Right now, I consider myself a reseller, but I’ve been thinking about what I want my business to look like a few years from now. Reselling was really the only vehicle I could think of to try to escape the rat race, and although it’s been making me money, it’s also a lot of work. I’ve been trying to figure out how I can simplify the business and make it easier to scale so that I can eventually leave my job, whether I’ve reached my $1 million net worth goal by then or not.
I’ve noticed that the task I hate the most is listing, which is unfortunate because listing is probably the most important part of reselling. It doesn’t matter how many great products I source if I never get around to listing them. I’ve even created a tool to help me with this, but I still don’t enjoy doing it. The problem is that the entire business model requires a lot of time and energy, and the more I try to scale it, the more work I create for myself.
The problem with reselling
The process of reselling is pretty straightforward:
- Source the product.
- Clean it.
- Test it.
- Create the listing.
- Store it.
- Once it sells, find it, package it, and ship it.
A lot of these steps can be simplified, but listing is something that never really goes away. Every time I sell an item, I have to find another product to replace it and create another listing. If I stop listing, eventually my revenue starts dropping because I’m selling through my existing inventory without replacing it.
That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. I don’t necessarily want to build a business where I have to constantly source and list new products just to maintain my current revenue. I could hire employees to take over some of those responsibilities, but that creates another set of problems because now I have to manage those employees and make sure they’re actually producing enough to justify their salaries.
I’ve seen people in reseller groups who have large warehouses and multiple employees. I was reading through the comments on one of those posts, and somebody mentioned that their employees average around four or five listings per hour. I’m sure experienced employees working with high-value inventory can make that profitable, but that still seems like a lot of labor just to get a handful of products listed. I’d rather find a way to build the business without having to depend so heavily on that process.
What my Etsy store taught me
One thing I’ve noticed is that I actually don’t mind running my Etsy store. For most of the products I sell there, I only have to create the listing once. After that, I just manage the quantity, fulfill the orders, and replenish the inventory whenever necessary. I can sell the same product over and over again without having to create a new listing every time something sells.
That seems a lot easier to scale than constantly searching for the next item to resell. Instead of having hundreds of completely different products that I might never find again, I can have a smaller selection of products that I know I can keep purchasing or manufacturing.
I’ve already started working on transitioning toward that business model.
Building a second eBay store
I already have a separate eBay account, and I want to use it to build a store that focuses on products I can sell repeatedly. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been communicating with suppliers and manufacturers on Alibaba about certain products I want to have made. The idea is to purchase these products in bulk, create the listings once, and then keep replenishing the inventory as they sell.
Since the manufacturers will already have my product specifications and information on file, ordering more inventory should be fairly straightforward. I won’t have to keep going out looking for something new every time I make a sale. I’ll already know where to get the product, how much it costs, and what I need to order.
I’ll start by listing these products on eBay and eventually expand to other marketplaces or e-commerce platforms wherever it makes sense. If a product performs well, I can order more of it. If it doesn’t, I can eventually remove it from the store and replace it with something else.
My long-term idea is to build a catalog of maybe 500 different products that I can continuously replenish. Obviously, not every product is going to sell consistently, but if I can build a large enough selection of products that are generating sales, I should be able to create a much more predictable source of revenue without constantly having to source and list individual items.
I’m not completely abandoning reselling
I’m still going to resell products, especially when I come across something that I can purchase cheaply and flip for a good profit. I might still go to garage sales, Goodwill, or wherever else I can find inventory. I just don’t want that to be the majority of my business a few years from now.
Ideally, I want most of my operations to resemble a traditional store. I’ll have a catalog of products, relationships with manufacturers, and inventory that I can replenish whenever necessary. Every now and then, I’ll introduce new products, experiment with different ideas, and remove the ones that aren’t performing well.
I think this would also make it easier to eventually hire employees. Instead of having somebody constantly researching, testing, photographing, and listing completely different products, I could have employees focused on inventory management, packaging, shipping, and other repetitive tasks that are easier to standardize.
I’m still in the early stages of figuring all of this out, and I have a lot of work to do before I can make that transition. Right now, I’m communicating with manufacturers, developing product ideas, and trying to get my first batch of products ready to sell.
I’m going to continue reselling while I build this part of Moonrock. Hopefully, a few years from now, the majority of my revenue will come from products that I can continuously replenish instead of having to go out and find something new every day.