355 : Brooks Boland – Use Datamiine to gain the edge in your Ebay business
Finally I see a way to parse your sales, organize your inventory and get real costs of goods all in one place for Ebay. I love the focus of this company: either it saves time or grows revenue! So smart. So focused! Get control of your business and grow.
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Transcript: (note- this is a new tool I am trying out so it is not perfect- it does seem to be getting better)
Brooks: [00:00:00] The question all the time to our users, so for the full time seller out there, that’s using data mine on a daily basis, they say on average, we’re saving them about two hours per day.
Cool voice guy: [00:00:11] Welcome to the ECOMMERCE guys. When we focus on the people, the products, and the process of incomers cylinder. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.
Stephen: [00:00:25] He wanted to talk a few moments about some sponsors scope from several labs. Um, when’s the last time you created a listing? Right? And when you create that listing, you’ve got to come up with the keywords, right? It’s all key word dependent. I don’t care if it’s a private label or wholesale. You’ve got to get it right. Well, what’s the best way to get it right? If you’re selling a similar product that’s really successful, you go and you take and use their keywords and that’s what scope does for you. So phenomenal tool brought to you again by seller labs. The leaders in technology when it comes to Amazon, right now, they are just crushing it with all their products, but scope allows you to get that listing right. Get ranked for those key words as fast as possible, therefore you get the sales. So go to seller labs.com, forward slash scope.
Stephen: [00:01:14] Use the code word momentum. Save a little bit of money. Get some free key words to test, try it out and see if you see an improvement. If you don’t adjust, what’s cool about what I love about a seller labs is that you then message and say, Hey, I didn’t get this right tyler. Hey Jeff, this isn’t working right. What am I doing wrong? I boom, you’re going to get the help you need and that’s what you’re going to get from solar lamps. And, and it’s a very special group that had been very. I’ve been very fortunate to be connected with them. And again, I look over time they’ve delivered every single time, you know, same thing I can say for Karen from solutions for ecommerce. I mean, she’s been carrying my account for a couple years now, um, and our account, my wife and I, and she really does handle things for us.
Stephen: [00:01:55] Um, I mentioned, uh, just last week we created a new listing with, I forget how many variations, but again, all the flat files uploaded done as I needed. I pop in, so she’ll send me a template, I pop in some information and then boom, it’s handled, await. These pictures weren’t done right, blah, blah, blah. This UPC, Nita poom modified adjusted. And again, the communication has been phenomenal too. I get an email back saying, hey, this was done or this, you’re missing this, Steve. Hey, you got to do this. So, you know, we have those challenges too. And that’s why I like working with somebody who’s been doing it. I’ve been doing it for a long time to do, you know, Karen also does listings for Ebay. Yep. Lots of them. So if you want to build out that channel, which of course you should, it’s q four, you should be selling everywhere.
Stephen: [00:02:39] You can, um, Karen can help you with that too. So you gotTa tell her I’ve sent you. So you’re going to go to solutions four ecommerce forward slash momentum. You’re going to save 50 bucks every single month. You’re going to save that $50, but more importantly, you’re going to get an inventory health report. Um, did you just get hit with monthly longterm storage fees? Well, guess what? If you haven’t, they’re coming. You want to get that inventory right and she can help you with that. You’ve got to tell her I sent you again, solutions, the number for ecommerce forward slash momentum will get you into that. Save the 50 bucks. Get that inventory health report though. That’s really, really important. Get that going right away. And I don’t want to miss my coach when it comes to retail arb or online or when I have a question.
Stephen: [00:03:18] And I do not that we don’t, we don’t really do much of it anymore, but when I do have a question, I go to Gaye Lisby because why? Because she’s really, she is a coach. I mean, she’s really phenomenal, but she also puts out a daily list and you’re going to get that list five days a week. You’re going to get tons of leads. The number of, uh, agreed to amount that you’re supposed to get. She at least, she usually gets to those in the four days and then the fifth day seems to be a bonus most of the time. Phenomenal Group, small amount of buyers where this list is going to. And the best thing is the nuggets that you learn. Hey, why is the red one better than the blue? One? Gaye can help you with those questions. I saw. Hey, I got, um, I got to the dreaded letter about a brand.
Stephen: [00:03:58] Here’s the, here’s the way you approach it. Hey, receipts. Um, how do you, what’s the best practice? I saw her leading instructions, teaching me the accountant how to do a better job with it and it’s phenomenal. So it’s Gaye Lisbys made a million dollars selling. Um, I’ll have the link in here. You’ve got to use, um, the, my, my link and it does help me. I don’t want to say it that way, but um, it’s part of amazing freedom with Andy, slam inslee, Ron Hirsch, corn, and nate’s lamins. So, you know, you can trust. Okay. So come back to the website, take a look at it and you will get a savings. And you can get two weeks free right now, only through my link. You get two weeks free. Try it. You don’t like it? I get it back off. But right now is the time to make money.
Stephen: [00:04:41] Get cash flow going right now. And so join you. Get two weeks free. The only way you’re gonna get the two weeks for if you use my link, it’s on this episode. Come on out and give it a try. You will not be disappointed again. You’re going to see me in there. So reach out if I can help you too. Let’s get into the podcast. Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. This is episode 355. Brooks Boland. His name might not be familiar with you, but his company might be, um, there’s a whole bunch of smart people that have found this out and I’m just finding it out. And that’s pretty normal. I’m a little behind the curve. The companies called data mine data mine with two eyes. Okay. So data mined with two eyes and it is probably one of the biggest advancements that I see for an Ebay business.
Stephen: [00:05:25] If you’re running an Ebay business and you’re not running it, well Steve, um, you know, that there’s opportunities, but it’s so overwhelming to try to manage it on your own. I mean, you know, if you’re a one or two person operation like we are, it is such a hard thing to keep track of things. It’s so hard to find what’s working right, what’s not working right. And what I love about data mine and the little bit I know, but the little bit I’ve used it, I physically have been using it and I’m already seeing an improvement in our efficiency because I’m addressing things that I’ve been to address but I couldn’t find them. Data mind makes it easy to find the problems in your business and their whole approach is again, driving revenue or saving time period. That’s it. Everything that they do when you go in and you start looking at d listing and relisting, there’s a recent.
Stephen: [00:06:13] It’s helping you get moved up in the algorithm so it sells. Everything’s done to help you sell or save time. It addresses my inventory, shows me the age of our inventory and it’s. I said to Brooks, after we were done with the call, I said, it’s, it’s, it’s that health scale that nobody wants to go to and your stuff is put up on this big flashing board and it’s showing you how unhealthy you are. Sucks. But the great news is, I know what to fix. I haven’t, I have the ability to address it. I have a place I can go and that’s very, very exciting. So as uncomfortable it is to stand on the scale. It’s a great place to start because it tells you where you need to put in the work. Um, and again, I’ve already started doing the work immediately. First day I got it. I immediately like, Oh, I can fix that.
Stephen: [00:06:57] Holy smokes. And so I got a lot of those small fixes to do, but again, that’s going to improve our business and it’s just so exciting. So let’s get into the podcast. Alright, welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. We’re excited about today’s guest because it’s an opportunity probably a whole bunch of us old settlers had been looking for. It’s an opportunity to gain gain back, to control the control that you have if you sell on Amazon, right where you can take your data and you can manipulate a third party systems, allow you to manipulate even Amazon, allow some of the manipulation, but on Ebay it’s always been a challenge. It’s A. Because I’ve tried many of the other companies, I I think I still have an ink frog account because that was at least one way I can get into our data and do some bulk edits, but it’s never been easy.
