From Spare Change to Success: How to Start Selling on eBay and Amazon with No Money.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: From Debt to Millions

2. Selling Your Stuff: Turning Assets into Cash

3. Doubling Your Dime: Leveraging Small Investments

4. Yard Sales and Online Listings: Maximizing Your Reach

5. Arbitrage: Buying Low, Selling High

6. Private Label Products: Building Your Own Brand

7. Solving Real vs. Perceived Problems

8. The Power of Passive Income

9. Overcoming Obstacles and Embracing Entrepreneurship

10. Conclusion: Your Path to Financial Freedom

**The Journey from Debt to Millions**

🚀 Introduction: From Debt to Millions

You have to spend money to make money, but you need to have money to spend money. So if you're starting out with only spare change as your seed money, do not give in to hopelessness. Today, I'm going to show you exactly how to start selling products on eBay and Amazon without saying goodbye to a single dime. Today, I'm going to show you how I got started on my journey from being $24,000 in debt to becoming a multi-millionaire.

We weren't really living, we were surviving. Because Seth would work so much, we couldn't hang out with him as much as we are able to do now. It was challenging. It was hard. But now I have multiple passive income machines that make me money while I am sleeping. These are the three exact steps that brought me to where I am today.

🛒 Selling Your Stuff: Turning Assets into Cash

First, I sold everything I didn't need. A lot of what I accumulated over the years were wants, not needs. I thought: "Do I really need this metal stool?" I mean, it was nice to have, but did I need it? No. So I sold it. I found stuff in my home I didn't need. And instead, I turned it into cash. For example, I had a suit for just in case. But how often would I really need a suit? I didn't have the money to go to formal restaurants, snap my fingers and go: "Oh, excuse me, garçon, I would like another plate of caviar." So instead of something useful, this suit was like a $100 bill just sitting in the closet.

Then it clicked in my brain. My stuff wasn't just stuff. It was assets. I had these assets all over the house. They weren't doing anything for me, so I made them work for me. Now I could turn that stuff into money that could help me make more money in the future.

💰 Doubling Your Dime: Leveraging Small Investments

We asked the Kniep family and a friend who knew me very well, what was it like to go from $24,000 in debt to having millions of dollars? My mom, she would get, she would focus on hunting coupons like all the time. She would look at cereal boxes and try to get the best deals at different like grocery stores and clothing stores in order to save as much money as possible. Being in debt, I remember going to the grocery store and pulling out my debit card, trying to buy groceries, and my debit card wouldn't work. And just the devastation of that there's no money in the account and I can't get groceries. There were a couple Christmases where we couldn't get gifts for our kids. It was hard.

I know the Kniep's were in debt, and I know it affected them greatly. They had an old Honda van And it had a horrible oil leak and of course, it's going to be really expensive and… I would try to help them because I knew, you know, with all the kids and the finances and Seth was doing everything he could. He worked crazy hours.

If you don't have cash and need cash, do what I did. By the way, at the same time, I started another project where I started asking total strangers to double my dime. All right, guys. So we are going out and we are going to start an experiment. We're going to see what we can do with a single dime by investing it. So I remember the day that Seth said he was going to double his dime. And he literally took a dime and he went downtown and he started talking to business owners and asked them: "Hey, this is what I'm doing. I want to double my dime. So I can get to X amount of dollars so I can sell online." And as an introvert, that freaking scared me half to death. I can't imagine doing that, just walking up to strangers and be like: "Hey, you want to double my dime?" And then he got to a few hundred dollars. And then he used that chunk of money to buy products to start selling, and it goes to show you, like, you can literally do anything.

When Seth was doubling his dime, I was the one that was behind the camera, filming on like on iPod. And then eventually, like an old iPhone. I felt like it was like a really cool adventure and interesting thing that he was going out just asking people to double his dime. There was another person, a store owner of a restaurant called 'Pfranks Hot Dogs'. The frank was spelled P-F-R-A-N-K. The owner actually started running his own company recently, so he kind of related to Seth in that way because Seth was, you know, on the path of figuring out what he needs to do and work for himself. So they kind of related that way, which I thought was really cool. He didn't see it as a crazy idea. He saw it as a journey not only to make money, but to interact with people, engage and have this experience. This experience is going to be him and I growing together.

