What a jewel thief can teach us about Amazon sourcing

In this post:

• The concept of blindspots: Making money off what other Amazon sellers don’t see
• The concept of Social Sourcing: Where the real money is
• Share your Social Sourcing stories
• Coming soon: My first time on video
• A photo of my mom

In the last few months, I’ve had some major epiphanies about selling on Amazon. I’m going to share two of them with you.

These aren’t new concepts – and certainly not ones I invented – but I’ve been thinking about them lately in more specific terms, and how most of my Amazon revenue can be attributed to these two concepts.

1. Blindspots: Identifying inventory most Amazon sellers don’t believe or don’t know will make them money.
2. Social Sourcing: Making bulk buys driven by relationships (aka getting tons of inventory by talking to strangers)

Blindspots: What a jewel thief could teach us about selling on Amazon

Over Christmas, I was reading a book about the most successful jewel thief in history. He figured out that most balcony doors on the 2nd story or up are left unlocked, because the balconies are perceived by their owners as being inaccessible.

And I thought: “This is how I make most of my money on Amazon.”

Not through thievery, but by exploiting blindspots. Money laying around unguarded that other sellers don’t notice.

That’s where the money is.

I’ll reveal how powerful the concept of “blindspots” is (with case studies) in a series of emails you’ll be receiving over the next week. (Open those.)

For now, here are a few fundamental principles of Blindspot Sourcing.

• Sleepwalk Sourcing vs. Blindspot Sourcing: Nearly all Amazon sellers follow the Sleepwalk Sourcing approach. That is, they take the cream off the top (i.e. “textbooks,” etc) and are completely blind to other 99% of the pie. Blindspot Sourcing is the opposite: Defying conventional wisdom, and understanding the real money is in what other sellers miss.
• It’s not 2010 anymore. Most sellers are walking around in 2015 with a 2010 mindset. They think there are “eBay items” and “Amazon items.”  What the 2010 dinosaurs don’t realize is that everything has changed. Today, anything will sell on Amazon. It’s not 2010 anymore.
• The only way to make money on Amazon is to look at what other sellers are doing, and do the opposite. What else do I need to say…

I’ll be sharing more insights over the next 10 days. LOTS of exciting content coming, so more than ever you’ll want to check back over the next two weeks.

Now, for an overview of an equally exciting concept:

Social Sourcing: Where the real money is.

Within the subject of “blindspots” is another huge category: “Social sourcing.”

Social sourcing is tapping into the hidden iceberg of inventory that isn’t for sale – you have to ask for it.

Otherwise known as:

• Social engineering.
• Relationship building.
• Getting employees to give you tons of stuff.

Have you heard stories about people picking up unwanted books dumped off at bookstore buy-counters? Or arranging to buy library book discards?

That’s social sourcing.

That’s the future of sourcing, period.

This concept first crystalized for me in a book I read way back in the day by Adam Bertram. He drew the distinction between two kinds of sourcing: Single Sourcing and Social Sourcing. The inventory you cherry pick one at a time, and the bulk buys you make by getting outside your comfort zone and talking to people. (And the inventory you obtain from talking to people usually isn’t for sale until you ask).

And the exciting reality is that the vast, vast majority of inventory is only obtained from Social Sourcing. I’m talking about 99%, easily.

Let’s take books. If every possible unwanted book were represented by a chart, this image caputures is what Single Sourcing represents:

This is a HUGE subject, with even huger potential. How did I get a local second hand store to sell me their unwanted books at a rate of $10 per shopping cart? Social sourcing. (This isn’t quite as exciting as it sounds considering how it’s played out so far, but still pretty cool.)

For now, I just wanted to get you thinking about the concept, and brainstorming applications. And if you have any Social Sourcing stories to share, please post in the comments below.

Real quick, I want to let you in on a couple things:

I’m posting two cool interviews in the next 10 days. Yes, this will involve me in my first time on video. Prepare to be disappointed.

One of these will be an exclusive interview with a man who does $1.5 million in annual sales with used books. No, I’m not kidding.

And in three days, I’ll be sharing some awesome news. (At least, I think it’s awesome.)

Endnotes

Internet drug kingpin, and… Amazon bookseller?

Did anyone notice that alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht co-owned an Amazon bookselling business?

It didn’t exactly take super-sleuthing on my part, but I found his Amazon storefront (it appears to have ceased operations in 2012, but the inventory is still visible):

Good Wagon Books Amazon storefront

Photo of my mom and the Amazon Empire Builder Box Set

If you’re on my email list (and you should be – enter your email address in the bar at the top of the screen), you know I did a super-secret, super-limited edition box set that included paperback editions of all my books for Christmas.

If you’re on my list, then you also know this box set was inspired by my mom, who started selling on Amazon, and did not know what an ebook was or how to open one, and how the set was originally a one-of-a-kind printing I did just for her.

At Christmas, I gave her the box set. And then I took a photo: