Friday, Sep 5, 2008
I quit my job to become an online auctioneer, but the success of millions turned out to be a disaster.
Oct 27, 2000 | A little less than three years ago, I quit my day job to become a full-time eBay seller, making my living selling collectibles through online auctions. At first my luck astonished me. I was drunk with success, earning three times what I had been paid by more conventional employment.
Lately, however, my eBay business, like the businesses of so many other eBay sellers, who depend either in part or whole on eBay sales to pay their mortgage and put food in front of their children, has stumbled drastically. It isn't because I don't know my game. I am closing in on 850 positive feedback points from happy bidders.
It's because the game has changed. Five years ago when eBay began its shuttle blast of an ascent, it was a fantastic opportunity for self-employment wannabes, a wide-open market with only modest competition. Today, longtime dealers like me, who once fell prey to the siren song of easy money, are finding themselves in trouble. EBay's own success is turning out to be our downfall.
In early 1998, when I registered with the service, eBay had around 800,000 users. At any given moment the online auction house was adding a little over 60,000 auctions per day. Of these, eBay touted that 75 percent ended successfully, meaning that they received winning bids. How much? How much would I get?
Today the number of items listed daily has jumped to more than 700,000. If you add in eBay's newly acquired company, Half.com, this figure soars to over 1.5 million items listed daily. Gone from eBay's press releases is the number of its auctions that end successfully. EBay no longer congratulates its users for listing with them, or tells them that most of its items sell.
EBay is a monster. It's a closed economy in hyperdrive, astonishing in its power to change, roll over or flatten anything or anyone in its path. Take a quick trip to eBay's discussion boards and you will find desperate sellers running scared like me. We are being forced out by competition, both from new hordes of sellers eager to cash in and from the scores of higher priced brand-name auctioneers that eBay is cutting deals with. Our profit margins have declined to the point that one night of eBay technical problems, an event that is becoming more and more common, can send us to the edge of bankruptcy.
It all started out so innocently. I was a willing, eager fool for eBay. Three years ago, I needed some extra cash and I had a lot of extra stuff sitting around in closets that I hadn't even looked at in years. What's the use of taking boxes of stuff I never use from house to house and apartment to apartment each time I move, I asked myself? Wouldn't it be spiritually wiser to rid myself of these material trappings, these halfhearted collections and unread books, and in the process pay off some bills?
That's just what I did. I couldn't believe it. The money people paid on eBay for my junk! I didn't sell bad junk. Nothing broken or fake or cheesy. Yet to everyone but a collector, it would have been considered junk, the stuff most people pass over at a yard sale. For a week's work of taking photos, writing snappy descriptions and waiting on horrendous uploads of listings and graphics, I made over $800.
Now to a day trader, $800 is complete and utter chump change; $800 won't buy you a decent suit. To a woman in her mid-30s with a going-nowhere graphics job that pays $235 a week after taxes, the difference was staggering.
Did I quit the day job? Don't be stupid. That would have been completely irresponsible. I waited until my second week's worth of stuff brought me another $725. Then I told my bosses they could take their brain-numbing job designing 25 coupons a night for carpet cleaners and chicken restaurants called Pluck-U, and shove it where the Merry Maids don't shine.
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