Instead of thinking of your assets as these static things make them work for you. Go into your living room, your bedroom, your front porch. Pick up a random object and say: "OK, how much is it selling for on Amazon or eBay?" And if you don't have any money and don't know how to get started? Start selling things you have because you need cash in order to generate cash.

🛍️ Yard Sales and Online Listings: Maximizing Your Reach

Selling our stuff, I became a lot less sentimental because I had to let go of a lot of things in my life. A lot of actual things. I knew one guy who had over 100 DVDs just sitting around his house. He just started to sell on Amazon. And I said: "Look, do you realize how much money you could turn those into if you sold them?" You can use that money to purchase other things and eventually create passive income, when you set up businesses that are working for you instead of you working for them.

So we went on eBay and we searched for one of the movies 'a walk to remember' Twelve units had sold the previous week for $5 each. Now I know that doesn't sound like much, but if you had over 100 DVDs and you can make $5 each minus a couple of bucks for shipping, that's $300, they're not being watched. Why not turn that into cash?

I would say more than money it was mindset. I cleaned, I dusted, I repaired everything I wanted to sell so they could command even more value. Nobody wants to buy a creaky bike with spider eggs under the seat, but with a dust rag and a little WD-40, you can sell a dream to someone who needs exactly that item. If you have items that aren't ready to go without buying something else, like a lamp that needs a replacement cord, then price them accordingly. Now, don't forget to make buyers aware of the product's flaws before they buy. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it's going to build trust and prepares you to overdeliver for your online customers in the future.

And don't be scared to display items that might be stained or cracked. I mean, local theaters and artists, they are hunting for deals like these, specifically, because their work needs to be on a budget. Maybe your wacky burger tie isn't going to see another boardroom, but it just might make a comeback in a high school play.

I advertised all the stuff online. The online market space is like, no kidding, hundreds of times larger than it was back when I did this in 2014. Your opportunity today is so much bigger than mine was. You had eBay, Amazon and Craigslist, but today you also have Facebook Marketplace, Nextdoor, OfferUp, letgo and a ton more. Make sure the listings you create include daylight pictures, multiple angles, size comparison shots. Photos are the number one part of an online listing that sells the product. I mean it's amazing if you think about the things we learned just from selling stuff we had or buying and reselling from yard sales, how we learn to sell the stuff online, prepared us for building an Amazon store for the future. Also include things like model numbers, dimensions and other relevant details, when you create that listing. You have so much more reach today than the old school yard sale.

Now, speaking of yard sales, we hosted yard sales with everything that didn't sell online. Garage sales were so fun. They were exhausting, but they were fun. It was a whole family event. All the kids were involved. I just remember making money, making good memories and selling crap. It was amazing. It totally impacted our marriage and it helped us to be more in sync and the health of our marriage grew from that point on.

If you hold a yard sale, putting a sign on your yard the day of the sale is not going to cut it. I mean, just the other day I walked out of my house, our neighbors have a yard sale, there's not even a sign, there's just stuff. You want to take the time to make it nice, to present it well and to advertise it well. Make sure you're putting clear, easy to read signs at intersections, community hubs, bulletin boards with your dates, times and address front and center. Yellow is the best color with black ink on top, so like a big yellow board or a yellow poster and you write it with the black felt pen. The earlier you put up signs on a Saturday, the more people you will get coming to your garage sale. And so we had to wake up really early and I'm never a morning person, so that was really difficult for me. We would draw like, write down the directions on them, drive through the neighborhood, and that would take like an hour to two hours. Usually, we did it in the summer. I don't know why we did garage sales in the summer, which is like the most hot because we live in Austin. The family would take turns managing the cash register to make sure like no one steals money, and that way, the rest of the family can like cool off and then we would switch. And so that was difficult. But when I think back on it and in those moments, I also appreciate the hard work that I learned to do throughout that garage sale and the selling process.

Make sure your signs go up at least 24 hours in advance, but no more than a week. That way, people have time to prepare, but not so much time that your sign fades into the background or their everyday lives get really caught up before the big day. Make the yard sale as nice as in experience as possible. For example, set up an extension cord so customers can test electronics. Pull down a shower curtain and full-length mirror for clothes. Now, if it's a hot day, why not put out a pitcher of lemonade? Make it a great experience for them. The better experience for them, the more stuff they're going to buy. Now, you don't need to invest in a card reader. But with the rise of Venmo, PayPal and Facebook Pay, you don't have to be limited by customers who aren't carrying cash. And let people know ahead of time that they have different options. Just make sure you have the setup in advanced so that your sale goes smoothly.

