eBay

The eBay I did out of necessity to make money again after my last child was born. I actually started out by selling my kids Disney video tapes (DVDs had just started becoming popular) on Half.com owned by eBay. Then I thought, if I can do this well with my own stuff, lets buy it at yard sales. So we started buying tapes at Yard sales, and then progressed into books, CDs, and video games. The problem was on Half.com not everything would sell quickly and after about a year and a half of accumulation of inventory I decided to diversify and start selling on eBay. I started by selling Jeans, now this was 7 years ago and it is much more difficult to sell the same old thing on eBay now. I have managed to change with the times and as one thing stops selling so well, I switch to another thing to sell. I have done pretty well at eBay. I currently sell the most during the Christmas season, which runs from October through January. In 2007 I sold A LOT that went overseas with the US dollar doing so poorly, bad for the US, but great for me! Things have slowly died down since January and the summer is the worst time, but for the amount of money I make the rest of the year it is still worth it.

You may be wondering how I did it.

BUY MY BOOK!

No, just kidding, I don’t have a book to sell. I am not here trying to get you to buy anything from me, as a matter of fact you won’t see me listing my eBay ID. I am not here to solicit sales for what I sell eBay. I have no problem telling how I got started but I feel it is in my best interest to not create more competition for myself in my particular selling field.

I always tell people that want to get started, assuming they have never done it before, that they need to start buy selling items found in their homes they want to get rid of. Clothes, antiques, pretty much anything. FIRST look to see if anyone else has sold any by doing a completed item search on eBay and see if it is actually worth your time to list. Is something only sold for $.99? If so then it probably isn’t worth it for you to waste your time and money to list it. After you find something to list, and maybe sell it you might find out you don’t like doing the eBay thing or that there is actually WORK involved in selling on there. There are so many who think it is easy. But like in life, you get out of it what you put into it. So if you want to work very little then doesn’t expect much out of it. If you are willing to jump in full force and find a good selling niche then you will probably do well.

How did I do it? I first started by selling my kids Videos on half.com. After I saw how well I did (some of those Disney videos were out of print). I then started going to yard sales, first buying just video tapes, then took a chance on books. There is a rush you get when you sell a Text book for $100 that you paid $5.00 for. My husband and I would drag our 3 kids in our 1993 Plymouth Sundance to yard sales all day. Make them get up at 7am, promise them some kind of a treat from the convenience store and have them totally trash the back seat, but we didn’t care as long as they let us go and left us alone. After we started to diversify and I got my first Kodak Easy Share digital 1.9 mega pixel camera we started to buy different things. I started out buying jeans and jean shorts.

During this time my dad’s realtor had a foreclosure he wanted my dad to clear out. My dad somehow got me to go there with him. There was this old Pyrex Butterprint Cinderella bowl from the late 50’s early 60’s. I just fell in love with it. I took it home then found myself looking it up on eBay and buying them on there. But what I also noticed was what else sold on there in that particular category. So now I had one more thing to look for at yard sales. It just progressed from there. I got some older patterns of Corelle, listed them. Then I saw that the new patterns sold well too. I love Corelle and Pyrex (both owned by Corning) and so I started going to the Corning/Corelle outlet store (plus other brands sold by World Kitchen LLC) and buying stuff there than ANYONE could buy. I would sell it for sometimes 500% markup on ebay! I was hooked. We would go to yard sales but I got pretty good at only having to spend a minute or two scanning yard sales to decide if there was anything I wanted.

At this time I also was really packing on the pounds. My son was born the year before and as usual I gained all my baby weight back PLUS….I was a size 18-20W…OUCH! I somehow found out that Tommy Hilfiger sold women’s plus sizes at certain stores. TH was really popular at that time. I bought a few things on ebay, and then figured out that they were coming from Macy’s and Dillards. As luck would have it, I had a Dillards 25 miles south from where I lived. So I opened a Dillards account and started buying…sometimes over $1000 in one trip. Again another rush you feel when you spend money like that. I sold this stuff relatively quickly. I kept that up until we found out we might be moving to NC and then found myself in the position of not wanting to have to move my inventory, so I listed everything at my lowest amount I would take and sold off most of what I had.

After we moved to NC, I had to pretty much start all over again. Here in the specific city I live near thin is in, making the TH chubby girl size an unnecessary thing here. I too lost some weight (yeah for me!) and I didn’t get back into the TH chubby girl size sales. I started shopping at a particular store that they has so many of here. There are more than 15 of these stores within a 40 mile radius of where I live. I found some items at 75% off and took a chance. Then it just snowballed from there. My son was 4 at the time and our routine was drop his brothers off at school then we would go to the stores. I was doing well if I could hit 4 stores before noon. After 12 all the moms come out and are shopping with their kids and the kids become cranky because they need naps. My goal was always to try and be home by 1pm so I would have enough time to get the van unloaded and stuff unbagged before my kids got off the bus at 3:20.

How addicted was I? Well, first I would get up in the middle of the night to check my email to see what I had sold since I had been asleep for a few hours. I would get up in the morning and check my email and try and get stuff packed and ready to ship. I also was having to drive my sales to the post office and having to stand in line for international packages. One week before Thanksgiving I throw my 50 some odd packages to be shipped into my mini van to take to the post office. I have my 4 yr old son in there with me too. He is in the back seat playing his game boy. Then, I hit a vehicle that ran a stop sign. I hit him hard enough that I flipped his minivan onto its side. My first thought is “I need to call my husband.” Why? who knows, I guess because he is my hero and he will save me.
He says to me “ARE YOU ALL RIGHT? How is our son?”
Our son? Oh, that is right I had him in the back seat! I say “Ok I guess” and then people are taking my son out of the van and trying to get me to open my door so they can help me out and turn off my blaring horn. What do I say to those standing around asking if I am ok?
“I need to get these packages to the post office. How am I going to get them there now?” Not, where is my son, or how is he…nope, I am worried about my eBay stuff.
Long story short, I broke my foot (from trying to brake so not to hit him) and after 2 years of BS between the idiot Lawyers (mostly mine) and the insurance company we settled for $40,000, the lawyer got their third and out of my 2/3 the medical bill cost needed to be paid back, so we ended up with about $23,000 in our pockets, but don’t worry it burned a hole it is all gone within a few weeks.

I am pretty sure we have never lost money as a whole on eBay, I have always made a profit when all is said and done at the end of the year. We are also an actual business, we do have it set up in my husbands name for tax purposes but all he does it the bookkeeping and taxes, I do the rest.

Here are my thoughts on drop shipping and selling stuff that you do not have in your possession of. To clarify, I am referring to those places that want you to sell their items; all you have to do is list them and be the middle man. They will ship it for you. I don’t believe this is a good idea. I have read stories where people list something and the supplier is out when it comes time to ship it. Also the quality of some of these items is suspect. But the biggest thing is the competition on these items. Those things are a dime a dozen on eBay. I have ALWAYS bought my own products to sell on eBay. There is also an incentive to list it quickly when you know you have spent money on it. I am to the point where, for me, I do the majority of my sales during Xmas so I am in no hurry to get stuff listed now. My business makes enough money monthly that it pays for what little I buy in the off season so when I finally get it listed and sell it anytime between now and Xmas it is pure profit for me. For now this leaves me with enough time to obsess over whatever the flavor of the month is. In January and February it was saving money, coupons and finding the deals.