Stephen: [00:07:42] It’s just never been easy and I’ve tried some of the old systems I don’t even think around again, but here’s a company that has really, really made it easy and we’re going to talk about some of the examples. One that I did this morning that just like blew my mind. I finally fixed an item that I’ve been dying to fix and it was because I was able to find it and that’s what this company is so, so good at a company called data mined with two eyes and I’m really happy to welcome Brooks Bolen. Welcome Brooks. Thanks for coming on the show. Hey, I appreciate you coming on. I think that statement. How many times have you heard that? What I just said how many times?
Brooks: [00:08:17] It probably almost every day I hear that statement because you know, when you download our software it’s going to open your eyes to a lot of things that you don’t really have the granularity to see on Ebay.
Stephen: [00:08:27] And, and this isn’t an Ebay criticism, you know, again, and I always say this, this is a giant machine. There are a legacy company, right? They were one of the first. They have a gazillion, you know, we were talking in the pre show that they have, how many sub systems that they’ve been trying to bring together trying to bring together. They got this huge bureaucracy, so I’m sure they can’t make a decision because to be honest, a change in anything affects different differently because of the systems that they have. And so again, this is not a criticism, but it doesn’t matter. We’ve got to find a way to wake at work because ultimately if we don’t sell, Ebay doesn’t exist, right? They don’t have the money to keep it going, so the goal has to be to sell more and so that’s why I’m certain they embrace what you’re doing too. I can’t imagine that they don’t.
Brooks: [00:09:15] Oh yeah, they’re actually bringing this out, uh, on November 27th. So we’re flying out to San Jose to basically talk to a bunch of sellers at even.
Stephen: [00:09:22] Is it because you come at it from a completely. You don’t have the, um, the investment in the romance, maybe that’s the right way to say there’s no romance for you with this old way of doing things, right. It’s completely here’s a subset of data, right? I always say it’s a database, right? So they, they can only do so much with it. Here’s the subset of data. We want to manipulate it this way, this way, this way and this way, right? You’re not romantic about, well, you know, there are three sellers and this is the way they do things, right. It’s, it’s just all for you business.
Brooks: [00:09:55] Exactly. I mean, what we realized is there’s no really one tool out there doing a little bit of everything from accounting to inventory automation, so as Ebay sellers for five years, we basically, we worked full time jobs elsewhere and so we had to develop a tool that helped us scale.
Stephen: [00:10:12] Well. I want to get right into that story because I think again, you’re scratching an Itch, right? You found a problem. I watched John Chris Lynde show and it was just so great. The minute I saw it, I’m like, oh my God, these guys get it. They absolutely get it. They’re looking for the most efficient way to have the least amount of touchpoints for their data. They want to automate things that take no thinking, right? There’s three d list and realist something. There should be no thinking other than perhaps price. Right? If it didn’t sell, there might be a price issue, right? That that’s a different. That’s the decision, right? Quite frankly, if the listing stuff was already done, why do you have to decide it again and again and again? Right? And you guys get that, so that’s really attractive. So you’re full time sour. So how many people were in the company? Five. Alright. So there’s five. And Are you all sellers?
Brooks: [00:10:58] We’re all sellers. Okay. Yep. And so the boys have their own accounts as well. So which is good.
Stephen: [00:11:03] Yeah. Well it’s absolutely good because some people be like, well wait, they’re going to find out, Steve, that you sell corvette promo cars. I’m like, Yep. Okay. Go find them. Go ahead. Know. Good luck with that. Right. Um, so, so that, that issue I think is, is definitely better than what you would find on Amazon. Amazon people are much more protective because, you know, it’s a wholesale account or whatever when you’re selling one offs, which typical Ebay sellers are, right? Typically based sellers. Is that more who your softwares for, would you when you think about this, because that’s a type of guys you are,
Brooks: [00:11:35] uh, we, we sell 100 percent renewables. So I’m constantly nine $95.
Stephen: [00:11:41] It’s renewable it. Is it a wholesale or is it just something that you have access to it? Is it products that they have access to? Okay. So they’re not like a, you’re not buying them from the manufacturer in China having them shipped here or even a distributor. And then you’re. So these are, they technically are one offs though, in a weird way.
Brooks: [00:12:00] Uh, yes, that’s true. Okay.
Stephen: [00:12:03] Okay. Um, so, so my, my distinction is if I have a standard account where I’m buying, I had, I had a recent interview, the guy sells a gopro parts and he has wholesale accounts. So he’s literally buying from a Gopro when a couple of other companies that make things. And so those are, are they the type of customer for you yet? Has this software developed for him or is it the guy who’s going to yard sales and, and flea markets and buying gopro parts? Trying to make that distinction.
Brooks: [00:12:32] So 90 percent, 95 percent of the people are the one off items going to go into the markets.
Stephen: [00:12:40] And I would assume this is my assumption, I think this is reasonable too, is it’s because it’s so burdensome to scale. That’s where all the problems are. If you’re a reseller for wholesale, generally you have that cost of goods stuff figured out because it’s carry a few skews, um, and it just wash, rinse, repeat. But on the other side it’s so hard to scale. Um, I just did an interview with somebody and they’re like, ah man, I can’t believe anybody can get over 5,000 skews live on Ebay by themselves without having a team. Right. I assume that’s something that you run into all. Yeah, all the time. So, so you guys decide to fix this problem you were selling before the software?
Brooks: [00:13:22] Oh, even selling for. We built the software for us and then a year and a half ago, um, we said, oh my gosh, what we have is we can basically turn this into a product. I have this so we can sell it to other sellers. So. And so basically the past two years has been working on making it a standalone product for other sellers. How did you guys meet? We worked with each other and I worked at a software coming together. Okay. So you were in software development? Yes, stuff that was a product manager basically taken a software from idea all the way out to uh, to roll out and he was the developer.
Stephen: [00:13:57] Okay. So, uh, those of us Steve Naive, not understanding that whole thing, so a product so, so walk us through each one of those roles because I’m not sure that we understand it.
Brooks: [00:14:08] So when a software cut me or a, uh, has users that says, Hey, I want you to come up with this cool thing, this cool feature, uh, my role was particular. So how do I quantify the need of a user?
Stephen: [00:14:21] So, so wait. So the need to be user, meaning that, is it a, is there a business model?
Brooks: [00:14:26] Oh, here is there enough people that need that, that we could get money for it? Is that. Yeah, basically quantifying for it’s going to take, you know, 20 engineers to do this in six months. Is it worth the Roi? So I have, my background’s in finance, so then I would take that and put basically a financial model around it and then take it from the idea stage and all the way tracking. And how it gets developed to how it gets put a price book to how it gets rolled out to
Stephen: [00:14:53] 10,000 people. So you’re managing the project basically all the way along? Yes. How do you manage? Isn’t it like hurting cats programmers? Because they are like, I mean in some ways really good programmers or artists and I know that sounds so weird for people because it’s just numbers, right? But it’s not. I mean there’s, there’s some real creativity, isn’t there in software? Oh yes. I mean since our fulltime in the business. I mean, my biggest weak point for me is I’m a big idea guy, so I’m constantly coming to him with ideas and he will turn me down and less than basically can take,
Brooks: [00:15:29] uh, save you 500 percent of your time. So if we can make it five x, then he might consider developing it. So that’s kind of been our philosophy for the past few years.
Stephen: [00:15:38] Well it sounds like that’s working because otherwise you can get mired down and never move forward. Right? Because are you fixing. I mean, when you think about the problems that you’ve heard and you know, people, the request from people, because this has definitely developed over time, what percentage of those have you guys addressed, would you say?
