This week we’re joined by Mike Cook, Mikey Bags of Money. He shares with us the growth of his social channels, and on Poshmark, Whatnot, eBay, and more. He also tells us about his YouTube channel and some of the guest sellers he’s had on his show. Learn why Mikey is persistent, hardworking, and upbeat.
The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly is the e-commerce resource for the seller community across all platforms and a 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.
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Transcript
Doug: Welcome back to the Seller Community Podcast. Today Danna and I are joined by Mike Cook, also known in the reseller community as Mikey Bags of Money. You have to say it big, I think. So, uh, thanks for taking the time and joining us today. Mike.
Mikey: Thank you for having me. I’m honored to be here. Um, I love List Perfectly and I love all the podcasts. You guys have had a lot of awesome people on here, so I’m excited to be part of it.
Danna: It’s so nice to meet you, Mike. I’m curious about your name. So, Mikey Bags of Money. Please share how you came up with that.
Mikey: Mikey Bags of Money. I wish I could really remember exactly when, and I kind of wanted to start a YouTube channel with my wife and it was gonna be called Life With the Cookies. It’s a pretty good name. And when I first started, I wasn’t good enough to make videos with my wife. They were terrible. She didn’t wanna be a part of such atrocities, so I knew I needed to come up with my own channel where I could, you know, do my own thing and learn. And one day it just came to me. Mikey Bags of Money. It sounds good. I like it, but it’s like hauling a fat guy, slim. I’m not loaded, I don’t have a bunch of bags of money anywhere. So it’s maybe prophesying or, it’s just really, it’s really just fun.
It’s a fun name. It’s called Mikey. So my whole family’s calling me Mikey. Now it’s just all right.
Danna: Yeah, you’re calling it into the universe.
Doug: Visualizing. Yeah. That’s good. Yes, it’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen. So we’re, we’ve got, uh, Camp Listing Party coming up. We’re very excited that you’re gonna be part of that.
And, uh, so this episode will air, like after the event, but can you share with us what you might be talking about? Maybe give us a little tease, a little hint.
Mikey: Ooh, well, I’m gonna be speaking with Kat, the Nurse Flipper, and Commonwealth Picker, Kevin. Oh, I’m very excited. I mean, they are like real YouTubers. I’m still just a little guy. I, I, I, I’m just, we’re all normal people. Really. All the YouTubers are normal people. Yeah. I’m like normally on this level. They’re normally on that level, so I’m very excited. I hope I learned some things from him. But, I’m also looking forward to sharing with the community.
We’re gonna be talking about ways to like monetize your YouTube channel or social media. There’s all kinds of different ways that you can actually make money with your, uh, with your viewers and stuff like that. You can direct sell to ’em, you can get affiliate links. So we’ll just be sharing information on how to, uh, expand.
Danna: That’s great. I am a fan, I admit, of your YouTube. I, I, um, try to catch you on my big screen on my TV, and I subscribe to YouTube. So it’s funny cuz since I watch you, they automatically come up when I turn on my tv, so it’s like, oh, new episode. So I do enjoy ’em. But I am curious, um, please tell us more about the lovely ladies that thrift with you on your show.
Mikey: Well, I have a wide variety of guests and friends that I like to bring. Um, my mom, my sister, I have a friend, Kari Parker, who’s gone with me. Kristen, Rural Squirrel, lots of people. Sunny Las Vegas is one of my good friends. We’ve done lots of videos going out together, thrifting, so I just really enjoy, maybe not so much putting the camera on myself, but putting it on other people and letting people get to see the awesomeness that I see.
Danna: Yeah, and it’s so, it’s so real and down to earth. It’s what I love about it. It’s just your genuine self. So I enjoy it.
Mikey: Thank you. I just try to be me and I’m just like, I’m a really regular, regular guy. You know, and, and I just try to be that I really enjoy just putting smiles on people’s faces and, and YouTube has kind of let me do that and share that with more people.
You know, I get to crack a funny joke with the cashier or something. Me and the cashier get to laugh, but now I have opportunities to share that with thousands of people where we can all get a chuckle, and I just really enjoy it. I love it.
Doug: Now, I’ve always, always seen you in a Hawaiian shirt and a hat, so is that all the time?
Mikey: Yes. Um, definitely on camera. Like, uh, when, when I’m off here, I’m probably gonna be wearing maybe a basketball jersey and my wife will be shaking her head or a tank top cause it’s a tank top and I just don’t do t-shirts too much anymore. And I just like the Hawaiian, we’re like, called Las Vegas, the ninth Island.
So it’s just kind of like a cool vibe. I enjoy, I really, I really like finding them. And I have even had, uh, viewers and companies send me Hawaiian shirts. It’s amazing. It’s amazing.
Danna: Nice.
Doug: That’s the way to do it. Um, so let’s shift to selling for a bit. So what marketplaces are you currently selling on?
