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eBay stealth business
 

I started a business using eBay stealth accounts. Based off 7 years of eBay experience and 4 years of eBay stealth here is how I operate. I have only really started large scale business 8 weeks ago.

I have a 1200 sq foot warehouse
I ship 30-60 items a day
My average item price is $50
I have 25 eBay accounts but only use 10 main ones.

Main ones are as follows:
2500 feedback account with 600/50000 limit (cost me $2000)
300/50000
200/25000
180/18000
90/9000
60/5000

and a few other smaller ones.

Note: I access all these accounts from 2 computers. I do not switch IP's like everyone says you should. I use different google chrome accounts, I transfer money between these account's paypals. I have yet to get an account banned even though I am not cautious at all.

Total sales in 2 months are over $35000, total listed inventory currently is $80000. I sell various electronic items, some are not testable which posses an issue. I will not give my exact items away to protect my niche. But for every 1000$ I pay I list $13000 in inventory.

Anyways the two largest problems I have with eBay are selling limit and defect rate. I always can't list all my inventory.

The defect rate became a huge issue on my large account after a month of sales. Essentially if you are over a 5% defect rate for 3 month your account gets banned. I was at an 8% defect rate, so I immediately took action. I bought 1000 rolls of shipping tape and started selling at 99 cents a piece. I did roughly 500 99 cent transactions at a cost of 2$ per transaction, it got my defect rate to 4.3% so it was a success but at a $1000-2000 cost.

The defect rate was from shipping bad parts. I just refunded a buyer when they were not happy and I kept a 100% feedback rate. However, when a buyer opens a return item case it counts as a defect, even when the customer ends up satisfied. Pretty stupid rule, results in a $2000 expense for me.

While my business has shown a lot of income startup expenses are huge and eats up a lot of profit the first 2 months.

Major expenses:
Rent $800/month
Inventory $5000-8000/month
Shelving 500$
Bubble wrap machine $1000
shipping supplies 500$/month
Part time employees $600/month
Trash Removal $800/month
eBay accounts $2500
Ebay fees
Paypal fees
Sales Tax
Corporate tax
shipping
refunds
internet

As you can see even with a 10-12x profit margin a lot of my cash gets eaten up on these expenses.

Anyways I am now showing a profit and I hope to show a lot more profit the next month I will keep you guys updated.

Any tips would be appreciated. I believe I have done around 2000 transactions in 2 months.

Re: eBay stealth business
 

Firstly, congrats on your successful business.

Based on what you've said here it is 99% likely that every single one of your accounts is linked. You really should be aware that if just one of your accounts gets limited / suspended, the whole lot is going to follow and you will be left with nothing to trade on.

Re: eBay stealth business
 

Are you operating on just a 2 day week?

If not your figures seem way out.

Re: eBay stealth business
 

I agree with eBayorBust. I think you need to have some more accounts and TRULY keep them separate following the rules of stealth. Or one morning you might wake up to see a bunch of suspension notices.

It is great that you have a good niche and are making money with this. Now you need to take some steps to protect it. Risk management is critical here.

The other thing you should be doing is ANYTHING YOU CAN to bring that defect rate down! That is going to be what makes these accounts go down like dominoes. Either that or PayPal to PayPal transfers.

I am not trying to insult you, but we see this all the time. Someone makes the claim that the stealth rules are BS, that IP's make no difference, that you can transfer from PayPal to PayPal without having any issues, use the same pictures and products on all of your accounts, or whatever else. Then, a couple of months later we see the post that says "HELP! ALL 20 of My Accounts Went Down in ONE DAY!!! HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN???"

There is not much you can do regarding your current accounts being linked. They are already linked and nothing will change that. But I would be doing whatever I could to bring down the defect rate, have new accounts ready to replace the current accounts, have new pictures and descriptions waiting to go and would most likely end the PayPal to PayPal transfers if at all possible.

Re: eBay stealth business
 

@kingboy, I would like about 10-20 sq feet in your warehouse to set up a postal location pls :)

Re: eBay stealth business
 

I agree that it is pretty dumb how the item defect rate works with cases being opened and what not. I absolutely hate how this works. I sell quite a bit of clothing and I will get a return request opened with the buyer saying I purchased the wrong size I need Large not an XL. Then i get dinged. Its similar on Amazon as well. Pretty lame.

Re: eBay stealth business
 

First of all, congrats on your success that's an awesome story! But as others have mentioned the not changing your ip was not a good decision. All your accounts are for sure linked now, so I would advise you to keep them in as good standings as you possibly can. Cause if one goes down they can easily all go down around the same time. That's why its so important to change you ips. If you don't want to reset your modem etc nor note ips down then you should get a dedicated ip from a VPN/VPS

But anyways not much you can do for those accounts that are already linked, just live and your learn but hopefully those accounts stay up just keep their ratings high. But I would advise you to start building other stealth accounts, following complete stealth to not link them, in case the main ones go down.

Re: eBay stealth business
 

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Re: eBay stealth business
 

You need to build up something as a backup, as you are linked. If you mess up, everything will fall apart like a domino.

Re: eBay stealth business
 

Agree!!!!!

Re: eBay stealth business
 

You should've read my message and taken my offer. Rolls of tape really? No shipping expense?

Re: eBay stealth business
 

Considering you're making such a huge numbers in therms of sale you should have been more careful,read the stealth guide again and make sure that you follow all instructions, including those that tell you how to keep the accounts separate from your other stealth accounts so that they don't get jeopardised, you should get some other accounts if you are hoping for a bright future.

Re: eBay stealth business
 

This post sounds sus as, if you are telling the truth when one accounts goes down they will all go down with it.

Re: eBay stealth business
 

All of these accounts are between 2-12 years old. I created about 20 of them at the same exact time, and have had probably 4 of them banned for not paying fees and what not.

I knew nobody would be happy with how I run my account but, its how I do it and its worked for about 4 years for me, even when an account gets banned.

I use the exact same IP on every account, I use the exact same pictures on every account. I list the same kinds of items on every account. I used to switched IPs but found it way to much of a hastle so I stopped doing it years ago.

Each account has a completely different identity of course, I do transfer funds between accounts.

I have have had one account get a linkage from linking the same bank account which put my limit from 60 items down to 40 items. All other accounts keep increasing limits monthly.

I do not see a chance of getting all of these account banned. I don't really have a backup plan, but worse case if everything got shut down I could put down 2000$ and have 8 new accounts with a 1000 item limit ready to go within 3 days. Biggest threat right now is the defect rate which I am keeping in check.

I do know how to operate a stealth account "according to the book", but I choose not to do so. I just wanted to share my experience so people can see.

Here is my defect rate on my largest account, it was 7.5% last period. I probably did 400-500 bougus transactions just to get it to here.
http://i.imgur.com/D2pQQot.png

Re: eBay stealth business
 

This is a rather rare case.
Have any of the accounts been restricted permanently?

Re: eBay stealth business
 

hey kingboy2k3 this all change feb 20th

Re: eBay stealth business
 

Sorry but SMH.