Brooks: [00:15:58] Um, of the needs of our users? Yeah. While in Beta phase, I’d probably say at least 60 to 75 percent.
Stephen: [00:16:07] No kidding. I mean think about that. These are problems especially because I’m pretty certain that a lot of these sellers that you’re dealing with have been selling forever and probably have the same experience that we have here, which is basically, you know, there are rules that have been put in place long after our listings were created and to get them to comply becomes, it’s very unmanageable, unwieldy. It might be the right term. And so for you to be able to address 60 to 70 percent of the problems that you’ve seen, that’s a significant fix in a year and a half.
Brooks: [00:16:38] Oh yeah. Yeah. We’ve definitely put a lot of pride into taking user feedback and then develop that. We just built a lot of momentum on that. The class, you know what, if you put a request in to Ebay, it’s going to get buried somewhere in their development team. They will never get it done, but we’re a lot more agile with that. So that’s kind of been our strong suit.
Stephen: [00:16:57] Yeah. I was just going to say, is there something else that helps this now? I mean his Ebay got their act together in their database much more not in a criticism way, and again, I don’t want this to come down on them in a bad way, but because they’ve made so many drastic changes to their databases over the last couple of years, has that made it more accessible to you? Therefore you can act on it faster?
Brooks: [00:17:17] Yes. Okay. Surprisingly, EA is the easiest tool to work with, so Amazon, poshmark at at all those I would say back in Apis to allow us to do things. He base definitely the most mature out of all of them
Stephen: [00:17:35] and mature meaning that the debate database is sick, is stable, what does that mean? Mature,
Brooks: [00:17:41] but sure enough to where we can’t develop software to help the user
Stephen: [00:17:46] because they’re not changing it so much because they are given us access
Brooks: [00:17:51] to certain things. So some, some other companies like, like poshmark is just so new. We don’t have any of the ability for us to pull data and manipulate it like we do. But with Ebay it’s very. And you’re right, they do not make huge changes to that stuff. So allow software companies like us to do
Stephen: [00:18:07] come in and do neat things like this. Now is that good or bad from a uh, you know, you know, this is the nerd talk. Okay. So I want you to get back on your dirt hat and say, and I mean in the most positive way because you guys do things that I couldn’t even think of. Is that healthy for a company or not healthy for a company? The fact that the database doesn’t get changed a lot or the style or the. I don’t know what the frame, what the words you guys use, but do you get what I’m saying? Oh yeah. I think it’s very healthy. Oh, okay. So that’s good. That’s good. Okay. And I’m always worried I just don’t understand enough of it. And so, you know, you hear some people say, oh my God, they’re such a dinosaur company. They have legacy systems that aren’t updated and blah blah blah blah blah. And then you hear you. Who’s a real into this stuff saying no, that’s stable. That allows us to now do these things. Exactly. I think that’s right.
Brooks: [00:18:57] Why ebay likes third party tools like us. But uh, but still there’s not been any tool that hit a home run to really help them
Stephen: [00:19:05] automate all the day to day activity for Ebay seller. Yeah, I would say that. I mean, when I think back to all the systems that I’ve used and I’ve used it in Prague, I stick, I still have an account somewhere. Um, but, and that was the cutting edge at the time, but I’m thinking back to those old, oh my God, I can’t even remember the names of them. All those old systems that used to do things with it was all third party applications you had to use that maybe be beyond or maybe they didn’t. Was it black blackthorn or all these crazy things, whatever it was way back then. None of them really worked. I mean it was like they would do a little bit, but they wouldn’t do it all. Right. Exactly. Why? Why has there been such a gap between all of them? Because this was, you know, years, multi years ago were really. There was a whole bunch of them and then it was really nothing. Like I said it was ink frog maybe six bit or something like that, but then you guys coming along. What’s that? What would you say is the reason for that giant gap? Because you guys experienced, if you’ve been selling for five years, you. You know what I’m talking about,
Brooks: [00:20:01] I can’t tell if it’s like a. maybe these software tools aren’t pure ebay sellers, but what we know from our users, you know they’re paying, you know, let’s say 10 bucks a month for go daddy for accounting. They’re paying 30 bucks a month for ink frog just because the stores are pitchers, they might be paying 50 bucks a month for six bit, which there are certain things with order information, but our tool does all that mileage tracking. They might be paying five bucks a month for mileage tracking. We do that as well. So it’s like how can we develop something, does it all at a price point that knocks all the competition out.
Stephen: [00:20:37] So that’s. Yeah. And the other thing I think too is like you said though, you guys are sellers, so you’ve experienced these problems and did you have, you used and don’t without naming them and putting them down, I don’t like that stuff,
Brooks: [00:20:48] but because they served a purpose at the time have used third party softwares and said, oh this doesn’t. Why isn’t it giving me this? No, we built everything custom in house. Okay. Okay. Alright. So this was all. And so five years ago, what started you down this track? What was the thing that pushed you over the edge that said, all right, we’ve got to fix this. It was really when you work full time, you know, 40, 50 hour weeks at a company and then you’re still trying to manage, you know, a $400,000 Ebay business, you just don’t have time, you know, you really basically we had to hire employees full time so they are managing while we’re working other jobs and I think that’s what really pushed us over the edge to think very creative off scalability and that’s uh, that’s Kinda what I think set us apart. Well, let me ask you this, it, was there a reason that you’re operating a side hustle like Ebay, I mean, was there a recent back then or is that normal in the, in the, uh, in, in your world that it’s very normal that you know, you work in, um, you know, uh, it during the day and then you do some side hustle?
Brooks: [00:21:57] Well, the way that we got product is the company that we worked at, so I almost had like a, a reason to stay at that job just because they’re like, look, we got a problem. See that pile in the back? Dude, I need to make it go away. Could you help us with that? That’s exactly what we did. So we took care of the dod wiping, so I was kinda like watching over the hen house for years. And then finally I said, Kay, when, you know, when I hit x amount with this, with the company, I’m quitting. So that 2016, that’s when things just super scaled after that, once I went full time invested in the company, it just sort of for that. Well, how did you know that was your source of inventory? That was your, uh, your dealer if you were the drugs, have these it things that you’re getting for free in essence, how did you deal with that?
Brooks: [00:22:50] Obviously a lot of planning had to go into that enormous amounts of planning, but it’s, um, it was really tough because they’re venture capitalists, venture owned company, so which can be very cutthroat. So there’s a lot of turnover. A lot of it got dealt with like for cfos in the past, like five years. So anytime a new cfo came on board, I would have to get in front of them immediately and say, hey, there’s this thing called the liquidation process, by the way, I’m kind of the owner of that cubby. So it was very awkward conversations, but I had to be a complete upfront as to where it’s not like very fishy or anything like that because, uh, you know, obviously people would be suspicious, like, wait a second if you’re a, if you’re taking it, there must be some value. Right. And so that’s the math that somebody does. As the old cfo of me, I would sit there and say, wait a second, if you’re making money on it, why aren’t we making money at it? Right. However, there’s a labor cost, right, and you’re not in that business. Right, exactly. They’re a software
Stephen: [00:23:46] company. We were doing it. They were doing the process.
