Forum

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

I am full time as well. Incredibly efficient for what it is, but could be better.

There's an amount of self-discipline that is required and comes from it, which is something I most likely learned from my past experiences. Trial and error, never give up.
Part of being a successful person is failing and knowing when to move on and what works, essentially cutting your losses and gaining traction.

It may be hard work at times, but it is the only thing that can guarantee true freedom and job security. If I fail, it is by my own hand, not anyone elses..

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

I think everyone can agree with me on this one...

People who work 9 to 5 wake up with a frown.

People who are self employed (and successful) wake up with a smile when they see all their sales notifications from orders placed when they were asleep :)

Not going to lie, waking up to an MC999 is one sh*t start. :p

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

yes checking my emails every morning and seeing how many sales I made during the night is a great start to the day but there is nothing worse than seeing that dreaded email of suspension!

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

HEY EVERYONE! I love this post.
Yes I have worked from home using ebay and amazon for 7 years this month actually!

I did have a question, I am looking to expand FINALLY, and I do need help packing. My goal is to get up to 400 to 600 sales per week. My problem is finding someone I trust.
Main things are, Keep their mouths shut. I dont want them telling everyone and anyone what I do what I sell and that I have thousands worth of inventory in my apt.

Thats the other thing, keeping a healthy stock of inventory in my home, having someone come to the house to pack it...I would get nervous. It would be about $6k or more in my house at any given time and I really need to know I can trust and rely on anyone I hired.

MY QUESTION IS: For the sellers who have hired and have help, what are your tips and suggestions for finding someone that I can trust??

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

Will you not be in whilst their packing? or are you scared?

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

You may want to consider reading the book "Home office from Hell" for some assistance in this.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

no family/friends you can get to do it?

I've not had any issues with people I have packing anyway.
I pay them more, standard wage is like £7-7.50 a hour for it, I give them £9 and let them work pretty much whenever they like.
Doesn't make much difference to me, they pack 50 items a hour so its 18p per item rather than 15p, I make £3.70 a item on average so it doesn't change the profit much.
Give them a incentive to not be a prik and they won't be a prik ;)

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

Yes thats very important. Dont think all of a sudden your boss, their slaves. They'll eat you alive before you know it. Treat them like humans, and make it comfortable for them such that they dont begin job hunting again the same day they start working for you.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

Lol, safe till they get fired. Where I used to work, in about 6 months, 80% of the people u knew 6 months ago aren't there anymore. Either fired or couldn't take it anymore.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

@zen - For me it's all about growth. My ecommerce business will eventually grow to the point that it's almost entirely managed by my staff, and not myself. That way I have time to pursue other business ventures. The way I see it I was incredibly lucky to stumble into the business(es) I currently own, but I know there are much more profitable industries to get into. I hope to eventually be involved with real estate. I, like many others here, am using Ebay to slowly become rich so I can slowly become a real estate tycoon of sorts, haha.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

Sounds like an Amazon fulfillment center, lol. Their turnover is the worst!

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

Oh and to some extent I do agree that you should never employ friends or family. It can make things very complicated very quickly, especially if you employ your spouse like I do. But in my case it works, mostly because my wife has very little fiscal responsibility. I hate to say that but it's true. She see's that I'm raking in cash and my savings are quickly growing, we both want to live in a larger house, and she knows she could never save that amount of money on her own (I'll never get a mortgage...). So she's more than happy to work from home helping me.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

I too am against the concept of mortgage. Curious to know why you are too?

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

this is such a good thread and inspiring!

thanks guys.

im hoping to do full time soon.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

Wow..sounds very similar to my plan.
Real estate may not be as profitable as you assume though....I know people who were involved in r.e. and believe it or not the margins are not very high for fix and flip, not to mention the fact that you may be sitting on single family homes after rehabbing them for much longer than initially assumed, thus paralyzing and tying up your money in an asset you need to wait on.

R.e. is good for buy and hold though, its a product that literally pays itself off and eventually turns into passive income.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

off topic but why do people fap over property so much, was thinking about it before but in the south of the UK you'd need to spend £100k to get a flat you can rent out for £500 a month which would yield a much better % than somewhere more expensive
Then:
maintenance: £1k a year on average?
problem tennents and it being empty (you'd be attracting the scum with a really cheap place): £1k a year average?
agents fees: £500 a year?
Then stamp duty aswell (tax on purchase price)

3.5% yield or less on your 100k, obviously good if property prices keep going up but not exactly a certainty is it, they're already sky high

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

South of England has pretty awful ROI % but long term the resale value will always go up and that is where money is made a lot of the time

In the north you can get 8/9% ROI all day long on flats which is IMO the place to focus. Resale value will never increase as much as in the south but when I buy a property to rent out I am looking more at the ROI in terms of rent not resale value 4/5 years later.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

Estates will always dominate within the investment markets. Its not always about buy and sell. There are so many ways a potential buyer can look to deal with a property. Some might buy to renovate, and then sell. Some might buy to rent, and sell later. so many possible options. Though, big investment, big risk, no guarantee it will pan out in your favour.

P.S. This thread has gone so off topic, I can't remember what the OP's question was :lol:

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

You guys buy cash flow property for 9% ROI?

If so, you need to look at rural USA. 20% Is pretty low.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

9% yearly yield % v purchase value of property in the UK is pretty good really. Most the time its around 4/5%

We have a very expensive housing market though, it would be very rare to get a house for less than £75k (around $110k). Last time I was looking at property in the US the $ stretched a whole lot further in the domestic housing market in the US than the £ does in the UK domestic market.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

@Retailer -I'm more interested in getting some rental properties set up for steady income. I know a guy who flips properties for a living and does alright, but it consumes 100% of his time.

