@rocket2retro wrote:
I sell that amount week now with my eBay store. Howwever, I used to sell well over double that (for 10 years straight) but in the past 3 years my sales have more than halved.
With this trend, I don't know how much I'll be selling on another 3 years and were I starting out again I don't know that I'd risk it.
To clear $700.00 a week you'll need to sell about $900.00 to cover eBay/PayPal fees, breakages, missing items, returns etc.
Then you add your stock cost to that amount. Factoring in these costs you can see you're goiing to need to sell well in excess of $1000 per week.
I usually list 40-50 things per week and the residual just sits in my store (usually around 1200 items). For me the time spent works out at about 1 hour per sold item.
At present this is about 30 sales per week for 30 hours input (but sometimes more) This includes stock sourcing, cleaning, photogaphy, photo editing, writing descriptions, packing, posting etc. This will give you a rough idea of the value your items need to be to be to make a decent hourly wage.I do things in bulk eg write 50 descriptions, photograph 50 items, bulk edit 250 photos etc. This cuts diown on time as you get on a roll and its more productive than doing just a few items at at time.
The other consideration is what you're selling. Clothing is a very flooded market on ebay & notoriously problematic with a high incidence of returns for sizing, condition etc (and I think change of mind returns disguised as 'not as described'). I suspect shoes would be equally probelematic.
Also you can't expect to be suddenly turning over $1000k per week in sales. It will take time to build up your store quantities so you are getting a reasonable and consistent volume of sales. It may take 6 months to a year (or may never happpen!)
Having said all that, I still plug away, as I too prefer not to work the traditional 9-5 and I enjoy some aspects of selling, However, at present, my 16YO daughter makes considerably more than me per hour waitressing.
Good luck whatever you decide to do.
All of the above matches my ebay experiences pretty much too. I used to make a full time living from ebay ( 3-4 years ago ) but like Rocket, my sales halved. I have managed to increase sales recently by starting a new store ( number 3 ) and are back to sales being around 35% lower than their peak of four years ago.
Over the three stores I clear $600 - $700 profit per week after all cost and expenses. It takes me around 2 - 2.5 days of solid work per week to clear this amount so I am making around $30 - $35 per hour. I usually do a solid, consistent 7-8 hours work per day when ebaying. It took several years of building up my business to get it to the stage where I could achieve this hourly pay rate, and in the first 12 months all profits from the business where turned back into stock and storage fixtures to get the business going. Now it is really just a maintenance thing and does not take a lot of effort really.
Like rocket I keep selling here as I couldnt stand to go back working for a boss again. I much prefer working from home in my casual clothes and taking a lunch break when I feel like it, not when the clock says I have too. It also allows me to spend more time running the wife and kids to their various functions and attend to things around the house. I have started a different non internet based business to make up the balance of my income, so the pressure is off now if ebay has a bad week. This has made a big difference to my stress levels.
The other business is a sheep grazing business, so on the nice sunny days I do sheep work and the rainy or hot days are spent in the office on ebay. All up it allows a much better work / life balance than I had when doing a normal day job.
Ebay cops a lot of negativity in the forums, which is understandable as people often come here with problems or complaints, but despite all of its MANY faults, I would still rather be making an income here than going back to the nine to five grind. And yes you can still make $700 per week on ebay if you can find products the buyers want to buy. ( I believe that is the biggest secret to making the whole thing work )
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