Brooks: [00:23:50] Basically. I took an idea and said, if we do this with all your returns product, you can probably make a million bucks a year off of it. Well, it grew so big that the CFO said,
Stephen: [00:24:00] okay, Brooks,
Brooks: [00:24:01] I know I don’t have for a software company, this is not our niche, but so I pitched to him that I would just fund it myself any bid for it and that’s kind of how the whole thing started back in 2013,
Stephen: [00:24:12] so. So let me get that again because I don’t think I quite understood that. So. So they are software developers, they eat through computers, right. And always replacing things, doing whatever they need to do. So they’re burning through this equipment right here. There’s a shelf life to it. It’s gone. However, there’s still a secondary market because you guys are cutting edge, right? You’re leading edge and so therefore other people would use this in another way. So you would take what burned out or taken out or whatever it is, and then repurpose it and then resell it. Right. That’s kind of the model. Exactly. I would remove the data to a certain standard, which is big. That’s a big deal. Big Deal
Brooks: [00:24:52] because a lot of their customers were like a hipaa hospitals, things like that. So I would remove the data as a service and then I would buy the good at x price flat rate, no matter if the servers were good or bad, and then I would destroy them. However I, I, once I bought them, I can do whatever I want to do.
Stephen: [00:25:09] Okay. And so some, if it’s really destroyed to be scrapped or whatever you had to do with it. Okay. All right. Very, very cool. Have you, have you seen other people, a really successful sellers take that same approach? Because your niche is pretty narrow. It’s,
Brooks: [00:25:24] it’s very narrow. It’s a, it’s a very tight niche. I probably only know of two other companies in the US that try to buy like I do.
Stephen: [00:25:31] Hmm. Now the other four guys working in the company or guys and girls, I shouldn’t say that. The other four people working at the company may be right about that. Do they also participate in that same category issue or have they have their own niches?
Brooks: [00:25:46] They have their own niches and I always see those safe, you know, do what makes you happy. So I don’t want them to go out there and trying to call computer company. So they sell you. They’re basically the thrifter.
Stephen: [00:25:56] Okay. But what’s cool though is that again, they aren’t as limited in the it world where, you know, that’s a very specific industry, probably pretty high demand at this point there in that third party category where it’s more challenged. Like if you sell a shirt, there’s what, probably $28 million shirts today on Ebay, right? I’m probably maybe 280 million shirts. So they have that different approach and a different perspective and I, and they’re bringing that into the, um, into the world. So. So can you walk us through then how, how the five of you approach the business because there’s so many moving pieces to data mine and, and I just want to know where they came from. So you’re a finance guy, you’re saying hey, mileage is important. Most other people would be like mileage isn’t important. Yes it is. It’s a big deal, right? It’s a big expense that if you eat a lot of it. So I get where that came from. How about the rest of the business? So my wife works full time for the business
Brooks: [00:26:48] and so this was chunks and uh, my wife basically runs all Ebay operations, so while we were working full time elsewhere, she was handling everything with Ebay and Amazon. So a lot of the ideas, you know, we would sit down with her on a weekly basis and saying, Hey, if you click here, click here, click here. We would just watch how she’s clicking. And then that’s how we started figuring out how to automate a lot of stuff.
Stephen: [00:27:13] I think there’s a pro tip there. I think what you just described is what people should do even in their small little Ebay or Amazon business is if you’re doing the work document right, you know that standard operating procedure re write down all the touch points, right? Because software like yours might reduce that. Um, I know we’re going somewhere, but I just want to ask this question. Have you, have you heard feedback from people on what percentage of this has brought to their bottom line of efficiency? Because it’s, again, I’m telling you that stupid thing that I fixed this morning, this one here, here’s the. Here’s the short version. I have 100. I’m embarrassed by this 100 shipping conditions or whatever they call them. I don’t know what they call them. I have 100. I’m a shipping profiles now. Steve has never created. I think I’ve created three because they forced it upon me so and almost most of my listings are all windows. Those three right. Firstclass a priority and media mail. All the rest of them have one, two, three. But there’s 100 of them and I didn’t create them. They were just there and it got converted over for me to be able to fix these in the old way on a and e based database. It would take me a lifetime because they’re all individual. It doesn’t make it easy. I was able to fix one. It took me about six seconds to fix it on your system. Right.
Brooks: [00:28:33] I would say for the full time, and I asked this question all the time to our users, so for the full time seller out there, that’s using data mind on a daily basis, they say on average we’re saving them about two hours per day.
Stephen: [00:28:47] Wow. On top of that 25 percent of your day, if you work an eight hour day, that’s. That’s unbelievable. Right.
Brooks: [00:28:56] And on average then I asked them the revenue, how are we helping you increase revenue through delisting and relisting automation because it’s getting more exposure out there and most of the users are averaging. These are full time sellers around 500 to 600 bucks extra revenue a month. All things that just haven’t sold in let’s say half a year or greater.
Stephen: [00:29:15] And so when you, if you’ve used this for more than one year, right? And you start to scale to it, now you’re talking to some, some pretty significant on that five or $600, what revenue would that sell or be at Missouri? Is there a frame of reference? Because I assume it’s linear. I would say around 5,000 a month. Okay. So 5,000, so $60,000 a year seller could see a 10. I mean 10 percent. Yeah, 10 percent improvement in revenue without. Without adding staff. Oh wait. Hey Brooks, I got a deal for you. We’re going to grow your revenue 10 percent and listen to this. You’re going to do it in 25 percent less time. Are you in? I like that pitch. Let me write that down. It’s a real pitch though. I mean it’s because I go, wait a second because you know, you already got the person looking at your item.
Stephen: [00:30:03] How do you convert that sale? And so getting it found in the algorithm, which to me is like the Duh moment, you know, I mean to me, you guys have figured out a way to say, hey look Steve, your stuff hasn’t sold because it’s not in the algorithm. It’s no, nobody’s seeing it because Ebay rewards things that sell right logically or people that sell, they want you to sell more, right? They’re giving you the most current items, right? Is that, is that the right kind of theory? Oh yeah. They’re delivering to customers the most current version of the water bottles, not Steve’s one that’s been sitting on his thing for 180 days. So how do I get that in front? I thought now this is me thinking that my good till cancel would automatically renew that listing. Is that not correct?
Brooks: [00:30:48] No, no. That’s the thing. So that’s the, I think they want you to do good till cancelled and Ebay wants you in their platform everyday. Just how once you in mine everyday. So they reward people that are in their platform everyday by giving them higher search. But why explain that? Why? Why would they do that? Because there’s more sticky. So if you’re using ebay every day, if you’re using data mine everyday, it’s just, that’s a, you know, I would definitely reward people that are using the product everyday versus someone that’s not using the tool, let’s say once a month.
Stephen: [00:31:20] But once you want to reward me for bringing you revenue because your business model was based a percentage of my revenue sales. Excuse me. You’re right, you’re right about that. I think. But see, that’s to me. Uh, Miss. I’ve never been able to make that connection because this is me and assist and I’m not bitter about this, but I’ve always thought to myself, God, I’ve been selling on that platform for ever. We’ve, we’ve gotten zillions adult man now they’ve gotten tens of thousands of dollars in fees from us over the years. Right, right. Why wouldn’t they say, Steve, you’re important to us, therefore we’re going to give you. We respect, you know, whatever we want to help you build up your business. Like a, like almost like I would like to have an account manager that would help me and say, hey, you were one of our better sellers. You’ve done everything you’re supposed to do. You meet our standards, blah, blah, blah. Let us help you sell more cars. Therefore we benefit and it seems like a misdemeanor. But you’re saying that the squeaky wheel gets the grease?
