The Sellers Bible Make Money Selling On Craigslist Chapter 1 of 8

Chapter One: Why I Can Help You 

A Brief Word On Myself…

First off, hi! I’m Sean. I used to work at Amazon, but then I left.  

What Did I Do With My Amazon Knowledge? 

I built my own business and started selling products through Amazon & eBay.  

What Did I Do Wrong?  

I put the cart before the horse, scaled too fast & got myself into debt.  

How I Finally Built a Business That Actually Works 

It started with brutal honesty about what I didn’t want in a business, or a lifestyle.  

So Why Am I Sharing This Info With You? 

Because I discovered a huge opportunity with Craigslist and Bitcoin, and it’s selfish not to share.  

Chapter One: Why I Can Help You

A Brief Word On Myself...
You’re reading a book written by an entrepreneur who has lost out on over a million dollars in Amazon shares. On January 31, 2001, after a lengthy career at Amazon, I found myself turning in my badge, laptop, and walking out onto the streets of Seattle with a banker box. My Amazon stock that once had a strike price of $25 was now worth a over a million. (Expensive kindling, but it lit a fire under my ass.) After getting let go, things really started to go south. Companies and other headhunters that used to call and ask me to work at their new startup had now gone out of business, lost funding or were no longer returning my phone calls and emails. I was 30 years old, living off of unemployment, and back at home with my parents. Needless to say, I was forced to figure out what to do - STAT. Luckily, what I had lost in stock options, I more than made up for in the knowledge and insights that I had accumulated during my heydays at Amazon. A few interesting things really stuck out to me while working there: First, there were an unbelievable number of people buying DIY books on how to make money selling through eBay. (Yes, Amazon was promoting and selling a ton of books on how to profit by using their biggest competitor. Crazy, right?) Another huge trend I noticed were books and DVDs that had to do with sex and sexuality (awkward). Lastly, I noted that the other top sellers were information books about health & wellness, vitamins, building a better body, and ‘alternative’ health cures. (As a matter of fact, one of the biggest revenue generators for Drugstore.com was the tab that linked from the Amazon website to theirs.) 

What Did I Do With My Amazon Knowledge?
I wrote something called Category Killers eBooks, which spotlighted some of the latest Amazon trends and laid out a number of insider tips for making money through the Amazon marketplace. The response to the book was positive, the information was sound, and it performed fairly well (this was before Amazon Kindle and Apple iTunes Store). But after selling a few dozen copies, I started feeling that the information was simply too valuable to just give away on the cheap, so I decided to keep it close to the chest and put it to work for myself. So my next move was to take that knowledge and launch a company in the health and wellness industry (built upon the Amazon.com marketplace) that focused on dietary supplements and sexual enhancement. (Remember herbal Viagra and TrimSpa? I was the number one Amazon seller for quite some time.) Sounds a little unconventional to say the least, right? Well, over the next 10 years, my idea grew into a pretty large business venture, one that involved maxing out a few lines of credit, exhausting personal funds (thankfully never borrowing from any family members), and generating a ton of creative juices. And I must admit, it felt really good to roll up my sleeves and bootstrap a business on my own. That’s not to say that the business didn’t have its ups and downs. On the one hand, I was able to buy my own house (ironically, it was in the shadows of my old Amazon.com corporate headquarters in Seattle). On the other hand, I working myself to death, putting in 60 hours a week minimum. But hard work without smart work can only get you so far, and after 10 years, failure set in once again.

What Did I Do Wrong?
In short, a lot of stupid things that I probably could’ve avoided had I heeded all of the lessons during my heydays at Amazon, like succeeding too quickly, hiring too many employees, and building to scale quicker than my abilities allowed. Plus, the sex/health/wellness ‘niche’ (an important word to remember as you read this book) started to get way too over-crowded. And while market saturation was sure to be an obvious challenge, I simply didn’t realize that it was time to leave the party (think Mark Cuban at Broadcast.com - he had the knowledge and risk-assessment abilities to know exactly when to get out). As the industry matured and became oversaturated, with a huge influx of online sellers offering products at cost, I ended up right back where I was after leaving Amazon - only this go-round, I was now sinking in about $30K worth of debt. 

