perfect.
Doug:
Thank you for joining us on The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly. You can find us at thesellercommunitypodcast.com. You can leave a message or ask a question at anchor.fm/sellercommunitypodcast. You can email us at podcast@listperfectly.com. Post a question in the List Perfectly Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/listperfectly. You can listen to The Seller Community Podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts and be sure and subscribe, tell your friends, and if you’re on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please leave us a review on Instagram and TikTok. You can find @snoop.dougie and of course, follow @listperfectly. And you can always use our promo code podcast. That’s P O D C A S T for 30% off your first month of List Perfectly or 30% off your first month of upgrading your plan. Thanks for listening. And we will see you next time.