A few years ago our company's main source of income was derived from selling goods on eBay and to a lesser extent Amazon. These days, we have moved on to greener pastures, yet we still use eBay to shift any residual stock which occasionally gets unearthed in a loft or garage. However, in the years when we were gold power sellers, we picked up a fair amount of experience with regards to selling online, and on eBay in particular. In the true spirit of sharing etc etc, we will be publishing our experiences here. We hope you will find them useful should you choose to investigate eBay as a revenue stream, but at the very least, you will find them free. There is far too much premium-priced guff full of vague notions out there for our liking. All our guff is free!

Of course, if you do find it useful, you can show your appreciation by visiting Amazon using the link on the front page and buying something. That will earn us a few pennies. Alternatively, browse some of the ads. Its your call though. There's no pressure. The doctors say the cheaper medicine is usually ok, so there really is no need to panic, not yet.

So what will you find in the way of useful stuff? Well, in order to help my own disorganised mind find some sort of order, I will document the plan here, then we will see how close I get to hitting it.

Categories

• Where to sell?
• What to sell?
• Where to buy stock?
• How to write good listings
• Avoid Scammers

That sounds like a good list to start with. Before I get to the articles proper though, I need to make one thing clear. The fundamental piece of advice I can give to anybody is this:

DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY

This works on many levels:

1. You will at some point get bad feedback from an idiot. Unless you know in your heart its justified, just ignored it. Don't let it crush you or wail to the heavens about how unjust the system is. Nobody else cares.
2. You will at some point get scammed. Selling online has the advantage of no shoplifting. A slight disadvantage is postal scams. Later blogs will show you how to minimise this, but really, you need to factor this in to your bottom line. Most people are surprisingly honest though.
3. Don't let eBay take over your house. If you are not careful you will be sleeping on boxes, and walking up and down staircases lined with boxes. Your children will be afraid to move for fear of being hit by a falling box. If this is you, then reassess what you are doing. Its not worth it.
4. A small minority of people are very odd. Just accept that, don't try and change them!

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