The 3 Things I LOVE About Running an eBay Business

The 3 Things I LOVE About Running an eBay Business

I absolutely love running an eBay business for so many reasons… From being able to spend time with my dogs, to the time I can spend with my nieces and nephews, to the simplicity of it all. Overall running an eBay business is an incredible opportunity I’d recommend to anyone willing to put in the work!

Let’s jump right into the 3 things I love most about running and eBay business:

1. Simplicity…

I love the simplicity of listing an item. I love the feeling of freeing up space from an item that is no longer serving the owner’s purpose and rehoming that item in a place where it does have a purpose.

How it all started:

From the time I sold my first piece of jewelry on eBay, I was hooked. I’d spent my entire career working as a recruiter, working the phones, interviewing people, placing people in jobs and hoping they would show up for the company I’d called for over a year to work with us. I’d been working in an environment where I built relationships with companies and earned their trust only to have no control over the quality of candidates my coworkers were sending to them. The turmoil this caused me daily is what led to quitting a job where I was making over six figures.

Before getting a new job where I hoped I could be a little less miserable, I figured I’d clear out things I was no longer using and bring in a little cash. From my first sale, it was quite addicting actually! The more I listed, the more I sold. De-cluttering and organizing the house had never been so fun (I mean previously it was my gravest form of torture)! Now, not only did I have the satisfaction of cleaning up our drawers and cabinets, I was bringing in money. As if I wasn’t having enough fun, buyers were sending me messages and leaving positive feedback about how happy they were with items that were previously lying dormant and taking up space in my house. And I got to accomplish all of this without making a single sales call. It felt like heaven!

I continued my job search, knowing this little escapade was just that and couldn’t last forever, when my husband came home from work telling me to call this gal who wanted me to sell her Coach purses. “She asked what you would charge to sell these for her.” He said as he handed me a note with her name and number

We locked eyes, the opportunity not lost on us. “I don’t know! What do I charge?!” I told him I’d figure it out and get back to her. Now I was on a mission to see if I could sell for others on eBay and make enough money to keep from having to get another job. I had six weeks to see if I could make enough to make our house payment before the money ran out… and the money never ran out so I’ve never worked for someone else in my entire life. I’d say it worked out.

2. Employing our youth and teaching them skills

I love hiring teenagers and young adults and training them to sell on eBay, a skill I know will benefit them longterm. Who knows, maybe one of them will start running their own eBay business one day!

You can’t always get exactly what you want, right?

When it first occurred to me that I could make selling on eBay a business and work from home, part of the appeal was that we wanted to start a family. I’d already had a tubal pregnancy and a miscarriage and thought maybe the stress in my work environment was preventing my body from being able to conceive. But I also knew that with my strung out on stress and working eleven hour days I wasn’t going to be able to spend quality time with my family. There was nothing left in me at the end of the day.

Two more miscarriages later, it became apparent we would need to adopt to have children. That’s about the time that Arlie was diagnosed with Primary Progressive MS. With the uncertainty of his health, he was no longer comfortable with adopting.

As my eBay business grew, Arlie started doing all the packing and shipping when he came home from work. His MS was progressing quickly and this was becoming more and more difficult for him so I started packing and shipping everything before he got home.

A little hope…

I met a client who had recently closed her candle store and gave me truckloads of boxes of candles to sell. I asked a friend from the church if her fourteen-year-old son might want to earn some extra money, helping me to maneuver these boxes and list the candles. (Plus I thought it might be a good opportunity to mentor him while still getting my work done.)

The next thing I knew we were stopping the car and calling out to our neighborhood teenagers we’d watch grow up, asking them if they’d like a part-time job. At one point we had ten teenagers working for us part-time.

I feel comfortable training them to list and ship with policies that I’ve set up, giving them monthly reviews so they can learn and grow and being transparent about expectations. I enjoy laughing and having fun with (what I thought was rap but was later informed was pop) blasting in the background while we’re getting the work done.

A different kind of answer to my prayers…

Arlie started working with the boys to build more shelving for our inventory. One project turned into another. They would work late into the night (until their parents called them home). I teased him that he was stealing my teenagers. He didn’t notice his body failing when he was working with them and they developed a bond that went both ways.