I’m currently selling on eBay, Poshmark, and Facebook, and I also have some listings. I really haven’t done much work to ’em on Mercari. In a while, I’ve made a couple of sales on Mercari, just not doing anything. I didn’t take ’em down. And then today I did have an offer on something where I, I didn’t have it in my inventory, so I, I, you know, I just declined the offer and took and delisted it.
But it’s amazing that sales are still even, you know, from, I haven’t touched it probably in like six months and I’ve still had a couple of sales roll in.
Danna: Yeah, so do you currently use List Perfectly to cross-post?
Mikey: Yes, for sure. I used it when I first started. I’ve been selling for about five years and List Perfectly has been around, I don’t know, maybe four plus or something.
And I started on eBay and I had a bunch of women’s clothing. It’s like 300 pieces of women’s clothing and I thought maybe Poshmark would be the place to sell it. I saw a lot of the Posh ads. Posh life and stuff like that. So I decided I needed to cross-post it. So I started doing the manual copy and paste and I was like, there has to be something better there.
This is, this is ludicrous to do that. And like List Perfectly came out not too long after that. Literally probably a couple of months and I’ve been a member since.
Doug: So since you’ve been, since you’ve been a member of List perfectly for a while, can you share a couple of your favorite features?
Mikey: Well, I got, yeah, I gotta say I don’t use it as much as I could. You know, if you like to use like Microsoft Excel, there’s a million things you can do with it. It’s an amazing program. So is List Perfectly, but I just really haven’t dived deep dived in there. Used all the features like inventory management, the photo, uh, white background, automatic remover, and stuff like that.
I mostly just, since I’m concentrating on YouTube, eBay, and Poshmark, I’m really just using it to go from eBay to Poshmark and then just from there. So I really, really wish I did utilize it more. Yeah, and it’s cuz it does have great features. Well,
Danna: You know, Mike, I’d love to see you do a listing party over at Listing Party. It’d be so much fun if you did, you know, a little party over there and you could gain more followers of course, and then also share some of your wisdom, like maybe something that you’re gonna share at, um, in Vegas, or excuse me, at Camp Listing Party. That’d be fun if you did a. A party with us.
Mikey: Yes, I’m down. I like to party. Partying is fun. I like to go live and I like List Perfectly. There might be a match made in heaven.
Danna: So speaking of live, what is your experience with live auctions?
Mikey: Uh, I sell ’em, Whatnot. I just celebrated a year and I think like a week or two? Now, I started out early and then I got injured and I just had to do some time management, so I took some time off and then I came back on Whatnot.
I’ve been selling once a week for quite a few months now at least, and then popping up once. I like it. It’s fun, it’s tough. There’s highs and lows in the auction world. I mean, some auctions are hot, some auctions are not. And it’s just about trying to, hopefully, have the right items and the right people in there.
Doug: So, any tips for a seller that wants to get started doing lives?
Mikey: Um, Auction. I would say probably keep your expectations low if you’re going on Whatnot. It’s just very tough coming out of the gate. Any, anything, you start really in life, you, you don’t start fast. Yeah. Unfortunately, you might, but usually, it takes a lot of work.
Uh, I’m still selling some things I take a loss on, but that’s okay. That’s, you know, that’s the, the bigger picture is if you’re making money at the end of the show, then hopefully you’re making money. Yes. So, yeah, just stick with it. Have low expectations and try to enjoy yourself. There’s really not that much pressure.
It’s, you know, you’re just going on live, and you’re making some money or you’re not. And if things don’t sell, you might feel a little uncomfortable inside. But in the big schema world, it’s nothing. A, few people didn’t wanna buy anything. No worries. Try next time.
Danna: Yeah, it’s interesting. I was talking to someone the other day that they actually don’t even show their face on Whatnot. I didn’t even realize that you could do that.
Mikey: Yeah, on Poshmark and I haven’t really gone into Posh Live now. I thought about it cuz I have, I do sell women’s clothing and I thought maybe I should pop up there. I go to Poshmark events around town and stuff like that. And I’ve learned a lot from the Poshmark community.
They’re awesome. Everyone in the reseller community is pretty awesome. Sure. They like to share information and stuff like that, but they also have silent auctions on Posh, where I don’t think you say anything or maybe even show your face. I, I’m not, yeah, it’s, it, the world of auctions is expanding every day.
Danna: Yeah. I couldn’t get over that. Um, it was actually Cheryl Hinton, she’s, she does Whatnot and she just uses her hands and just shows, you know, stuff like that. And I thought, oh, I could do that.
Mikey: Now I did take a poll. I bought a light box cuz I did have a jewelry sale. I’m by no means a jewelry expert, but I know what to look for and then I like to offer it to my audience to see, you know, test the waters.
Is jewelry for me, is it not? And I did buy a light box and I did post a poll that day. If they’d rather see the host or the item. You know, in the box. And it was overwhelmingly two to one I think it was, that they’d rather see the face. Now, it might have been my pretty face, I’m not sure…
Danna: That’s, that’s interesting. I’m glad you shared that.
Mikey: Yeah, and I haven’t used a light box since, so.
Danna: Very good. Well, my favorite place to sell is eBay. I’m, I’m big on eBay. But since you two are selling on the platform, what’s your favorite tool for promoting your eBay listings?
Mikey: Now, I know there are a wide variety of tools, but I’m kind of old school. I’ve just been sticking with the promoted listings. Okay. I’ll usually go, if it’s a big category with lots of competition, I’ll usually go with the trending rate. Okay? If it’s something more specialty that I know is gonna sell and with like it has a hundred percent sell-through rate or something like that, or it’s high demand, less items.
I’ll put like 2% or sometimes 0% cuz I like, I know it’s gonna sell no problem. So that’s pretty much my strategy with the promoted listing. It’s been doing me pretty good.
Danna: Okay. You haven’t tried coupons?
Mikey: I have not tried coupons. I was curious. And coupons have been around for what, like two years maybe?
How about, do you guys have good experience with coupons?
Danna: I honestly haven’t used them either, but, um, I know I’ve sent one out. I, I lie, I have sent one out a couple of times to buyers that have purchased at checkout, so I’ve experienced, and experimented with that, but I haven’t had sales.
Doug: Yeah, no, that’s a good one. I’ve just seen other sellers that I know using them. I think it’s cool. It gives you a lot of different options, and I really like Danna’s idea. It’s like if somebody’s, somebody buys from you, you give ’em a discount to come back.
Mikey: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I have viewer sales, so maybe they might actually enjoy coupons and I never really thought about that.
Danna: Yeah. Yeah, I actually had someone, um, that I bought something from in the past, send me a coupon, and I thought, oh, what the heck? I’ll go take a look and see what they have. And sure enough, I bought something from their store cause I had a coupon so it did work.
Mikey: Yeah. Cause coupons work. They’ve been around a long time.
Doug: Gets you back in there. So how can we find you on eBay in case we want to, uh, shop in your store, use a coupon, or something like that?
Mikey: All right. Well, always, I send out offers every day. I don’t know if you guys do or not, but I do every day. I’ll send out offers when people are watching, so you can always send me an awesome offer with a little message.
But my, my, um, My eBay store is Charmed LV. And that was when my wife first started eBay. She used to buy puffy heart charm bracelets. Like the sterling silver ones. And, so it was kind of Charmed LV and, and she used to buy and sell on there. And then when I started reselling, I became Charmed LV.
Danna: So you just took her name.
Mikey: And yeah, so it doesn’t really have anything to do with it. That’s also my Instagram Charmed LV, because I just, okay. You know, I just started from nothing with no vision. I just started selling on eBay. I really enjoyed Instagram where people show, shared so much information, bolos and, and like tips and tricks.
So I was just all about it, just absorbing as much information as I could.
Danna: Yeah. Yeah, I love Instagram too. It’s a great tool. Um, well we’re happy you were able to join us for the first annual Camp Listing Party event. Are there any other seller events you’ve attended over the years?
Mikey: Um, I actually went to and spoke at the first two Boss Reseller Remix events.
Oh, wow. That was so awesome. I, I enjoy, I never envisioned myself, you know, when I became reselling that I’d be speaking at these events. I’m honored to share my information with people and just kind of be a host and reach out to everyone. I make it a point to try to say hi to every single person there and it’s not really within me.
I’m kind of. Like, I mean, I’m on camera. I’m like, yeah, Mikey Bags. But think like everybody. I just kind of usually keep to myself, but I try to kind of come out of the box even more and I really enjoy it. The Trash to Cash podcast came to Las Vegas. They came twice. The first time they came, it was kind of low-key, but I went there.
I went to their podcast, and we went to dinner with them. We got to hang out with them. And anytime you go to like a reseller event, You just like to meet people, you get to hear little tidbits of information and it really can just spark joy and like make like you realize that you could do something a little differently or a little better, and it’s just amazing the power of networking really.
Danna: Yeah. Well, this has been fantastic and, I just thank you so much for joining us. Mike, do you have any final words you’d like to share?
Mikey: Um, I can’t wait to see you all at Camp List Perfectly in person. Real events are so fun. I love hanging out on the internet, but the real, yeah, you know, when you go there with the people, you all get to hang out in the groups.
It’s so fun. So I just look forward to seeing you guys there. Anyone that’s viewing, I know I’ve had commenters in my comments that say they’re coming, that I’m gonna meet ’em, so I can’t wait to just meet all the people. I hope to see some of the viewers there and, I can’t wait.
Doug: Yes. Cool. So cool. No, it’s always fun talking to you, Mikey Bags of money. Thanks for being on the podcast. Looking forward to seeing you next week, and, uh, keeping an eye on you on uh, social media.
Mikey: All righty. Thanks for having me.