Tagging Miles

  • Saverocity
  • Home
  • About
  • Ask Tagging Miles
  • Support Us
  • Store
    • Reselling Tools
  • Guides
    • Beginner’s Guide to Fulfillment By Amazon
      • Start Here
      • Setting up an account
      • Analyzing and adding a product
      • Shipping 101
      • Shipping 201
      • Ungating Product Categories
      • Amazon Seller App
      • Amazon Seller App Part 2
    • Expert’s Guide to Fulfillment By Amazon
      • Dealing with Returns
  • Mile High Reselling Club

Pareto Principle in Reselling

April 26, 2017 By Trevor 2 Comments





Last year my wife and I made a pretty significant decision in how we run our reselling business. We had been chasing every opportunity we learned of. Best Buy’s Daily Deals? Gotta jump. Kohls offering 30% off plus Kohls Cash (which also stacks with Kohls Yes2You rewards), jump! At some point last year, we made the decision that it was too much. So we took a step back and looked at where we got the most value, where we generated the most solid products and profit. We then utilized the Pareto Principle in reselling, which is the 80/20 rule that I’m sure you have heard everywhere–hopefully.

Applying the Pareto Principle in Reselling

Essentially the Pareto Principle states that 80% of value will come from 20% of efforts. In the case of reselling, we looked at all of the stores we sourced at regularly, Best Buy, Kohls, Target, Walmart, etc. We then looked at how much we were actually generating from those stores, and found those stores that we were clearly more successful at. From there, we made a few active decisions:
  1. Identify our core competencies when it comes to stores that clearly we are better at, like Target, Walmart.
  2. Accept that we can’t be expert with every store.
  3. Transition away from chasing every deal to going deeper in knowledge, and in most cases, deeper in inventory on the deals from our core stores.
  4. Ignore other stores on a regular bases.
  5. Treat truly good deals (e.g. shopping portals, Black Friday, quarterly bonuses) as one-offs, and analyze them in their own right.
    Specifically, I’m trying to avoid getting pulled back into chasing every deal
  6. As available, do measured tests with new product categories from stores I already know.
  7. Occasionally, spend an hour in a new store, but limit the engagement to just an hour.  

For most of the items in the list, the focus is on limiting, which might be counter intuitive.

Imagine the alternative – chasing all of this:

Pareto Principle in Reselling

The risk of pursuing everything… used under Creative Commons from Wendell.

Why Limit Ourselves?

Short answer: Because time is our most valuable resource. I’ve written before that there are only 168 hours in a week. It is entirely too easy to chase everything, get overwhelmed and either want to quit, or just become inefficient. The whole reason for doing any of this, is for the most efficient use of resources. 

The pursuit of miles and points is exactly the same – go for the highest return on invested time first. Whether its the easiest, lowest time investment like Redbird and Bluebird were. Its why the world after Redbird has been less written about. 

This isn’t just advice for weekend entrepreneurs, this is also advice for full time resellers. Really we shouldn’t just limit the Pareto Principle in Reselling, we should be mindful of time. We should be looking at inefficiencies and actively decide if we should accept them.

What have you applied the Pareto Principle to in your life?

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email
  • LinkedIn

Filed Under: Reselling Tagged With: Business Advice, Reselling, Sourcing

Trackbacks

  1. Melbourne, Alitalia, End of Punitive Loyalty Era? - Tagging Miles says:
    April 28, 2017 at 5:52 pm

    […] Pareto Principle in Reselling […]

    Reply
  2. Award Booking Services, Soviet Era Hotels on Points, 79-Inch Pizza Hut - Rapid Travel Chai says:
    August 3, 2017 at 4:15 pm

    […] Pareto Principle in reselling. […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Stay in touch!

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Search

Subscribe

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team.

You have Successfully Subscribed!

Topics

  • #Avgeek
  • Airline Programs
  • Ask TaggingMiles
  • Awards
  • Cashback Portals
  • Credit Card Match-ups
  • Credit Cards
  • Destinations
  • Dollars and Sense
  • Editorial
  • Events
  • Frequent Flyer 101
  • Giving Credit to Credit
  • Hotels
  • Manufactured Spending
  • Mileage Run
  • Miles and Points
  • Podcasts
  • Portal Update
  • Random
  • Rental Cars
  • Reselling
  • Saturday
  • Savings & Loan
  • Tagging Miles
  • The Brass Ring
  • Travel
  • Travel Insurance
  • Travel Programs
  • Uncategorized
  • Weekly News Roundup
  • Where Credit is Due

Recent Comments

  • double btc.com on Get Ebates Cashback In-Store
  • john nicholas on Tagging Miles Portal Updates – 10 December 2020
  • daftarnova88.info on Why I’m not a fan of the Amazon Seller App enhancements
  • ion club on Why I’m not a fan of the Amazon Seller App enhancements
  • Rachel on Introducing Tagging Miles Portal Updates!
Note: Opinions expressed here are author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, airline, or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities. The owners of this website may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links and advertisements posted on this website. For more information, please see our Legal Notice.

Copyright © 2021 · Tagging Miles

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
This website uses cookies to personalize content and ads and to analyze traffic. Our ad partners may combine this information with other information you have provided them or that they've collected from your use of their services elsewhere. You consent to our cookies if you continue to use this website.OkNoRead more