They witnessed his positive attitude when Arlie was later diagnosed with terminal cancer. I’d hear them laughing with Arlie as they worked in the garage. I’d joke that I didn’t even want to know what he was saying. The teenagers became the family we’d always wanted and gave us a deeper connection to our community.

3. Flexibility and Freedom

I love the flexibility running an eBay business gives me. Enabling me to work from home, be there for my family and discover new avenues to grow my eBay Business. It allows me to pursue passions and live a life that others don’t.

From the time I started, running my eBay business has been anything but stagnant. It’s like a living, breathing thing that surprises, challenges and even delights me constantly.

Gaining momentum:

I started my business in February 2006, and I had accumulated multiple consignment clients mostly by word of mouth (Arlie’s mouth–he was very outgoing and grew up in San Ramon where we lived).

That first Thanksgiving, a group of people came through his line at Costco. They were co-workers who had pooled together $300 to provide a Thanksgiving meal for a family in need. Their bill went over by $60 and Arlie swiped his own debit card for the remaining balance.

The next week we were shopping for a present for my sister and we found one of the best reselling items we ever found… He swore it was because he’d swiped the card, he felt like God was watching out for him.

Finding Gold:

What happened we had a trip to L.A. planned to visit my family to celebrate Hanakuh, and Arlie wanted to get my sister a keyless doorlock because she was expecting, and he wanted her to be able to get into the house without fumbling for the keys. Now that I didn’t have my six-figure job, I was a little leery of spending a hundred dollars on a gift, but when Arlie was inspired to be generous I tried to follow his lead.

We went to Home Expo, grabbed the Schlage lock and were shocked when the cashier said it would be $22.50. Arlie immediately told him he’d made a mistake (so fast that I didn’t get to see if I would have been so honest). The cashier looked it up and explained that they were changing brands so they had marked these down seventy five percent. Arlie grabbed a cart and collected every lock off the shelf.

When we got home, I looked them up on eBay’s sold listings and saw that they were selling for $59.99 plus shipping. I listed one of each finish and by morning two had already sold. We called every Home Expo in California (and Arizona) and purchased every lock over the phone. When we drove down to see my family, as Arlie would say, “I said hi, Happy Hanukah, bye!” and headed trailer in tow to collect all the door locks. We purchased over 450 locks and made over $14,000 over the next months from these five listings.

More electrifying adventures:

The next big surprise came when an electronic recycler asked me to sell computers, DVD players and other electronics for them. We did this for over a year and sold over $10,000 a month of electronics. Arlie would come home from work and pack the sold items until after midnight. When we found that their ethics were not in line with ours, we stopped working with them (even though it meant we had nothing to list that January, and of course our house payment would still be coming due in thirty days).

Building Networks:

I joined a local business networking group to get to know other local businesses and by the next month, we had enough to make the house payment.

I’ve sold over $2 million worth on eBay plus (eBay does not include items sold on eBay Motors in that figure) seventeen cars, an RV, a 1974 Scotty Trailer and most recently a Mercedes Sprinter complete with solar panels amounting to an additional $200k plus in sales.

So why do I love the freedom even with the uncertainty?

It’s just so much fun when it is your company, your adventure–when someone asks me to sell his Scotty Trailer that’s been sitting on his property for over a decade (that we have no idea how we’ll move), someone buys it, and we find a company specializing in moving trailers who successfully pick it up. And yes, I sold it and then figured out how to move it. There’s nothing like necessity to spur creative problem-solving!

Having and running my own eBay business has given me a way to support myself through my husband’s battle with MS and cancer. It has enabled me to be there with him through it all, create our own work family and involve us with the community. When Arlie passed away in 2017, it gave me the ability to pack myself and my business and move to Colorado to be near my little brother, his wife and their four children (who of course, even at the age of 3+ get to help me with shipping).

All in all, I love what I do and I feel so fortunate that I get to run an eBay business and have all of the simplicity, mentorship and freedom that I do!

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