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Selling on ebay from home full-time
 

Does anyone on the forum sell on eBay full-time as their main source of income? Maybe have even quit their day job as a result of outstanding ebay profits? Just curious. :)

not me mate but i am very interested in setting up an ebay business as my main source of income, selling mobile phone accessories parts and things like that , any advice on a good product to sell to the irish market lads?

I have been doing eBay full time since Dec of 2005.

No way. Would never put all my eggs in one basket. Diversify, diversify.;)

Ah there we go! Good stuff!

I've been on ebay since 1997, full time only income since about 2000. pushing 8 years. have been through roughly 14 different accounts. most shut down for vero, my last shut down for falling 5% in a month on my shipping time. 100% positive feedback, just had a bad month that made things slow. thought it was ok because I have 8 accounts in waiting till I started listing one this weekend. Now every item I put on gets caught up in the ebay/paypal 21 day wait. I'm screwed.

From someone who has done this for 8 years.
DO NOT, DO NOT. MAKE EBAY YOUR ONLY SOURCE OF INCOME.

I have 4 children and now no income to speak of due to it.

Here we go again.
What do you have as main products to serve people as a good income like this ?

I'm trying to get in affiliate marketing and just started this past week. If anyone can give me advice on help me out a little on it please do. I want to start getting into something besides just ebay. Ebay is my main source of income right now though.

Vero! What are u selling...shoes, handbags...china merch huh, Yea I been there...I remember the days back in 03, when u could list a multicolor murakami and bam its sold 30 mins later, wasnt no delay in listing....
However when u ship something, tell your customers to leave FB asap, if they dont just write paypal 3 days after delivery and they will release it, I do it all the time!

I been on ebay since 99, but i would mostly sell merch i got from china....but with vero thats almost impossible now...what do you sell?

yea the 21 day hold sucks. I have about $500 pending release in my paypal right now until my items get delivered. It just sucks that I cant order more merchandise to list until it clears.

You know I won't answer that.... LOL

My eggs are spread. I retired from a 15 year career in 2005 and started selling on eBay.
85% of my sales are through eBay.
15% are through Amazon, my web site and other selling sites.
Then there is the Stock Market. But who knows anything on that topic lately.... LOL

I sell mostly t shirts. do really well with them just every now and then I get popped with a vero problem and as you know theres not much you can do about it. sometimes I get the 3 strikes and your out. other times I get booted 1st time.

Racist. (USERNAME)

Its actually very Non Racist. Seeing as the username itself could be construed as a racist comment from all points of view its not really directed at any race so it kind of looses its value as being racist. Its one of those is the glass half full or half empty questions. In the end it is what you make of it. :D

Hi, This is my first post on the forum. I joined because I got the boot from ebay. I'm a single mom. I've been making money on ebay for 10 years. This was my second account, which had been in good standing for 5 years. I sell antiques and jewelry. My eggs are not all in one basket. I sell at antique shows, and I buy metals for scrap. But MOST of my income was from ebay. They booted me because my account was "associated" with my mom's account. She had an enormous past due balance from 9 years ago! They're not answering my emails. I've offered to pay the balance in installments. I'd rather do things, "right", so I don't get the boot again. But I really need to get back in business before the rent is due again. I welcome your thoughts.

Usually if you become suspended because of non payment and later on decide to pay that balance ebay will lift your account. You could try that but that won't guarantee they'll lift your Linked account. It's worth a shot though if it's not a big balance.

If not you might want to get started reading eBay Stealth. Good luck!

There is no "right" way with Ebay. Best way is to keep hammering at them, one of your new accounts will get through if you you are not selling VERO. If I ever paid my fees, I would have hundreds of active accounts.
Read the guides, if you are a newbie. The basic and most import things, clear cookies with CCcleaner, change ip address, use reloadable gift cards to register, and vumber for telephone verification, use altered registration info at ebay and paypal (like if you are Susan Holmes 123 driftwood dr. you register new as Sue A. Holmes 123 Drift Wood Dr.)

For me it's just spare cash and a bit of a hobby.

My partner and I run our ebay business full time. We have also put a lot of effort into alternative auction sites in Australia but sales are very sparse. I think the answer for us in the medium to long term is running our web site and marketing it heavily. I am very curious to see what we can do with the $50,000 a year we would otherwise pay ebay for advertising.

