Recommended Sales Per Month on eBay

[wshazy]

Hi!
I sell high value items (smartphone screens and laptop screens) which are on average $50-$100.
I am wondering what is the recommended amount of sales to do per month with a stealth account?
My prices are good so I can easily sell 10-30 per day but would that be risky on a stealth account if my monthly sales per account are $25K+
What is the best way to tackle this?

[slokor]

Considering that new stealth account usually start off with 5 items per month these days you wont be able to sell more than that anyway.
Your question depends on the account youre using. How old is it? how much activity has it seen? Those are big factors in answering your question.

[rsot]

You need a business consultant - this forum is meant for stealth setup - how you operate is really a matter of testing, trying and feeling what works.

Starting out - a monthly sale of 25K+ on one account will kill the account quickly...spread over several accounts at the very least

[123]

Get multiple stealth accounts to start / if your in canada they will most likely start with 10/1000 and slowly start selling on all of them and then if you get good feedback after 3 months or so you will have a small army of higher limit accounts with a good selling reputation to rotate between

[RosieTosie]

Originally Posted by wshazy

Hi!
I sell high value items (smartphone screens and laptop screens) which are on average $50-$100.
I am wondering what is the recommended amount of sales to do per month with a stealth account?
My prices are good so I can easily sell 10-30 per day but would that be risky on a stealth account if my monthly sales per account are $25K+
What is the best way to tackle this?

The fact that you are even posting a comment in this forum indicates you are quite a bit newer to stealth than the figures you are talking about indicate. There are no recommended amounts of sales, most Stealthers who are commenting on here are limited beyond their control by their listing limits, do you have any listing limits on your stealth account? Are you saying that your projected sales are $25K monthly? So you are going to be having tax issues as well if you do go on to sell those amounts. Maybe better to just operate more accounts, split the risk amongst them, and see how you get on, because if you don't the tax situation could limit you before anything else.

[Fantuz]

I just spoke to an eBay CSR and told them I would like to open a seller account, what are the limits? He said 100 items for $5000 per month.
I asked him, so if I sell 4 items in my first month totalling $5000, that will be the equivalent of "starting slow"? He replied YES. He said no red flags would be raised in that situation.

His words seem to contradict what I am learning here, that I need to start slow and not sell anything for the first 3 months on a new account.

Any insights? Clarification?

[NXLM]

buy ebooks for 99 cents and get positive feedback from them to help establish your account 5 positive feedback helps in the beginning. Even 10 ebooks so they give you 10 positive feedback is worth the investment

[empirestate]

buy ebooks for 99 cents and get positive feedback

If it were that easy to get feedbacks...

[Haidukken]

Originally Posted by NXLM

buy ebooks for 99 cents and get positive feedback from them to help establish your account 5 positive feedback helps in the beginning. Even 10 ebooks so they give you 10 positive feedback is worth the investment

Pretty sure that's NOT good advice, given the OP situation.

First:
The 99 cent ebooks look weird as they are and eBay are pretty good at flagging up accounts that try that old trick.

Second:
As far as I know, buyng feedback doesn't really scale towards sellers feedback. It's something that you can do, but I've read on multiple occasions that it doesn't really mean anything.
I mean... Even suspended accounts can purchase items.

Third:
If he is planning to take $25k+ a month, don't you think it might look A BIT off when he is building his feedback by buying 99 cent items?
To go from ULTRA low end items to super high end is an account suicide, you'll get flagged and you'd get suspended most likely.


The best thing you can do is buy he Stealth Book, read it couple of times and wrap your head around the whole thing.
Then if you are in a hurry- Please use the official sellers in this forum and stock up on some accounts.
If you have more time, start from scratch and build your accounts yourself.

Even if you purchase higher limit accounts, you need to build them and make them look and feel as legit as possible. It's virtually impossible to sell $25k+ worth on your first month, without losing accounts.

[jakobrockz]

I always buy a couple things on new accounts just for looks that the account is 100% positive, instead of 0 and 0%. I'm convinced people feel safer buying from someone with at least one or two feedback (even if its buyer feedback) than having no activity whatsoever.

I don't do this to increase my limits or make the account stronger, just my thing that I do

[MM78]

Sorry but buying $.99 ebooks is a waste of time and money. I would rather have 5 selling feedback than 10 buying feedback. Seller feedback is King!

[rsot]

Originally Posted by Fantuz

I just spoke to an eBay CSR and told them I would like to open a seller account, what are the limits? He said 100 items for $5000 per month.
I asked him, so if I sell 4 items in my first month totalling $5000, that will be the equivalent of "starting slow"? He replied YES. He said no red flags would be raised in that situation.

His words seem to contradict what I am learning here, that I need to start slow and not sell anything for the first 3 months on a new account.

Any insights? Clarification?

Don't always believe what these CSR guys say - they thumb the process down heavily.

100/5000 is not the standard norm

[jeffweico]

I would never take in more than $5,000 per month on a stealth eBay/PayPal combination. Whenever a payment processor sees you doing more than $5,000 per month, that is when they start looking deeper into the account for risk management purposes. That is true of PayPal and most other merchant accounts as well. How they decided on the $5,000 figure, I don't know.

But also, if you have 5 stealth accounts and are selling $5,000 per month on each of them (I would actually recommend 10 doing $2,500 per month each) then you will STILL have your $25,000 per month in sales, but you are spreading your risk over 5 accounts.If ONE gets shut down, then you only lose 20% of your business. If you have ONE account doing $25,000 per month and it gets shut down, then you are OUT OF BUSINESS. At least until you can get more accounts going.

