I did it. They all told me no too, but I didn’t listen. I quit my job to work from home at eBay. It eventually worked out fine, but the road to good was long and bumpy. This is what happened.
I worked in a high pressure IT (information technology) job and hated it. The hours were long; I was on salary so there was no overtime. My children thought I lived somewhere else and the stress was unbelievable. I looked at other career options and quickly realized that changing jobs would lead to the same destination, just in a different place. After talking with my spouse, we decided that I should change jobs. I don’t think he realizes that I mean quitting my $50,000-a-year job to sell items on eBay. I forgot to mention that. After we talked, the next morning I gave two weeks’ notice. Let the games begin!
The same night I gave the notice, I started researching what it took to sell items on eBay. Surely it couldn’t be that hard, everyone seems to do it and I have an IT background. I have an eBay ID. So I did what most people do to begin with; I cleaned out my closet. The clothes were fine; especially some of the designer clothes that she would no longer need because she was going to work in her pajamas at night! Looking back I realized that I was delusional. When my husband finally realized what he was planning, he turned around. Aside from threatening divorce, he said he was under the impression that I would change jobs or careers. He never dreamed that he would quit smoking to stay home and play eBay. He gave me a year to fix it or go back to the corporate jungle where I would go.
My last two weeks of employment have come to an end and I am still awaiting payment from an auction. The others shipped and I’m not sure what else to sell. I started looking around at what I thought would sell. I know, I’ll be buying iPods from trustee websites that always advertise that they have eBay items. Well, iPods became a palette of electronics that cost me $1,500.00. I love my husband; he still hasn’t tried to kill me. My loving husband assumed that I would have discussed buying a pallet with him before buying it. Oh good…
About that pallet: It arrived and I was so excited. It was like Christmas. I unwrapped the pallet keeping everything together; I couldn’t wait to see the iPods. Oh boy, was I disappointed. I thought this was new merchandise, not open used stuff. 2 of the 5 iPods would not turn on. None of the boxes were sealed and there were several other electronic items that were not working. Wait, it gets better. It was an older version of the iPod, not the new ones consumed in eBay bidding wars. These are the iPods that are only sold once in 4 auctions. Some of the other electronic devices I was able to put to work. After spending a week going through the pallet of things, repairing items, and repacking and gluing boxes together, I was finally ready to take some photos and list what items I could. Of the 100 items on the pallet, 75 were salable. Of those 75, 25 sold the first time but for much less than I expected, 15 sold the second time, and the other 35 never sold. The end result was a loss of $800! It’s not a good start.
What I learned? The first thing is that I really needed to learn what all those terms mean on the liquidator’s website. If I had known what a return paddle really meant, I would have passed on this. The second thing I learned is that I had a lot to learn. So I spent the next month reading and researching and understanding it all. So I finally started to get it right.
I quit my job to work from home at eBay. It was a good decision after all. However, he could have avoided a lot of trouble early on if he had done a little research. There was never a return to the corporate jungle. I had a successful business.