Quitting eBay Completely, A New Blog & £12k on Amazon UK in My First Month!

Welcome back!

Oh, how I missed this!!!! 🙂

It has been almost 4 months now since my last blog post but it feels like YEARS! What started as a quick summer break slowly extended into a more complex transition time for me, my businesses and this blog. Especially the blog as you can see – we now have a brand new look & layout for it! I know that it’s hard to accept something new but I really hope you like how it all turned out and will get used to the new design very soon.

I’ve actually started to receive emails from long time blog readers asking whether everything is okay with me! Luckily I’m all good and actually in better shape than ever before! But I will leave that story to January, when it’ll be one year since my “Get Fit” start date.

Anyway, back to the question at hand – what have I been up to for all this time?

To start with, in the beginning of the summer, I went on a long awaited holiday to Croatia with my family – it was in the beginning of June, when the season over there technically hasn’t even started yet but for us it was perfect! 10 days with no rain, 30 degrees, a swimming pool and lots of relaxation.

At that time I didn’t even know that a major change for me and my business was just around the corner.

You have probably already noticed that something is different about the blog now?

That you see Amazon on every corner, and not eBay anymore?

Long story short, I quit eBay in August this year. Yes, after 10+ years of selling on eBay I stopped trading there completely and I have no plans to go back anytime soon (probably ever).

Why? Basically what happened is that the two Amazon businesses I started in 2015 and 2016 improved so much in sales over the summer that I asked myself – why the heck do I need eBay anymore as I get such a better ROI on Amazon? And not only a better ROI money wise, but time wise too – as on Amazon I’m fully relying on FBA for order fulfilment so my businesses basically run on their own, 24/7!

So I decided to leave eBay behind and fully concentrate on Amazon.

BEST decision ever!

I managed to launch a new company and brand, my 3rd business on Amazon, in the beginning of September and in just the first month sold almost 1200 units!!! You can learn more about that in the new video I have created on the blog (if you haven’t done so already). When you enter your email to access that video, you are at the same time subscribed to this blog’s newsletter and will receive an email when new content is published. This is something many people have asked for and I’ve finally implemented it!

I go into detail in that video why in my opinion the days of eBay are well and truly over and why I see Amazon as the next BIG opportunity to get into but to sum it up – the biggest problem with eBay is in 2 things:

1) How the search algorithm works on eBay. Basically, price nowadays is the number one factor in eBay’s ranking system! If you can sell a product for a lower price than anyone else, you’ll get ranked in top positions. No matter how good or bad your product is. You can get multiple refund requests, get a lot of bad feedback etc. and still eBay will rank you high enough. The problem is that you won’t make much money, but who cares, right?

2) eBay has become a bargain hunter’s paradise. And this is basically the result of how eBay ranks listings. eBay customers now expect super cheap deals on EVERYTHING! Sometimes it seems that everything can be bought for just a few quid on eBay – be it a silicone spatula or laptop stand! How can you make a business out of it? When you make pennies on a £10 sale? And I won’t even talk about all the unfair competition from sellers who do not pay taxes, do not register for VAT, or sell fake goods.

Basically, if you want to create a business with decent margins, that can sustain overheads, employees and growth, eBay is not the place to do it as you will always compete on the lowest price.

If you have followed my blog for some time, you’ll know that my strategy is to sell HIGH quality products at higher prices to maintain good margins and NOT get into the low price game. But this has become more and more difficult on eBay as you simply can’t get enough traffic to your listings PLUS people can’t really see which products are good and which are cheap, low quality rubbish.

In my opinion eBay failed totally with the review integration, just like they have failed on everything else they have tried to copy from Amazon (5 years after Amazon does it).

Amazon is a totally different world! It’s built for people who want to maintain high standards of trading, create awesome brands and HIGH quality and even PREMIUM products!

Unlike eBay, rankings on Amazon are massively influenced by the reviews you receive. You simply can’t sell rubbish, low quality products there! After the first few bad reviews, your listing will go down in search, to page 10 where no one will ever see it again!

Product quality is everything on Amazon and Amazon customers are actually looking for high quality products. This is perfect for people like me who like to sell the highest quality version of the product possible, charge premium prices and achieve healthy margins!

It’s not like I realised this just a few months ago of course. I have been involved with Amazon since 2015 but it took me some time to fully understand how it all works and see the enormous potential of what Amazon offers, with all the regional sites and especially the hands-free order processing via FBA.