That is one of the best things about stealth. When I lost my first account, I went from making a nice amount of money each month to making NO MONEY each month. In addition to being hurt by this emotionally (I had never been fired from anything in my life or had anything fail business-wise) it DEVASTATED me financially. Now, I KNOW that this could never happen to me again. Yes, I can lose an account, but the likelihood of me losing ALL of my accounts is remote. I never forgot that feeling I had when the rug got pulled from under me. If I didn't have money saved, it would have felt 100 times worse!

[RoxJox]

[QUOTE=jeffweico;680021]I would never take in more than $5,000 per month on a stealth eBay/PayPal combination. Whenever a payment processor sees you doing more than $5,000 per month, that is when they start looking deeper into the account for risk management purposes. That is true of PayPal and most other merchant accounts as well. How they decided on the $5,000 figure, I don't know.

But also, if you have 5 stealth accounts and are selling $5,000 per month on each of them (I would actually recommend 10 doing $2,500 per month each) then you will STILL have your $25,000 per month in sales, but you are spreading your risk over 5 accounts.If ONE gets shut down, then you only lose 20% of your business. If you have ONE account doing $25,000 per month and it gets shut down, then you are OUT OF BUSINESS. At least until you can get more accounts going.

That is one of the best things about stealth. When I lost my first account, I went from making a nice amount of money each month to making NO MONEY each month. In addition to being hurt by this emotionally (I had never been fired from anything in my life or had anything fail business-wise) it DEVASTATED me financially. Now, I KNOW that this could never happen to me again. Yes, I can lose an account, but the likelihood of me losing ALL of my accounts is remote. I never forgot that feeling I had when the rug got pulled from under me. If I didn't have money saved, it would have felt 100 times worse![/QUOTEMy opion means nothing, but if anybody is anybody is foolish enough to not take this advice in ALL forms of business, you may as well get a job at %#$mart

Outstanding as usual Jeff

I would just like to echo jeffs thoughts on the matter. Spread the risk over many accounts, that way you are in control and you will have less chance of ebay or paypal looking deeper in to your accounts.

If after a while you get higher selling limits, all is going well, i would then increase the amount. The key is to do things slowly, in increments. I once had a strong account, i went from listing a few hundred poinds worth of items to nearly 5 thousand. I ramped it up too fast and got shut down.

If i had gone from say £500 to £1000. Then a month later to £1500. And so on till i got to £5000, i don't believe i would have had a problem.

You need to build history, show ebay and paypal you are trustworthy. Building that relationship is key, especially in the first 3 months.

[NXLM]

Originally Posted by Haidukken

Pretty sure that's NOT good advice, given the OP situation.

First:
The 99 cent ebooks look weird as they are and eBay are pretty good at flagging up accounts that try that old trick.

Second:
As far as I know, buyng feedback doesn't really scale towards sellers feedback. It's something that you can do, but I've read on multiple occasions that it doesn't really mean anything.
I mean... Even suspended accounts can purchase items.

Third:
If he is planning to take $25k+ a month, don't you think it might look A BIT off when he is building his feedback by buying 99 cent items?
To go from ULTRA low end items to super high end is an account suicide, you'll get flagged and you'd get suspended most likely.


The best thing you can do is buy he Stealth Book, read it couple of times and wrap your head around the whole thing.
Then if you are in a hurry- Please use the official sellers in this forum and stock up on some accounts.
If you have more time, start from scratch and build your accounts yourself.

Even if you purchase higher limit accounts, you need to build them and make them look and feel as legit as possible. It's virtually impossible to sell $25k+ worth on your first month, without losing accounts.

NEVER said it was an end all to a BE ALL ANY FEEDBACK HELPS with NEW ACCOUNTS. So youd buy from someone with ZERO FEEDBACK before buying from someone with 10 feedback? ALSO, 10 feedback allows you to sell in 1 day auctions as opposed to 3 day auctions. ALSO: Buying ebooks is USUALLY an automatic positive feedback once you use the BUY IT NOW option. I never said buying 10 ebooks would allow him to post 25,000 woth of items in the first month without being flagged. It does help add some wear to his account. If it is looked at physically by the risk department, nothing will really matter then.
As mentioned, it is a quick 10 dollar cushion towards staying under the radar.

[MM78]

Originally Posted by NXLM

NEVER said it was an end all to a BE ALL ANY FEEDBACK HELPS with NEW ACCOUNTS. So youd buy from someone with ZERO FEEDBACK before buying from someone with 10 feedback? ALSO, 10 feedback allows you to sell in 1 day auctions as opposed to 3 day auctions. ALSO: Buying ebooks is USUALLY an automatic positive feedback once you use the BUY IT NOW option. I never said buying 10 ebooks would allow him to post 25,000 woth of items in the first month without being flagged. It does help add some wear to his account. If it is looked at physically by the risk department, nothing will really matter then.
As mentioned, it is a quick 10 dollar cushion towards staying under the radar.

So what your saying is that 10 buying feedback is equal to 10 selling feedback?

[rsot]

Buyer feedback has no count towards seller feedback so MM78 is correct to call this out

[epimetheus039]

Originally Posted by NXLM

NEVER said it was an end all to a BE ALL ANY FEEDBACK HELPS with NEW ACCOUNTS. So youd buy from someone with ZERO FEEDBACK before buying from someone with 10 feedback? ALSO, 10 feedback allows you to sell in 1 day auctions as opposed to 3 day auctions. ALSO: Buying ebooks is USUALLY an automatic positive feedback once you use the BUY IT NOW option. I never said buying 10 ebooks would allow him to post 25,000 woth of items in the first month without being flagged. It does help add some wear to his account. If it is looked at physically by the risk department, nothing will really matter then.
As mentioned, it is a quick 10 dollar cushion towards staying under the radar.

The only difference is that it looks appealing to a customer but it will absolutely have no difference when bots pick up your selling behaviour