I was a Top Rated/Powerseller on eBay for about 4 years. I started out selling wall mounts in late 2007. This was right at the LCD/Plasma boom so life was REALLY good. I was clearing (after ebay fees) about 6-700 a month during the summer months, and between 1500-2000 a week during the shopping season.
Well, the TV mounts quit selling after a couple of years. Mainly because of big companies buying in bulk from china and making .30 cents on each sell. We just couldn't compete. We looked for different suppliers, and tried a couple of other options but it just wasn't clicking.
Late last year (2010) our business was done. Our profits were down to nothing. eBay's restructuring killed our business - the best match - flooding the market with previous store only items destroyed us. In the past you could search for one of our products and it would come up with about 35 listings. After the change it would bring up 4000 and we would be at the very bottom.
After some thought, we figured we might as well go out with a bang. I hooked up with a dealer (can't say what it was we were selling but eBay frowns upon it) and started pushing a new product. I knew this was eBay suicide, but our business was already shot. We started in early 2011, in less than 3 months we had cleared 28,000 - This is no joke. Well, eBay shut us down - again, I can't say what it was we were selling - but they sell like HOT CAKES on eBay. We had over 10,000 positive feedbacks with a rating of 99.8% Top Rated sellers as well. They removed our listings and suspended my account.
Over the last month or so I've bought several stealth accounts and have read the
stealth guide. All of my accounts have been nuked. The problem I have is, with every stealth account they immediately dump my listings and ask us to call them for ID verification (which I expect). Now, everytime I call, that ask me to send them photo ID's and Billing summaries with my personal info on it.
Not going to happen.
About a week ago, I went back to o'le faithful - amazon. I used one of my
eBay Stealth accounts and was back up selling in no time. As a matter of fact I had 6 big sells (1) hour after creating the account, and they continue to come in.
So eBay, I thank you for the good years - but for now, I'm done.