And the turning point was really this summer when I saw that my Amazon sales were increasing while my eBay sales are going down, month over month. Then, for the first time I actually did check the popularity of Amazon and eBay via Google Trends and the picture was shocking!

I knew that in the US Amazon was more popular than eBay but I didn’t expect such clear proof of where things are going:

As you can clearly see, in the USA, Amazon basically out-competed eBay at around 2011-2012 and since then it has continued its growth in popularity year on year.

But what’s more interesting is when we take a look at the situation in the UK:

Basically right now we’re at a cross-roads which we’ve already witnessed in the US – Amazon is continuing to grow while eBay is slowly dying….

Obviously Google Trends is not the most sophisticated market research tool but it just double confirms the feeling I had – that Amazon is taking over the world while eBay is totally messed up with all the problems they have been dragging on for years.

And as I said, it’s not only about the increase in sales/traffic Amazon generates but more about the fundamental differences between these two marketplaces. And from now on, I choose to continue my online selling journey with Amazon.

This means that on this blog, I will cover all things that are related to selling on Amazon, including importing from China, branding and everything else of course.

This also means that I have closed the Easy Auction Business course as I can’t really promote something I don’t believe in anymore and provide support on issues I have no experience with. EAB was online 10 years (maybe that’s a sign?) and it helped thousands of people to start an eBay business but that era has ended now. It’s time for something new, something more powerful.

I will of course continue providing support for existing EAB customers but I won’t be producing any more new content. I will also keep running Spicy Auction Templates even though I think the best choice would be to sell it off to someone who is into eBay or an eBay template design company as I won’t have time to grow and promote it further.

As for the 60 Day Blueprint program – I’m also closing it down, for good. Right now I’m working with my last group of people and we’re of course doing Amazon already, not eBay. For the last few months I have offered the Amazon route to my 60DBP customers and most of them of course agreed with me and went with starting an Amazon business.

But I’m not closing 60DBP solely because I don’t sell on eBay anymore. The problem is that 60DBP takes so much time and energy from me that I simply can’t afford to continue it anymore. I have my hands full with my Amazon and eCommerce businesses now and it’s simply not possible for me to offer personal chat sessions at that price and format anymore.

So what does this all mean? Is this the end?

Far from it! 🙂

This is actually the beginning of something much better – something that will create many millionaires over the next decade! To be honest, I haven’t been so excited about my business for a very long time! Seeing how well I’m doing on Amazon, seeing sales increase month on month, and feeling that my concepts just work – it’s amazing! I have already planned out 2018 and I can’t wait to implement it all in real life.

As for this blog – I will try to publish 3-4 blog posts a month and will of course continue to personally answer your emails and comments. I will just concentrate on Amazon, not eBay.

I will also start using Facebook more – as often I just have a quick idea or news story I want to share and I won’t do a blog post about it. I will simply publish it on Facebook. So if you haven’t done so already, follow my Facebook page here to ensure you get all updates.

What’s more interesting is that I will actually use more real life examples from my Amazon business to keep theory to a minimum and talk more about real life situations, examples, problems etc.

And that’s not all – I’m already working very hard (when time allows) on my new video course – Amazon Sharks, which will be launched in January 2018! It will be the ULTIMATE Amazon training program for anyone who wants to create an amazing business on Amazon UK and beyond.

In more than 150 video lessons I will teach you exactly what you need to do to create a highly successful Amazon business. In the course I will reveal my own business (for the first time ever!) and will basically guide you through the whole process from A to Z!

And it won’t be an ordinary video course, no, it will be a 10 week self-learning program with CONSULTING built into it! Basically, you’ll receive video materials each week with exact step by step instructions on what you need to do AND at the same time you’ll get my personal online support.

I don’t want to reveal it all now, but make sure you head to the Amazon Sharks website and sign-up to the waiting list as the program WILL be highly limited! Right now I’m thinking of doing 4 groups a year, 30 people each, but we’ll see what my final numbers will be.

For now, if you haven’t done so already, sign-up for my new FREE video on how I made £11 648 in my first 30 days on Amazon as it’s truthfully very valuable content that you DON’T want to miss out on!

Next week I will be back with a regular weekly blog post. Stay tuned for that! 😉

Thanks for being with me!