The phrase “working at home” used to be a contradiction in terms.Way back in the twentieth century, when you worked at home, you wore different clothing than you did in the office. You had more relaxed mannerisms and habits. But these two scenarios have changed. Offices have casual dress days, and working at home means much more padding around the kitchen in your bathrobe and slippers and talking on the phone.

Working at home can mean that you run a full- or part-time business in which you conduct transactions with customers from around the world, thanks to the Internet. One of the most exciting and potentially lucrative ways to work from home is to sell merchandise online with the biggest and most successful online auction site, eBay. eBay is known as a place where you can sell or buy at auction: you put an item up for sale by publishing a description and (usually) a photo of it on eBay’s Web site. Prospective buyers find your item for sale and submit bids by filling out a form right on the auction page. The person who has the highest bid when the auction ends is the winner. In addition, eBay allows you to sell items for a fixed price, and has special areas for selling vehicles, business services, and high-end antiques, each of which is described in this article.

Whether you want to sell on eBay full- or part-time depends on your needs and the amount of time you have available. If you’ve been laid off and need some extra income to fill up the time between jobs, you have lots of time to devote. If you already have a full-time job and are trying to make some extra money, you’re limited to off-hours such as evenings and weekends. An eBay business is flexible enough to handle each of these situations. First, you need to decide what you want to accomplish.

Set Goals for Your eBay Business The first step in starting up any business, whether it’s on eBay, on your ownWeb site, or in the offline, brick-and-mortar world, is to set your goals and objectives and then develop strategies for attaining them. In the traditional business world, it’s called coming up with a business plan. A business plan requires you to ask yourself some basic questions of the sort that can apply to your eBay business, too:

- Why do you want to sell on eBay?

- What do you want to sell?

- Are there enough buyers for what you want to sell?

- How do you define “success”? The first question is deceptively simple. It forces you to focus on your goals for your eBay business. Do you want to sell full-time?

Do you want to find new customers for a sales business that you already operate, either on theWeb or through a storefront? Do you need to expand an e-commerce business that’s flagging? Or do you just want to make some extra money each month to help with expenses? The second question is also important: Since you’re going to be spending many hours per week on your business, you need to make sure you’re working with merchandise you know and hopefully enjoy buying and selling. The third question involves market research: make sure there aren’t a thousand people already selling what you want to sell on eBay. If the market is already flooded, you’ll have a hard time breaking in. Switching merchandise or sales categories can help you find more bidders (see “Decide What to Sell” later in this article). The final question is essential: envision how you want your eBay business to function ideally once it’s up and running. What will make you happy

- being able to leave the office and work at home? Being able to help your spouse out with some extra money while taking care of the kids? Or just being able to pay the bills at the end of the month? Defining success will help you design your business and encourage you to feel satisfied when you reach your goals, too.

Jump Start a Brand-New Business Selling on eBay is a terrific way to start up your first business. That’s because eBay provides you with a well-established framework in which to operate. There are rules that sellers and buyers alike have to follow, and an elaborate system of feedback that helps keep people honest. Once you get used to buying and selling on eBay, the move to running an online business is not that dramatic. It’s probably easiest to start out selling a limited number of items each month before you consider trying to handle the 50, 100, or even 200 items a week that some busy sellers put online.

Selling on eBay Part-Time You don’t have to sell on eBay as your full-time “day job” in order to generate a steady income. Far from it: one of the busiest sellers I know, Bob Kopczynski (eBay User ID: maxwellstreetmarket) has a full-time job. His wife and various relatives and neighbors help him put 20 to 30 items up for sale each day. Chad Gibbons (eBay User ID: boomer1967) works on eBay about ten hours a week. Despite ongoing health problems, he manages to put 100 to 200 sales online each week for himself and several individuals whose items he sells on consignment.

