My name is Richard Grady and I started working online in 1998. Like many, my first ‘taste’ of trading on the Internet came from using the largest online auction site in the world – eBay.com.
I first heard about eBay from a newspaper article and decided to take a look. I live in the UK and at the time, there was only one eBay site – eBay.com – so most members were based in the USA.
Despite this, I could still see a huge potential and started to sell on a part-time basis to make a bit of ‘pocket-money’.
eBay wasn’t my full-time job and I was doing the ‘9–5’ working in a 17 year career in corporate finance, but I enjoyed it and it was profitable.
In fact, eBay never became a full-time business for me as I drifted into other things, however, I traded enough to realize that it is possible to earn a full-time income through selling on eBay alone.
Over the years, I sold all sorts of things from vintage computers (such as the Sinclair range), to DVD’s, to mobile phone accessories and more. eBay was profitable and generally enjoyable.
However, as I started to sell more and more products, I found that the increasing workload was becoming less and less enjoyable! Spending my evenings and weekends packing goods and dealing with emails became more and more of an ‘effort’ and I would often just stop selling for a couple of months to give myself a break.
Looking back, I wasn’t actually selling that many items, maybe 20 or 30 a week, but I suppose it seemed like a lot because I was working full-time as well.
In fact, despite spending almost 4 years selling on eBay, I only built up a feedback rating of just under 900 comments – admittedly not everyone leaves feedback, but it goes to show that I wasn’t a ‘huge’ seller, certainly nowhere near PowerSeller status! (I would like to add at this point that I never received one negative feedback comment in all my time selling – my feedback profile is still unblemished today ☺)
I always had a certain respect for PowerSellers, I suppose because at the time this was something I would have like to have been myself. Unfortunately, I didn’t seem to have enough hours in the day to manage this!
The reason I eventually ‘moved away’ from eBay was because of the fact that I wrote my first eBook. This was a directory of UK wholesalers that could be used by new eBay sellers in order to find suppliers and contacts.
I wrote the guide in response to the numerous emails I was receiving each week asking where I bought my stock from. The directory was a massive success and I went on to write a similar guide for the US.
In the end, I just didn’t have the time to spend selling on eBay as I was concentrating my efforts on building up my ‘info-products’ business. In 2001 I was able to give up my career in finance and work full-time online.
I still keep up to date with eBay and from time to time I can’t resist doing a bit of trading – especially at Christmas.
If I am honest, I don’t think I could ever have been a PowerSeller for any period of time as I simply disliked the packing and shipping aspect of the ‘job’ too much! I do however think that it is fantastic that the eBay website has allowed so many people to give up jobs that they hated and spend their time doing something they enjoy, as well as earning a good living.
Many people visit eBay and consider starting their own online auction business. I wanted to write this eBook to show that you can earn your living on eBay and that many ‘ordinary’ people are doing just that.
It will be hard work and it will involve long hours, but it CAN be done.