Brooks: [00:32:17] Yeah, I think so. I mean, I’ve had the same problem. I would love an account manager because we’ve paid Ebay, you know, probably $100,000 in the past few years, but it’s almost tore the. Ebay has a big gap. It’s the only reward, the people that are doing the things right right now, not you don’t look at saying, this seller over the past 10 years has done x. they’re worth looking at, this is doing this right now, let me, how do I reward them in the algorithm and eating
Stephen: [00:32:43] well and I guess if we were honest, uh, they’re a publicly traded company that’s changed hands a whole bunch of times, got lots of different people in charge that are being measured for the quarter. They’re not being measured for the lifetime of the value of the business. It’s like how do we pay our bills this month and next month and the month after we got to make our shareholders happy. And so to be fair, that’s the world they play in. So they have that limitation. Um, so I get it. And, and again, it’s not a criticism because the platform’s unbelievable. I mean, it gives you such a giant audience. I mean the, I mean, the stuff I sell overseas, it’s crazy to think that, you know, I mean, have you thought about some of that stuff? Oh yeah. It’s mind blowing to think that you can connect with somebody to sell a pokemon card to somebody in Japan, you know, that that’s been looking for that card forever and you happen to have it because you found it at some thrift store summer. Anyway. To me, that blows my mind. All right, so, so staying back on path, um, when, when you look at the number one, uh, use of data mind, what are you seeing? What’s the number one thing that you see people are coming in and saying, oh my God, this fixes this.
Brooks: [00:33:53] It’s mainly the delisting a relisting automation. That’s if you just go to one page, is it, there’s something called the inventory summary Tab, which gives you so much information to your shipping policies, to what you’re selling, how old your inventory is. That’s like you get. I always get the wild factor for people by looking at that age.
Stephen: [00:34:12] It’s good and bad. It’s embarrassing when you look at it and you see how much do you have over 180 days though it doesn’t make you, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a slap in the face. It’s like a wakeup
Brooks: [00:34:23] right? But I get more information about that one page that I’d do the seller hub. And that was the whole goal. Like Chris Lenny said, Brooks, if you can just create me one page that is so actionable to help me, you know, that’s worth, you know, 10 bucks a month. So that one page, there’s all about how you create good action to help drive future sales.
Stephen: [00:34:44] And it’s a velocity issue, right? So your inventory by summary, by days, since last sale, it’s a velocity issue, right? It’s showing you how long that inventory’s been sitting, um, uh, watches average watch, it’s showing you I’m average days of selling average sales price, which is very strong, is showing. And if I go down, right? So that’s a velocity issue and I can click on each one of those and we’ll talk about that in a second. How we can, how we can list that because I agree with you, but then it also gives me this, this other thing, inventory summary by store category name. So is this an opportunity? Because if, if store categories are important, and I’m not saying they are, I don’t know. Um, and maybe you could tell me, is this an opportunity to fix these other things too? And it’s saying, hey, if you want to have the best listing, these are the things that you need to deal with,
Brooks: [00:35:32] right? Yeah. I think a more going with the, showing all the categories and things
Brooks: [00:35:38] like that. I want to know myself through rate per ebay category. Oh Great. So basically I want to be able to give our users the ability on what not to buy. You don’t want to be buying things that all move. So if you knew your sell through rate by category, that would help you, you know, basically on the procurement piece. And then we move over and we see inventory summary by conditions. Right? And so that’s again what you’re saying, it’s an exact example, right? You want to know, hey, if I’m buying all these things and these are all acceptable and they’re not selling, I’m steve stopped buying acceptable items, right? Yep. Okay. So answer me this, why do I have 98 percent of mine showing is not a side. However, I’ve never put a listing in without a condition. Ever. Ever, ever.
Brooks: [00:36:24] How do you clicked on the. Not Assigned? No, because it’s 5,000 items do, but it’s just, it’s just odd to me again, is this where the database was so old and it got converted, you know, probably three times. I hate to say how old that listing is. It’s old. I’m the first one that comes up. Is that likely what’s happened is that they’ve changed fields over the years and, and therefore it’s not getting recognized. That could be. Yeah. Okay, okay. Alright. Painful. But again, is this an opportunity to fix this, right? I mean, does this one of those things. Let me ask you this, do you recommend to sellers to go in and start addressing each one of these if they want to be, if they want to get the optimal revenue from their items? Yes, that’s exactly what I do. So this right here is eye opening when you first get to this page and the software, but then it’s like how do you clean it up and then how do you manage it going forward.
Brooks: [00:37:16] So a good example would be, I will always recommend users to delist and realist everything that hasn’t sold in six months or greater and then under just a monthly basis, just keep doing that, you know, and then work on your things that haven’t sold within 90 slash 61 to 90 days. And that way it’s just get into a good rhythm because eventually the, I guess the top sellers would not have things in those outer categories because they’ve optimized them in theory. Yes. Would you say the investment of time, um, is that where the 10 percent came from? You know, is that when you think back to the people that have gone through and saw that huge improvement, they’ve put their head down and just crunch through all this stuff to get to that level? Or have you seen people like instantly make a few changes and then boom, they automatically seal, saw those results? I think for the users that are using our accounting piece as well, it’s instant gratification, you know, because they didn’t really have any process at all around that and then now we give them a tool to be able to say, well that that is very sexy because you gave me the ability to finally put my cost of goods in a place that I could actually get it back out of.
Brooks: [00:38:32] Correct. Yeah. You can see how profitably are per item shipped
Brooks: [00:38:36] on anything
Stephen: [00:38:37] and when, when you seen businesses now, because will it calculate cost of goods for you at the year end? Yes. Dude, this is that finance degree coming in, isn’t it? Was this a pain point for your wife?
Brooks: [00:38:51] I’m not so much. I mean, which song is very. I mean he basically, he’s almost like a CPA as well, so I’m the seller out there that I had my margin up. If I know my margins, you know, 70, 80 percent, I’m probably not going to want to know my profitability per item. So. So we also give you the ability just to do lump sum journal transactions and journal entries to where you know you can do a p and l still at each individual month. Can you get
Stephen: [00:39:17] actually get a, a balance sheet out of the two or just a peanut, just p and l or just a p and l. and then will this create a file that I can upload to my quickbooks or something like that?
Brooks: [00:39:28] Not at this moment. The goal is to get off quickbooks. Ah,
Stephen: [00:39:34] well, I mean, again, I guess if you’re only selling on Ebay, why get that big complicated thing with quickbooks, right? If you’re not in, especially if you don’t have payroll and if it’s just a simple small business. However, when you scale up you, you got responsibilities. Some of those take a little more complicated county. However it looks like you can make some journal entries in your system to put in some additional costs. Correct?
Brooks: [00:39:56] Absolutely. So you can put in expenses and revenue from other platforms as well. So if you sell on poshmark or Bacara, you can do that as well. And put them in here and we pull all your Ebay revenue and expenses and paypal. That’s just, that’s done to us. But other platforms you can do that manually.
Stephen: [00:40:13] How are you addressing? Ebay’s got moving to their own or somebody else’s. I’m a payment system, not pay pal. It’s something else.
Brooks: [00:40:25] Yeah, from the, from the back end where we talk to the API is not really changing anything. Okay. Which is good.
Stephen: [00:40:34] Okay. All right. So it’ll just be. Instead of saying pay pal will say whatever the other thing is. Okay. As they move around and it’ll probably change two or three times now. Um, I’m looking through some of the pages and I’m looking at customer tab. What’s the thinking about customers? Um, I get the concept of loyal customers, but what’s the concept of customers? What’s, what’s, what was the thinking that we need this page four.
