It's easy to grab something from your closet, snap a photo, and sell
it on eBay or Amazon. The mechanics of online selling are incredibly
convenient. Every time we moved we always did a big sell off that
helped us make money for gas or the next rental security deposit. But
how did we figure out how to do eBay full time?
It's all about
building a lifestyle. Like any small business, it had to become our
"everything" so we had to make sure we were building the days we wanted
to live. We took time to figure out what we liked to scavenge and sell.
We took time to figure out how much listing we needed to do each week to
build up a large inventory. We took time to figure out how to make that
listing time as enjoyable as possible. We made sure we balanced our fun
scavenging days with "sit at home and list" days.
So when
people write us about how to get started, we always remind folks to take
their time. The three pitfalls we see with new sellers (and experienced
ones) are burnout, being half-assed, and getting overwhelmed. It's
cool to sell for a couple weeks at a time, but can you create a pipeline
that makes you money for the next ten years?
Burnout: It's easy
to get sick of listing "junk" all day. You mean this is now my life?
This sucks. All I do is list and pack. List and pack. Boring. I started a
data entry business that I hate.
Being Half-Ass: I want eBay to
be my full time business so I've listed 100 things in my store. I'm now
waiting since I don't want to list too much stuff till I know it'll
sell. Why don't I sell things everyday? I'll never make enough money
doing this. eBay sucks.
Getting Overwhelmed: I scavenged too
much stuff too fast without a plan for storage and listing, and now I'm
paralyzed by the dreaded unlisted piles everywhere. There's so much to
do so I don't know where to start. Even if I work all day, it all seems
endless. I'm now basically just a hoarder who lied about wanting to sell
on eBay.
Trust me. We've been all these people BUT we pushed
through. We took the time to develop the kind of days you want to have.
Sleep a little late if we want. Have coffee and read the news. Turn on
the radio and list for four or five hours. Take plenty of short breaks.
But stuff has gotta get done and we got to do it. Do a little every day
and soon our sales are paying the bills. No one said it'd be easy (especially not us).
In this podcast, we also talk about tax and paperwork stuff. How to start a general partnership or sole proprietorship. Get a business bank account. Get an accountant. But this is the easy stuff. Once you're making serious money there'll by plenty of people to help you manage it.