One thing we would do is set up a nice blanket right there on the driveway and put smaller items like teddy bears on that. Then using a shower curtain to hang clothing and organize it by men's, women's, children's, teenagers. Then tables for our physical hard stuff or higher value pieces. So that if you drive by, you can't help but notice something significant is going on here.

Well, at the time that we were selling stuff in our house, I was little, so I would kind of join along and sell like my stuffed animals and stuff and make a profit. So in that sense, I got a young taste for selling products and doing sales and making money. For anything that didn't sell, I would go door to door and sell it to my neighbors. Sometimes it was people who didn't know me. I'd knock: "Hey, you don't know me, but would you like to buy this? We just had a yard sale. We thought, you'd appreciate this. We're doing this at a huge discount." It was a little uncomfortable, but it needed to be done. The experience actually helped me to become a better salesperson, which also helped my future business on Amazon. I always felt like sad for him whenever someone would say no, but he would keep going. He wouldn't stop. He didn't give up, which was really cool. So Seth is very much about solving problems, overcoming. He is not a quitter. He's relentless. I mean, he just pounds away like nobody I've ever seen. OK. This is the kind of hustle, the kind of mindset you need to have if you're going to build a business on Amazon.

The most precious moments for me was when I got to bring my youngest daughter with me when she was doing a fundraiser for her school. So we would do a double deal. We would go together, I would sell my stuff, she would do her fundraiser and together we were able to succeed at our goals. So he was selling these watches with like a Minecraft character face on it. I specifically remember that. So when I would go to sell my stuff for school and raise money, he would come with me and sell these Minecraft watches. So if they don't like this, they can buy this. Win-win.

We put together a six step PDF graphic. That will walk you through six things you can do to build cash fast. Just go to jod.com/fast or click the link below.

🤑 Arbitrage: Buying Low, Selling High

Second thing we did, I took the cash that I earned from selling my stuff to sell products via arbitrage. Arbitrage is where you buy products on the cheap and sell them somewhere else, like Amazon or eBay at a higher price. He found a niche on eBay. That's where he started that no one else was selling. And then he just got in there and started fulfilling them himself. Seth, didn't let things get to him, he just always found a way to adapt to, how can I take things that aren't important, resell them to get the capital, so I could invest and start my future?

So if you notice a product is selling for $5 on Walmart.com, but $20 on eBay, you can pocket the difference after paying the eBay fees. I know Seth doesn't do things by the seat of his pants. If the numbers aren't there, he's not going to do it. I mean, I know that. If that takes another month of looking for that product or that niche, he's going to do it. Let me give you an example. Here's some eBay sale screenshots from back then for this Sperry Women's Songfish Boat Shoes. Shoes like this sell so well. If you find them for a lower price and can resell them, I'm talking brand item stuff on eBay or Amazon, you can make really good money. Then use that money to buy more products via arbitrage. Use the money you get from one product to sell two. Use that money to buy four and your cash continues to grow and grow as you reinvest and reinvest and you build that out. You don't have any excuses to not start selling online. You can start with nothing and double that and keep going over time.

We were able to pay off our house, which was unbelievable to me. We had never been able to do that before. And so that was incredible. And still, like I remember us paying off our house and being like: "This is real." When we started to travel and meet people and see this amazing world, that's when I really started to feel the impact of: "Wow, we are doing this." When I actually felt: "Wow, we actually have way more money than we had before", was probably when we went to Sweden in 2019.

🏪 Private Label Products: Building Your Own Brand

Once you have that cash, you can start making what are called Private Label Purchases. In other words, you start building a brand of your own products. And instead of selling a bunch of one-offs, you start selling 2000 of these, or 3000 of these, which requires less work and you start making money more passively. And then you no longer have to hustle hustle hustle all the time to make money. You actually start making money while you sleep.

He had mentioned something about a coffee mug to me one tim. He made a coffee mug, and it was a little as you hear him talking to his videos about differentiating your product. It was... He had a little, minor differentiation and you know, he's making good money. And was that one of his big sellers? Well, not in terms of what he does today, but at that point in time, yeah, he was making good money off of it and he was turning around, taking that money, reinvesting and working and doing things.

🤔 Solving Real vs. Perceived Problems

And that brings me to my third point. Third, I took the cash from selling arbitrage an