Brooks: [00:40:58] If you’re that user that every month or every quarter you would go in and pay pal. Dunk transaction was copy and paste the data, their emails, all that stuff. This is the page that takes away that need. So what would somebody be doing with that data? Taking that and creating their own marketing campaigns off of it. So you know, this, these customers bought this type of product. I want to try to up sell them to why type of product. That’s the kind of stuff that’s only. We started out 100 percent on Ebay and now over time 70 percent of our revenue is driven directly paypal.
Brooks: [00:41:34] So you know, most sellers out there, he might sell three or four different platforms. We don’t do that. We sell on one, one or two platforms and then the other piece is just doing B to b cells directly to paypal. It’s huge. Saves a lot of money. So directly through paypal, meaning that you’re selling it on your own website or somehow marketing to them? Yeah. Selling and you know, I would say, Hey, I saw you purchased this hard drive five times from us. How about you one? I got 20 more. How about you just want to go directly.
Stephen: [00:42:07] Customers I think is very interesting where I get to see customers that have purchased more than one item from
Brooks: [00:42:14] um, that’s, that’s cool. Like I’ve never known that somebody has bought, I mean, unless I caught it, you know, so if they bought at one time, that’s pretty helpful. Right. What, what does that help? What was your thinking there? What was that? Is that then you would look at what products they bought and you’d say, okay, there’s a demand here, but imagine looking at a Hayden shipped orders on Ebay and within one second being able to identify repeat bar so you can do that when they didn’t mind by looking at your orders. And then I just wanted a very fast way of once a week I would look through all my transactions and try to identify my repeat customers. So that’s kind of thing and that was the thinking there.
Stephen: [00:42:55] And so as I move along and I start looking along, the dashboard just blows my mind because immediately I see just so much activity as, as you said, like Chris said, hey, I need one page where I could see everything I want and I can make my decisions here. This is a very strong place. Um, with uh, uh, my daily workflow, sales report, accounting revenue report, Ebay post transactions and custom report, How sacred is that space? I remember talking to somebody who developed Amazon’s homepage and he said they competed. All these unique departments wanted space on that page because, you know, but he said it was such sacred territory, you know, that was, that was real strong real estate that everybody wanted on. How about for you guys?
Brooks: [00:43:39] Oh, it’s extremely, I mean the most importance we have a lot of work to do on our dashboard tab. So Dashboard Tab is just taking the best metrics possible and making it, you know, easily actionable for the ebay seller. So we have a lot of work to do on that,
Stephen: [00:43:54] but it’s so cool to see my revenue in one simple place, my year to date revenue in one simple place. And you want to see that? I’d love to see a hockey stick. I don’t, I see a long, but it’s a gradient. I mean, it, it definitely is going up. Um, and then the new postings, I think this is another huge, huge opportunity and I don’t remember who started it, but there’s a thing out there, I know if you follow any of these guys who do this momentum program where basically a year, uh, the, your, your listing as many as you can, sending a goal, we do it as a financial target rather than a number of items, but you’re setting it and our sales have exploded because of it. I think we listed 75,000 in three months worth of listings, which is enormous on Ebay and you see it correlate to higher sales. Right? And again, I think as you would say, it’s because you’re active in the database, Steve, that’s why you’re seeing those results. Right? Right.
Speaker 5: [00:44:44] That’s a good point. That’s why we put those two charts together. So if you start seeing your revenue slide the minute, you shouldn’t be thinking immediately, Oh, let me get my exposure out there and create great new listings. So that’s kind of stuff that I would monitor. And then I would say to my wife, hey, we need to create more, you know, listings out there because our revenues dipping
Stephen: [00:45:03] well. And, and, and logically, that’s the place to invest, right? So if you’re sitting here, because this is one of the hard parts of this business is there’s so many moving pieces to it. It’s like, where do I invest? Do I source more, do I list more, do I, uh, you know, ship better, I guess I don’t know about that, but, but logically, so this tells you right there, you know, if you want to source more, that’s great. If it’s sitting there not getting listed, it’s not helping you. So that’s not the place you need to go. You need to list more and look at the correlation. And then the other thing is it’s, it’s probably there’s a math formula. You can say, Hey, if I increase this number of listings, I saw a 25 percent increase in sales. If my sales are x, I could expect this of dollar amount. Therefore, if I have to spend this amount of money to get that dollar amount, that’s a good return, right? Absolutely.
Speaker 5: [00:45:49] Yeah. The future of data mining could be to where when you first get into data mind you say, my revenue goal is x, and obviously we can look at your sales cycle, we can look at your asp and we can start guiding you into a journey to say, hey, for you to hit your revenue target of 10,000 this month, I need to increase your inventory exposure by 25 percent because your asp is only 45 bucks, you know, on average right now, imagine a tool that helped you make decisions like that.
Stephen: [00:46:18] Yeah. You’re basically saying, Steve, you know, we’re measuring it against best practice. This is always where I’d like to go. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. There are people way smarter than me. I’m going to measure myself against them. Not just one offs, but a whole group of people that are best practice and then you can see that Delta, that gap, and then I address it to him. He would help her business enormously. Now I haven’t seen a business model yet for you guys, you know, and I don’t know when you’re dropping that, um, but at this point it’s a free service, right? It’s to get people hooked and see the quality and, and as you build it out, which I think is very, very smart because you’re getting people to help make a decision about something, they’re going to be invested. Right. That’s fair. What, what type of business model do you foresee with data mine? Is it a revenue sharing? Is it a flat fee? Is it a scale based on transactions or usage?
Speaker 5: [00:47:11] It’s going to be a three tier model and the models are going to probably start out as January one will be going into more of a pain model with the three tiered structure, the lowest tier structures for that small, small seller that wants to look at all their orders, wants to do their accounting, wants to do their tracking,
Brooks: [00:47:30] you know, that’s going to be that, that first tier right there. The second tier is going to be more if you want to do more inventory automation and the highest tier is going to be the whole delisting a relisting, uh, features as well. Have you, um, I don’t know whether you’re ready to commit at this point. Have you guys, you know, put a framework to what a costs likely would be. So we’re going to go for a, for Q, one of next year. We’re going to be offering basically promotional pricing and it’s going to start in the 20, 30, 40, depending on what tier you go in and that’s per month.
Stephen: [00:48:05] So not a revenue share and not a percentage of sales or anything like that, which is me, I think about Amazon. That’s one of the big challenges. Any of the large inventory companies.
Brooks: [00:48:15] Percentage, right? Yeah, we did. We wanted to stay away from them. That’s just not fair to the seller and a little thing. Yeah. Yeah. And so that promotional price, is that for your, your initial customers, the ones that, that, that kind of go in, that charter group. Anyone that signs up before March 31st.
Stephen: [00:48:33] Okay. Okay. And then you’ll raise it to what it would be. Would or are you going to honor that price then for a period of time? Yes. Then you get locked into that price like forever. Forever. Dude, that’s a long time. Now as you roll out other services, do they automatically get grandfathered in that charter group? Yes. Oh, all right. So there’s the reason to join. First off, it’s free, right? And uh, right now, um, and if somebody comes in and they try it and they see, wow, this is awesome, but I’m doing nothing with it, I’m not going to take action on it. You’re presenting me, thinks I should take action, but I’m lazy. Right? Broke some. I’m just lazy. I’m not doing it to it. Right. It’s cool, but I’m not going to do it. It’s just a side hustle for me. It’s, it’s just not going to be something I want to invest.
