How I started

We all get into different kinds of jobs or businesses, often completely unintentionally.  How many of us actuallly work in the industry that we were actually educated in?  I mean, when we went to college (those of us who did) and studied Engineering, or English, or whatever, very few of us actually work in the field that we were educated for.  That just happens over the years.

I never finished college.  It bored me, so I quit.  Frankly, it is a decision that I have never regretted.  I am kind of a free spirit, I like to do what I want to do, and that varies.  Sometimes I do a certain type of work, then I get bored with it and move on to something else.  It’s just my nature.

Because of my free nature spirit, I have gone through many jobs over the years, and even many niches within the same type of work.  I’ve been earning money online for more than 10 years now.  I have earned my living exclusively online for about 6 years now.  But, how did I get started in earning online?  Let’s have a look.

In 1997, a friend e-mailed me and told me about eBay.  I had never heard of it before, they were still relatively new, so I went and checked it out.  Wow, it intrigued me.  I started buying a few things on eBay.  I learned the ropes of how eBay worked by buying on the site.  I bought quite a few things there, because I found it convenient, and also I was intrigued at being able to actually buy things on the Internet, something that was almost unheard of in those days.

Being the entrepreneur that I am by nature, it didn’t take long and I had the itch to sell on eBay.  I had to learn how to do that, but I didn’t consider that a hurdle.

During this time, I didn’t have too much money, I sort of lived paycheck to paycheck, but I was happy.  It happened to be May of this particular year, and I had just gotten a very nice tax refund, around $5,000.  Feyma and I went to do some shopping at Costco, mostly for groceries.  While there I saw a big pile of REX organizers, from Rolodex.  I had been wanting one of these things, it was a credit card sized PDA, and I wanted one, but they were too expensive for me at that time.  Online, you could buy one for about $150 in those days.  At Costco, they had them for $49!  I couldn’t believe my eyes, but I didn’t buy one.  Too conservative with my money, I guess.

When we got home, Feyma told me that she was surprised that I didn’t buy a REX and try to sell it on eBay, after all it was 1/3 of the normal price!  Oh, wow, this was a business opportunity.  I went back to Costco to get a REX to sell on eBay.  Hmm, I thought… how many should I buy?  Two?  Three?  Well, I remembered that I had that $5,000 tax refund in the bank.  When I got to Costco, I bought 100 units.  That’s right, I blew my entire tax refund on REX units.  What if they didn’t sell?  Well, Costco is very liberal about giving refunds on unused products, so no biggie, I would just return them if they didn’t sell.

I got home, and got busy, started listing my new found product on eBay.  When I woke up the next morning, I already had bids for higher than I had paid for the units.  By the time my auction ended, I had sold the REX for over $100, so I more than doubled my money!  I started listing 3 or 4 REX’s on eBay at the same time, with auctions ending at different times, different starting prices, etc.  I sold out of the 100 units in a week or so, and went back and bought another hundred.  Sold all of them too.  I made between $25 to $80 per unit.  I made less on the units sold at later dates, because others started finding the deals, and were in competition with me, but still, $25 was a nice profit, and I was happy with it.

I made a nice chunk of change from selling those REX units.  It only whetted my appetite too, because from that day forward, I have made money online in one way or another ever since.  It was a great way to start!

Do you have a story on how you started earning money online?

What? You are not yet making money online?

What are you waiting for?

Is it a sign of things to come?

Did you know that eBay is starting an experiment or a test on eBay Australia?  Beginning on June 1, all eBay buyers in Australia must pay for their purchase with Paypal!

That’s right, there will be no option for cash payment, a check in the mail or any other online payment system, the buyer MUST use Paypal.

Did you know that Paypal is owned by eBay?  So, it would seem that eBay is using this method to increase their take on the items that you sell!  I mean, they get a percentage from virtually every payment that goes through Paypal, so this is a money making decision for them.

I don’t begrudge anybody making money, after all that is what this blog is all about.  But, in this day and age, the goal for any company should be to give their customers choices.  The more choices the better.  This move, though, is limiting choices.

eBay has been making a lot of moves lately that are wrong, in my opinion.  Are they hurting for cash?  It would not seem so, but the moves they have been making seem to indicate that they are.  Why?

Is eBay shooting themselves in the foot?

A few weeks back, eBay made some changes in how their system works.  For one thing, eBay had gotten the reputation that their fees that sellers paid was too high, so they made an adjustment to that.  Problem is, when the restructured the way that the fees work, the cost for most sellers went UP instead of down!  But, eBay said that this change was done to change the perception of high fees.  Does this make sense?

The second major change that eBay made is that Sellers can no longer leave negative feedback for buyers!  This, in my opinion is a change that will really hurt a lot of sellers, and in the end it will hurt eBay itself.

Do you know how feedback works?  Basically, when a transaction is done on eBay, the seller of the item, and the buyer of that item get to leave feedback about how the experience went.  This feedback is accumulated, positive feedback is added up, negative feedback is subtracted, and neutral feedback doesn’t change the score.  When all of these calculations are completed, a number is assigned to the eBay user.  For example, if a person has been involved in 10 transactions and all have been assigned feedback, the total number of feedback scores would be 10 feedbacks.  If all 10 of those scores are positive, the person would have a feedback score of 10.  If 9 were positive and one was negative, the feedback score would be 8 (9+ - 1- =8).  In addition, that feedback rating would be rated 90% positive.  While 90% positive sounds good, it is not…. for the most part, a feedback score of 98% or better would be considered good.

Now, though, with negative feedback being banned from being left by sellers, is the system really fair?  I don’t think it is any longer.  There are bad buyers on eBay, and they can do bad things, fraudulent, etc, and the seller can do nothing.  The buyer can leave a negative feedback comment about the seller, but the seller has no way to counter that.  It simply is not fair.  Fair and accurate feedback should be available to both sides.

Because of these two changes, Sellers last week staged a protest boycott of eBay.  What did eBay think about that?  Well, they shrugged it off and said that it only had an effect of listings on the site being down by 13% .  Basically, eBay is saying that the boycott did not hurt them, and the controversial policies will be staying in place.

So, if sellers don’t like the new policies, what can they do?  Well, they can stop using eBay.  They can move to Amazon selling, and doing things using Google’s Checkout.  Also, other auction venues could start to pop up.  Craigs List is already getting more items being sold from these former eBay sellers.  I have been saying for years that eBay needs competition, and it is looking like my feelings are starting to be right.

What do you think?  Will you sell on eBay in the future?  Do you think eBay’s new policies are right?