I'm constantly browsing govdeals for property tax auctions. I bought my 1st 1/4 acre last year for $4500 and it's zoned residential with sewage and power hookups already in place. If I spent $10g on a single wide trailer and rented it out for $650 per month I'd be making a profit within 2 years. I'd like to eventually own an entire trailer park, using the profits from previous units to purchase new units until I've filled an entire piece of property with rentals.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

Not a bad place to start.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

For us, the banks were nothing more than pirates.

Our personal circumstances did not fit their criteria.

We live in different continents so that really was hard for them to perceive.

When we did manage to get a mortage, we decided to repay more dollars than needed to reduce its term. We had not even taken the funds when the interest rate went up. That little extra we hoped to pay was reduced.

Luckily, we access line of credit now which is rarely needed.

To really make you grasp, residential loans in OZ at one point were 18% interest.
As I said, pirates!

:faint:

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

18%!!! That is mad

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

James'

This was about 20 to 25 years ago. Yeah, it was mad.

At the time, we were squirrelling money away as investments with the banks were high too.
We took the chance for the longest terms to get invest. By the time the terms were up, the rates were lowered. But we were paid out at the high %.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

did they work at amy's baking co.?

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

Nope, nordstroms clothing retailer. We were on commission. 6 months, u don't recongnize 80% of the staff.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

it was meant as a joke. it was from an episode of kitchen nightmares. worth looking up just for laughs.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

I remember when mortgage was around 400% in Belarus, I'm glad my parents migrated.
Belarus Interest Rate | 1991-2016 | Data | Chart | Calendar | Forecast

I wonder if a person can get insured from getting ripped by the banks. If someone takes a loan under a fixed rate contract, can they raise the rate anyway if there is a crisis?
All those people taking loans under -0.75% - 5% can just wake up one day and start paying 100%+ or if it's fixed it's not possible?

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

Oh, and @ the person who asked why I'm against mortgages:

I'm self-employed and even though I'm well-off for the time being, I don't know what the future holds. I don't want to go out and get a $250k loan and then have my income dry up the next year and lose my (the banks) home. I've always had an attitude of "don't buy what you can't afford." I just hate debt period, I guess.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

See I'm on the opposite side, I can't wait to get a mortgage. Our £475 rent per month is never to be seen again, I would rather have a house at the end of it that I can sell up or retire in!

Plus we have a bit of frustration with our current renting situation, when I had a council flat it was great because the building was maintained and repairs and issues dealt with quickly. When renting privately like in our current flat, the land lord does not care. We have damp, mold, rot, leaks, and windows that are nailed shut. If it was our place we could work on these things and fix them, but atm its not even worth painting the walls. :/

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

You both make valid points. But I side with phaz0rz on the basis, you never know what the future holds.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

Bit of a random question but this post seems to be filled with them.. Anyone in the UK can you recommend a good savings account? I have all my savings in one account and the interest isn't great, I have no idea about investing either but I do want to do something with my money rather than just having it sit doing nothing.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

Im not necessarily scared, its just I am a single younger woman now and having that much inventory. I would worry about theft or break ins. I am not trying to be paranoid. However I have just ended a 7 yr relationship and he was a drug addict who brought lots of friends over (who were recovering/not so recovering addicts too) I have already had stuff go missing with 2 of his friends staying with us awhile even after they left and I just get a little anxious obtaining that much inventory and then hiring someone I dont know. And no there is no family or friends to hire, I have very little of either one of these especially that lives where I do, and they all have productive full time jobs.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

That sounds like my plan too. Now that I have time to focus on myself and my business, I really want to get a few business ventures going. I feel ebay is not going to last forever, and I always feel like there is just a matter of time till the stealth thing is next to impossible to do. I want to make sure that if and when that time comes I already have a few self sustaining businesses and income so that it will not affect me.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

I would focus on strategy. Find ways to cut down time taken to post and pack orders:
- Use a label printer.
- use a shipping platform like shipstation which collects all your orders.
- dedicate one room in your home to business.
- organise everything in shelves
- have everything within reach
That way, you might not (just yet) need a helper, you can just about manage to pull it off on your own.

Once you have an efficient process in place, look for a 'woman' helper. It can be uncomfortable in your situation to trust a guy. Hire someone to help out few hours a day. Slowly build trust, be with them. Soon after, you can trust them to do it by themselves.

Stock, lock most of it in another room. Just put out what you may need that day.

Theft, stick a budget cctv camera as a form of deterrent.

Trust me, most people would just want to make a living. If your not selling iphones and branded handbags, I dont think people will care for the face value of such products.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

I haven't worked for the man in almost 28 years! I have four different businesses and 18 employees working for me. I own a landscaping, trucking, and pawn shop business. On top of that, I sell a ton of stuff on Amazon/eBay. Thank the good lord Jesus Christ I married an accountant :hail:.

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

Good post was interesting reading a lot of the answers.

eBay is full time for me I do everything I wrap the parcels, post the parcels I work from my own office and I haven't worked in a normal job since 2010.

I never intend on doing a 9 till 5 building someone else's business up and making them rich when I can learn myself and do it myself.

I've made a lot of mistakes in the passed with the whole eBay business, too many to count on both of my hands, but everyday I am grateful for what I do even when I do have the most annoying irritating customers or a supplier messes an order up for me I still wouldn't change it for the world :)

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

This is for everyone that keeps messaging me for tax advise, I'm not an accountant! And no I'm not going to bug my wife with your questions! She is too busy doing my taxes lol!

Seriously though, you shouldn't take tax advise from random strangers on the web. Meet with your accountant if you have questions. Stop messaging me please!

Re: Is stealth eBay your full time job?
 

Full time ebayer