Selling on eBay Full-Time

Few things are as rewarding

- and as exhausting

- as working on your own full-time from home. I know whereof I speak. I worked in an office for many years and dreamed of being able to stay at home and raise my children while writing. When I was able to make the move to being a full-time freelancer, that’s when the hard work really began. The moment you make the decision to support yourself full-time, you’ve got to be prepared for long hours. It’s the same with selling on eBay. When it becomes a full-time business, you’ve got to develop a schedule; the things that were simply an enjoyable hobby before, like scouring garage sales and flea markets, become work. At the same time, it’s hardly all work and no play. You’ve also got to be prepared for freedom

- for being able to run your own schedule, work when you want, and spend time with your family or friends when you want. You can sleep until 10 A.M. and work from 1 P.M. to 9 P.M. if you want. You can accompany your kids on field trips or hit the golf course in the morning and work on getting your sales online in the afternoon.

Find Customers Worldwide A number of the sellers I interviewed while writing this article used to operate, or still operate, storefronts where they sell antiques or other merchandise. eBay has revolutionized life for such sellers. On one hand, they had to start selling online just to keep up with the competition. On the other hand, once they did start to sell at auction, they found a new and dramatically wider audience for what they have to sell. Many auction enthusiasts are savvy shoppers who need to save money on things they purchase either for personal or business use, and the time spent searching for them in conventional sales outlets. They’re actively seeking rare items to add to their collections. They don’t have time to schlep around the country for months or years visiting antique stores, flea markets, and sales to find them. They’re happy to find something they want on eBay and have the chance to obtain it from the comfort of their own homes. If you’re a seller, your adrenaline starts to rush when you anticipate having two bidders who will offer you far more than you ever expected for what you have to sell.

Give Yourself a Financial Cushion One reason for selling on eBay is to get a source of extra income that you can put aside for a rainy day. Some eBay sellers use their auction revenue for their children’s tuition. Others use it for vacations. The fact is, once you have a system set up that enables you to sell, you can adjust how active you are based on your needs. You’re not required to sell the same number of items every week. I know at least one eBay seller who sold full-time for several years, then decided to take a full-time office job. She still sells on eBay, but not nearly as often as she did before. The important thing is that it’s nice to have that extra income to call on when you need it.

eBay Bestsellers eBay Gave Him a “Reason to Get Up in the Morning” It’s often said that eBay has the potential to change your life. I’ve met many sellers whose careers have been changed by eBay. But I don’t think I’ve met anyone to whom eBay is more important than Chad Gibbons. Chad, 25, lives in Windsor, Ontario, and goes by the User ID boomer1967 on eBay. Like many young men, he has collected sports cards since childhood. He first started using eBay in 1999, in fact, to trade cards. “I started selling cards because there were many that I didn’t really want, so I sold them off to buy more.” In 1999, Chad was diagnosed with kidney failure. He had to take a medical leave from his regular job. The three years while he was waiting for a kidney transplant were difficult. “When I was sick for those three years eBay helped me by making me get up in the morning.

I had to get up: I had to mail stuff out and do e-mails and get next week’s auctions ready to go, then to the bank to cash checks. All those things that needed to be done were keeping me preoccupied and not thinking about how sick I was.” To supplement his income, Chad started selling on consignment for other people. He now has up to four consignment customers, and he conducts as many as 100 to 300 auctions per week using eBay’s Turbo Lister software, which is described in Article 6. Amazingly, he estimates that he is able to conduct that many auctions while only spending ten hours a week on eBay-related activities. “I have met lots of people and made a few friends from eBay. The people on eBay are the best people imaginable.”

In August, 2002, Chad received a kidney transplant. Everything went smoothly, except that being in the hospital for two weeks made it difficult for him to keep up with his mailings and auctions. Just a few months out of the hospital, Chad had his best sales month to date, selling 477 out of 530 items and grossing $2,656. He’s now sold about 5,000 items and has been highlighted as one of eBay’s Power Sellers of the Month. Chad suggests that when you are planning your own eBay business, sell items about which you know something. Also sell items for which there is a proven demand on eBay. “Always be there for the customer to answer questions and concerns.”