I'd rather be doing this that working a regular job. The changes are sickening and nerve wracking, but they are also driving us to diversify and innovate, which is a positive thing.

I sell full time
 

However I haven't been able to quit my day job. Maybe in the next couple of years I can, hopefully

Depending on what you're selling you could do very well with Adwords, Adcenter and YSM... Add organic traffic to this and you have a fully profitable website!

Hey thanks Topazcorp! Yeah, it will be interesting to see how it goes over the next 12 months. Web marketing is a really interesting field to me, and I'm itchy for trying some new things. I appreciate ebay's traffic, but these days I don't think their service is worth $50,000 a year.

I first started my own web business and then expanded to eBay.

If you work eBay to it's fullest, it can give you a ton of sales easy. But the same can be done with your own website and the right advertising.

I'd say we got 80% of our sales from our sites, and 20% eBay. We'd do thousands a day with eBay.

Fun times.

I do Ebay Full time and love my very flexible schedule that I have. I don't have to wake up 5 in the morning to go to work and drive 30 minutes or longer to get there, take vacations when the boss say I can and wait for holidays to come around to get a day off.

All my friends that have a day job always say I got it easy and I don't work or do anything. Yes I have it easy but I just work smart. I would like to work doing something else like Construction or Mechanic because I am a hands-on type of person but I don't want to give up my Free Time that I have. Decision Decision I have to make.

BooMer

ebay full time
 

Making your own website is the way forward. Optimize it so you can get into the top 20 in google and you're away... We also use ebay to advertise our website because it has a lot of traffic to plug into. We used to rely on it until we got the booty last year.

Now we make 99% of our sales through our site/google which is great because there's no listing fees :) a percentage of that traffic may come via our ebay ads but we try our hardest never to make the sale through feepay.

Google base is also a great source of traffic. Our site is
freshfootwear.co.uk we DON'T use paypal... google checkout all the way.

hopefully we'll be able to do away with ebay alltogether soon.

This is EXACTLY how it is for me. Everyone calls me unemployed and how lazy I am for not having a job, but they do it all out of fun because they know how much I usually make and hate me for doing it because I really don't do a whole lot. I am usually the one they end up calling if they want to go out and do something because they know I don't have much going on! And about going on vacations like you said, I just decided on Monday to go to Florida for the weekend :) I'm excited!

OMG!! You are like me.:D I have to wait for my friends to call me up when they have time to do something. For example poker night... I am always available day or night to play but when it comes to the others they have to make sure they don't have work or work the next day to stay up late. I don't ask them anymore to go do something, I usually wait for them to ask me.:). And for the vacation I was planing on going to Florida for Disney World in August but changed my plans because everyone couldn't make it. Maybe I can go with you Philly387;) The Big vacations that I went on so far since going Full time on ebay were Hawaii Island Hoping/Cruise 1 1/2 weeks, Alaska/Vancouver Cruise 2 weeks, China Bejing Tour 2 weeks.

eBay Full Time
 

I do eBay Full time but I definitely want to go the way of my own Website. I am in a serious transition time ever since I was suspended from my one and only eBay account last month. I was really making a ton of money on it but I always knew that it could be taken away with the click of a button by an eBay employee having a bad day. Now I am completely re-grouping and I have been researching for about a month. I have set up 8 different eBay accounts and 4 different PAYPAL accounts that are confirmed, verified and no limits. I believe that when a door closes - a window opens. I am too busy to do anything but take care of my 4 kids and get my business back off the ground. I will never put all my eggs in one eBay account basket again - and hopefully soon I will only use eBay for some extra cash and as a marketing tool for my website. I am convinced that the only way to make real money is to either own your own business or get into some kind of sales. I am needed at home right now so I guess it is going to be an Internet business. I believe that I can make this work again.

Lol, that's how my friends acted the first couple years I started working for my self.

It's fun! I'm still in Vegas, and going on my 2nd month being here. Working online has it's benefits.

you guys must be very clever with online business! Thanks for the inspiring comments.

I have been doing ebay part-time and going to work. I dont think I will ever stop working my 55k/year job (at least for now) but I will continue to try and increase sales on ebay. I also have a personal website up and running and working on marketing strategies to increase traffic. Things are looking good. :)