Stephen: [00:49:19] A lot of time they get out of it, there’s nothing to them, right? It doesn’t affect their account. They just deactivate your access to their email account. Absolutely. You just deactivate is done. Okay. So there’s, there’s a reason that you want to join and again, if you ever have an interest in this because you know what’s cool to me is just getting started and when you have smart people like a Chrysalis and some of these other really strong analytical type of sellers helping advise you and to say, Hey, these are other pain points. Could you address this in the simple way? Um, without emotion. Again, I think the thing that’s most attractive with your company to me is that you guys are not emotional about Ebay. Um, in a, in a weird way. And like, you, you get what I mean? In a weird way. I think so, no, I mean you guys are sellers, but you’re not like, it’s not a romantic thing.
Stephen: [00:50:05] It’s like, Hey, this is a great platform. We love it. It’s great. Now we can get the most from it. We’re getting data, we can take action, we can increase our sales instead of, wow, you know, the old way we did things and this is why. And now, yeah, that’s exactly how we are. Okay. So what’s next for you guys? I mean, I, I sit there and I think about, you know, the number one thing, the data mining, right? So where you’re taking data out and you’re saying Steve relisted, um, you’re pointing to me, hey, these are the problems with your problem, these are the opportunities with your listings. You can improve this. So first one is check d list to increase sales. Second one is, hey, these are the opportunities because your listings, I have some weirdness going on. Check, that’s another revenue opportunity. Again, that seems to be a common theme accounting so you can see profitability per item, so you can again stop buying certain things. Check, that’s all revenue driven. Um, what else is next?
Speaker 5: [00:51:02] So early 2019, we’re probably going to be looking at consignment teachers. So some of our users are paying 100 bucks a month or I can sign it tool, that’s, you know, which is ridiculous. And I think that they’re a consigner for somebody else’s product. Yes. And how do they track how they got the product? Who gave it to them? What percent do they pay out to him post sale? So given the functionality to do all that with inside data mine,
Stephen: [00:51:30] do you see the ability to then have that revenue split a shared with that other person or. Um, I mean because accounting wise it’s right there just writing a check to somebody and so your system can handle that it sounds like. But do you see the ability eventually you guys would link back through pay pal to have that revenue shot across or something like that and make payments from your system?
Speaker 5: [00:51:50] Oh, that’s a good point. We do have the capability of doing that. Yep. Oh, you do have the right now you have the capability right now we do. It’s not built into the product, but do the fact as long as they’re using paypal to do, to pay out people, then that shouldn’t be a problem.
Stephen: [00:52:06] Well, could you see the. And let’s just stay on that then a consignment model where. Okay. Brooks and I, I, I sent brooks a bunch of stuff and you’re keeping, you know, 30 percent and I’m taking 60 percent of net. Could you actually flag that in the system? So the payment, the accounting gets sent to me.
Speaker 5: [00:52:22] Yes. Yelling. Yeah. What we’re doing right now is just trying to find, you know, 10 to 15 consignment users and then once, then we have weekly meetings with them. So we built out every case possible. So you’re still looking for people for that? Yes.
Stephen: [00:52:38] Hmm. Okay. So if you’re interested in that, they’re going to reach out me and I’ll have a link for um, to get in touch with you. Um, okay. So what else is next? What other places do you see? Opportunities?
Speaker 5: [00:52:52] Um, I see opportunities in marketing, so cross-marketing on maybe facebook marketplace, cross marketing on plush mark. I think that’s going to be big. Um, you know, we, Ebay says they spent so much money in marketing, but I want to give our users the ability to say, Hey, I want to cross markets like Ebay store products on a facebook campaign, targeted promotion to this type of demographic of people. I think that nbn bail be, own able to do that automatically would be pretty cool. I think again with your philosophy is
Stephen: [00:53:26] that sounds like another opportunity to raise revenues. You know, it’s interesting as I sit back and listen to this conversation and it, but you have a whole bunch of other people picked up on it to almost every single thing you guys are doing is trying to gain revenue. Either gain revenue or save your time. Dude, that’s the, that’s the approach that’s missing. That’s that, that you know, and I guess that’s, that’s you, that project manager, that person who’s seeing it all the way through. That’s really why you have that eye for it and I’m assuming your partner does too. That’s very, very cool. All right, what else would you like people to know about your system? What else did I not emphasize enough? That listing and delisting thing. I hope people get that. What he’s saying is look, Ebay right now, today, they’re algorithm rewards. At least we believe because they’re not gonna share it with you. They believe you believe that they reward the squeaky wheel, the person who’s got the most time in the system. So therefore you need to be active in it and your system will take down what? Twenty five and reenlist 25 a day. Yes, and that will keep you, because if you do 25 transactions a day, that’s pretty active.
Speaker 5: [00:54:32] Yes, exactly. That’s why we do that. So as it’s making, it’s making it look like you’re in Ebay every day making those tweaks and adjustments.
Stephen: [00:54:39] It if you sent in 2000 it would probably shut you down and say, Whoa, something’s wrong. Right. Nobody can physically do that.
Speaker 5: [00:54:46] Um, I don’t, I don’t think that’s going to be a huge flag, but you know, we, ea only allows companies like us to talk to them so many times now.
Stephen: [00:54:54] Okay. That makes more sense. Okay. Alright. That makes more sense. And so you have limited ability to get in. And so then is your advice, if that’s the truth or the 25 that I choose. So I have 371 listings in that. Um, what did I say in that category that are sitting out there, right? That are over 180 days a raw or 90 to 100, whatever it is in there. Is that the group that I want to address first?
Speaker 5: [00:55:21] Yes, exactly. Yup.
Stephen: [00:55:22] Okay. And will the, how does the 25 of that group get chosen? Which 25 gets really delisted and relisted the first ones in that section? The first one in that section. Okay. So is the smart move then to sort it differently and then maybe go for your higher dollar amounts because of this time of year and you want to get as much Christmas stuff out there as you can or is there, is there a way to manipulate it differently?
Speaker 5: [00:55:47] Yeah, you can, you can sort it by either a custom label or store category, however you want to do it. So you can sort of buy a elapsed days since sold. So that’s Kinda how I prioritize it. But let’s say you want to only do a certain category, you can do that as well. Okay. Alright.
Stephen: [00:56:04] Um, what else would you like to let people know? Because to me, again, I’m going for that. To me these are, there are three. I’m addressing three things. One is obviously to get these, these listings delisted in relisted, right? Because there’s your, that’s the easiest, lowest hanging fruit, right? To get back in there. Second, I’m going right after is getting rid of 96 shipping, um, uh, plants because I assume that makes it messy for Ebay’s algorithm to. I can’t imagine that’s good for them that I have 96. Why have 100 but I’m going to keep for, but I can get rid of 96 of them. That’s messy, right? And I imagine that makes it harder for customers and just weirdness all the way around,
Speaker 5: [00:56:43] right? I’ll say one really cool thing that saves me hours. Uh, using data. Mine your Ebay wants you to promote everything will go, whether it be through promoted listings or markel manager and they don’t really give you the ability, they only give you the ability to, to really promote or mark down the entire category, but certain things in the category, you know, still a lot better than other items in your category. So with data mine basically you can export all of your inventory into an excel file and you can filter by elapsed time or you can filter by custom labor whatever you want. So that way you can do a targeted marketing promotion on Ebay within under probably 45 seconds because I want to only promote things that haven’t sold in x amount of time.
Speaker 6: [00:57:31] Hm.
Stephen: [00:57:32] Does that, does that make sense? I think so, yeah. I think. I think you want to again, take advantage of a man. No. Say it again. Say it again because I don’t think I did get it.
Speaker 5: [00:57:44] So I want to do a promotion or promoted listing in Ebay for only items that haven’t sold in, let’s say a half a year.
Stephen: [00:57:54] Okay. So there’d been sitting there. It’s stale, it’s just stale inventory.
Speaker 5: [00:57:57] Still inventory for you to do that. Ebay and I did this before we automated it. It took me three hours in data mine. It can take you less than a minute.
Speaker 6: [00:58:07] Hmm.
Speaker 5: [00:58:10] So that’s one thing
Stephen: [00:58:12] I’m sitting here thinking about that. One of the other things that blew my mind was the sales by state because of the sales tax issue that’s out there. Right. People are worried and concerned about number of transactions or dollar amounts and things like that. I’ve never seen this data like we run our own state because we pay sales, sex interstate, right? I’ve never seen this. The ability to know where my products are selling. Fascinating.
Speaker 5: [00:58:36] Yes. And we do the same thing for country as well. So if you want to know what revenues generating out of a certain country, you know, that real time now,
Stephen: [00:58:45] dude, you’ve addressed a so many different issues. Um, and to me what’s exciting is you’re just getting started and I just, again, I can’t imagine where you’re going because you’ve already taken it so far. Is this very, very cool. Yeah, I mean that, uh, I really do. Okay. So let’s. People are interested in finding out more information now. Let me see. You did give me a link. Um, and it’s a sign up link. I have a sign up link and I’m going to send it A. I’m going to put it on this episode, um, for people that want to get there was no cost to you to come in. Um, and if you eventually do pay, I do benefit if you use this link. So I, I just always clear about that upfront because I, you know, and so you don’t need to use this link if you want to get in to sign up for data mined with two eyes and you can do that, but it would help me out and help me on the podcast and so I have that link so I would appreciate it. I’ll put this on that episode. Um, any other thing that you’re seeing or you’re not interfacing with other companies at this point? You’re not doing poshmark or macquarie or any of those at this point? Not yet. Is that something, I mean, assuming that crosses your mind and you would love to be able to do.
Speaker 5: [00:59:54] Yeah, I think that’s going to be. We just partnered with one of the largest clothing manufacturers in the US, so we’re getting a thousands of clothing. It basically consignment and he says like new attack stuff. So now that we’re forcing ourselves into the clothing space, I’m trying to act more as far as a company. Me As a company, yes. Oh dear God, your poor wife. But it’s a good thing. It’s all renewables and it’s know from college were to marvel’s, so Walt Disney quote, I mean it’s just a libertarian thing,
Stephen: [01:00:26] but you couldn’t have done this. I mean, think about this. I mean as a, as you say that if you didn’t have this, it would be overwhelming, wouldn’t it?
Speaker 5: [01:00:35] Oh yes, absolutely.
Stephen: [01:00:36] I mean it would be one of those things that would probably be like, no, it’s just too big. It’s too big for us. We couldn’t manage it because it’s the. It’s not that you can’t pack and ship. That part’s not that hard. It’s this part. It’s knowing what’s profit and what’s not getting an old listed and all the rest of that jazz and you guys have been addressed so much of that.
Speaker 5: [01:00:54] Right, and were the kind of company to where if 50 percent or 70 percent of our users are in a certain category, I’m going to want to sell in that category to feel the pain that they’re feeling. So that’s, that’s the oer
Stephen: [01:01:06] and so that it helps you. Have you ever thought about addressing the listing limitations that are out there? Because it is a challenge sometimes to do scaled listings.
Speaker 5: [01:01:14] So when that, when I look at I’m a little different one that would have looked at creating a listing feature, that means I’m going to compete against ink frog and uh, there’s so many different companies out there to do that. I say either I create a listing feature or can I help our users find renewable products? So my, one of my top initiatives for 2019 is how do I help our users find renewables? That way they’re not having to list, you know, 101 offs. They just have to list 10 things
Stephen: [01:01:44] and by, by narrowing down. So Steve can see what really sells. He’s going to narrow his focus. He’s going to say no more than he says yes and therefore he’s going to sell similar items, right? Because I know where I’m making my bread and butter. Exactly. I think too, if you can add value to it, I think Prague is doing a decent job with it and you can’t really enhance it or add a lot of value. Why waste your time there? I think that’s another real. That’s a real point. I mean, because you have limited resources, right? You can only have so much attention. Dude. I am. I am blown away. This is really terrific. Um, I think you’re advancing our business. Could see it. I can, I can see it. I’m telling you as I sit back I can see a huge advancement in our business and making it easier.
Stephen: [01:02:25] And, and I just had somebody on who was talking about their warehouse by making it more efficient. It was Perry Kauflin was talking to. He was able to find 25 percent more efficiency in his existing warehouse, therefore he didn’t have to go up and warehouse size. And so the pain of moving and all the cost and this is exactly the same thing I can sell. I don’t have to make more listings to sell 10 percent more and gained 25 percent more time. Dude. It’s huge. It’s really huge. Okay. Alright. So it’s data mined with two eyes and a brooks. If somebody has a follow up question, what’s the best way to get in touch with you?
Speaker 5: [01:03:00] You can find me on facebook and best buy trying to go to our data mine Beta user group, so just type that in or you can email me@dataminewithtwoeyesatGmail.com.
Stephen: [01:03:10] G Mail.com. Okay, and I’ll put that out there and again, I’m going to have the link for signing up a. it’s a Beta group. It’s a charter group. You get in, you’re going to lock in your price. I’m already on it and a reach out to me if you need help because I’m starting to figure it out and it’s like it’s so exciting for me. The goal of the podcast is to help people move forward. So you know, I always have asked that question, what’s your best advice? Because you’ve seen so many different sellers, you’ve seen the best and the worst. What’s your advice that you still give out and plus you bend a seller for so long and a successful seller. What’s your best advice to help people get past stuck?
Speaker 5: [01:03:48] The best advice would be it’s not about selling, it’s about buying. So if you can find a niche of buyers who want a product, you can then they see it become their buying source for them, so you would never have to even leave your house to do retail arbitrage. So that is the key. We do a lot of that at the business here are the other business.
Stephen: [01:04:08] So it’s really identifying what you’re going to sell and then your time is finding those products for that because you’ve already figured out that the buyers are there and you’re meeting their needs. A dude’s smart. Very, very cool. Well, I thank you so much. I wish you nothing but success. Oh, thank you so much for coming on the show. I mean, what a great guy. What a great company. Again, it’s, it’s, uh, focusing on uh, Ebay today. Join, um, I have a link and again, it is an affiliate link and there’s no fee. So at this point it really didn’t cost you anything but um, that would help me out and help out the podcast and I have it on this episode a sign up because you’ll get locked into that price for life. He committed to it for life, so, um, you know, those of us who have been paying these other companies forever and yet you’re not utilizing their system.
Stephen: [01:04:52] This is something that a whole bunch of really smart Ebay sellers, like a Chrysalis and a whole bunch of other people have helped direct and, and, and, and point out the problems that they have in this data. A data mining dashboard, for example. I can see all those new listings and then the correlation to my ebay transactions after it. You want to talk about a kick in the butt and an incentive to do more because you see it working. Phenomenal. So smart. Um, come check it out. Data mined with two eyes again and um, and if you use my link, that would be awesome. If you don’t, I understand. I’m, I’m cool with that too. I just want to see you improve your business. ECOMMERCE momentum.com, ecommerce momentum.com. Take care.
Cool voice guy: [01:05:32] Thanks for listening to the incomers momentum podcast. All the links mentioned today can be found at incomers momentum. Doug, come under this episode number. Please remember to subscribe and the lake us on itunes.