How I Finally Built a Business That Actually Works
After ten years of trial and error on the Amazon marketplace, I finally decided to take a step back and create a wishlist of what my ideal business would look like. At first, I thought about all of the things I didn’t want my business to look like, and by being brutally honest with myself, I was able to create something even more valuable - five clearly defined rules for my own success:

No Employees: I discovered I'm a terrible boss.  No Boss: I’d been away from the cubicle for too long. I wasn’t about to go back.  No Selling or Listing Fees: Amazon and eBay were taking 15% or more.  No Time Wasted: Only pay hefty fees for products that made big profits.  More ‘No’s: No advertising, no major investments, no fancy technology.  

Allow me to expand on that last point - no technology. If I was to keep costs down, I simply didn’t have the resources to invest heavily in technology. I had zero time to waste, and no profits to waste either, whether it be on SEO, blogging, HTML, javascript, cascading style sheets, web analytics, or social networking with mundane Facebook updates or clever Tweets. Don’t get me wrong, networking, blogging (steemit seems to have figured out how to make money with blogging), and other tools like Google analytics are great, but they really won’t help you much when selling on Craigslist. Do they have their place? Absolutely. But I’ll choose making cash deposits to my bank over blogging any day. Another thing that I really wanted was a one-man business that I could build to some type of modest scale, that could be both sustainable and profitable from day one. So armed with a laptop, iPhone, truck, and a couple of economical or free e-commerce apps from google, I built a very unsophisticated - yet profitable - home-based business, all made possible through Craigslist.  

So Why Am I Sharing This Info With You?
Chances are, you’re reading this book (or posting on Steemit) because you want to make money, and you want to do it your way. Maybe you’re looking to escape cubicle nation, or just avoid it entirely. Maybe you’re suffering under our bleak economy and need some supplemental income. Or hell, maybe you’re just bored. Whatever your unique circumstances are, I know I can help you attain the freedom and lifestyle you’re looking for. And believe it or not, the solution is waiting for you over at Craigslist. Now, I strongly believe in the Craigslist ecosystem, which is why I’ve developed a battle-tested method for selling and making a solid living through this medium. I know that I can show you how to do the same. And if you’re thinking I’m drinking the Craigslist Kool-Aid, or think that the website is all but obsolete, here are a few things you should know: With over 20 billion page views per month, Craigslist is still, to this day, the leading classifieds service in the world. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Craigslist is still one of the most trafficked websites in the country, ranking 11th overall, according to Alexa.com. Craigslist is recession proof. If the economy is booming, people have more money to shop online. If the economy is tanking, people have even more incentive to visit Craigslist in an effort to save money. 

As you’ll find throughout this book, there are seemingly infinite opportunities to profit through Craigslist. But here’s the catch: with massive amounts of poorly written ads and scams (with no shortage of shady characters), trust is always going to be an issue on this platform. People are wary of Craigslist, and I am certainly not naïve to that fact; but I also believe the culture can be changed, and that’s the driving force behind this book. Higher-quality ads, better products & services, and more informed sellers will undoubtedly lead to more consumers coming to Craigslist as a trusted destination for shopping online. Even with the rise of Amazon and Google shopping, along with steady competition from eBay, Craigslist is still going strong. And there are a plethora of ways in which you can make a lot of money, help others in your community save money, and contribute to a better economy for all.  Of course, the other reason I’m writing this book is to make money for myself. Yes, that might seem a little greedy or selfish at face value, but just know that the opportunity goes both ways. If you and everyone else who buys this book (or reading this blog post on steemit) are unable to make money, then I don’t succeed, simple as that. And I’m confident that if you stick to the methods and strategies that I’ve laid out in this book, you’ll make a substantial profit off of your investment, and I’ll keep selling books. It’s a win-win. Just know that this book is not written in stone. Market demands are more unpredictable than ever. And while the tech world moves fast, culture can change even faster. Remember, while the Terms of Service can’t be broken, there are plenty of rules that can go out the window at any time. But even faced with this uncertainty, there is one thing that I am certain about: that I’ve developed a real-world, market-tested system for profiting through Craigslist, and that you can use this system to profit too.  

Chapter 2 The Sellers Mindset Will Be Posted Tomorrow