Why We Closed Our EBay Business After Three Years

It began out of passion and necessity. I was an avid collector of miniature cosmetics and had a closet full of duplicates. Out of work for several months, my husband was looking for a source of income. We toyed with the idea of selling on eBay.

After testing the waters with about a dozen lipsticks and perfumes, we decided he would sell while looking for a permanent job. He quickly got a business license and ordered business cards. He filed all the required forms with the Federal government and the state. He found an accounting program to track the inventory, sales, and profits. We kept precise records for income taxes. We had a written plan.

Within a matter of months, we started buying products to sell, and our account reached the first Power Seller level. Hubby found a job and went back to work full-time. Both of us loved selling on eBay, though. We decided to cut back a bit. I would handle the buying and listing. He would collect payments, manage the inventory, and take care of shipping. TurboLister was a huge help because it allowed us to work hard during the week to create listings to upload on Saturday and Sunday. It left our weekends free to take care of typical errands, grocery shopping, go to church, or take a trip out of town now and then.

Our business experienced various surges over three years. Some of them were predictable, while others remain a mystery. We had huge sales in January-who would have thought, after the holidays?-and pitiful ones in the summer. After about two years, we decided to no longer offer "gently loved" auctions for items such as jewelry, commemorative plates, books, and CDs. We sold at most 50 percent of these items. Photographing them took huge amounts of time.