All About Me- a New Blogger in Townby L Shepherd | More from this Blogger 08 Feb 2007 03:16 AM I started blogging here at families.com less than a week ago, and am just now getting around to introducing myself. I am blogging about home business topics, using my experience to generate advice that other families can use. I started out very small, selling inexpensive items on eBay. I worked up to larger items, then expanded into having 100 or more listings at a time. My record was about 175 simultaneous listings on the site one year at Christmas time. I evolved from eBay into three other sites and sold on all four simultaneously for a couple of years. Needless to say, it was a ridiculous amount of work. My nerves, time, and patience were stretched to the limit. In order to keep up the pace, I had to hire part time help periodically. I had to hire full time help for about six months once when I found myself drowning in work. That meant that I had to expand the business more in order to pay her and keep making a steady income. The business got so big that I ended up renting a store front and sold items in the store to walk in customers and sold the items in the back to the online ones. The hours got longer and longer and I finally decided to find another way to go before my sanity flew away and left me. I had been doing freelance PR on the side for awhile, as well as mystery shopping. I decided to expand those ventures and wean myself off ecommerce for awhile. I have been working as a freelance writer since then, though I still keep selling on two ecommerce sites, including eBay, part time. Freelance writing is much the same as ecommerce, really. There is searching out the work, delivering the product, and hoping for good feedback. The real difference is that there is no inventory to worry about and no shipping involved. I am enjoying the variety it provides every day, with no two projects being the same. It's hard on a desk, though, as you can see, with so many different things going on at once. Related blog entries: If You Do What You Can Tolerate - The Money Will Follow... Eventually
Learn more about L Shepherd  L. Shepherd is a freelance writer and home business entrepreneur. Being involved in online retail with several third party sites, she knows the long hours and commitment that a home business requires. Relevanthome business tags User Comments  Salena (127) 09 Feb 2007 11:02 PMUnfortunately, as a full time mystery shopper and auditor, I started Ebaying to make extra money to ween mystelf off of some of the demands that staying awake and filing reports ona continuous basis. I have been full time auditing for about 2 years now. I was using EBAY to ween myself a little from the incredibly rigorous demands of trying to make a full time living auditing. There are only so many times people are going to find me slamming my head into my car horn becuase I reached a site 10 minutes too late and the store was closed, or I realized that I read the guidelines of a shop wrong and shopped my location wrong and now I would NOT get paid for it, or, even worse, I floundered all day (like today) and drove all over PA and Ohio and made NOT ONE CENT because I was a day late and a dollar short ( for lack of a better explanation) at every location. I think that my advice to you, even though you are the blogger, is to find a happy medium between the two ( Which I have done, becuase EBAY really can be a huge, fall behind, get negative feedback stretch your sanity to a breaking point huge demanding Yard Sale!!!) . I know that when I have a crappy day shopping but come home to find that 2-3 of my items have sold, the day no longer feels like a huge loss. I also mechandise part time and I have even given thought to doing some "real" work on a very small part time basis.  L Shepherd (78) 11 Feb 2007 03:48 PMOh I know what you mean. Mystery shopping is rough, it really is. I like doing audits a lot better, but with mystery shops there are just so many things that go wrong. I am still selling on eBay, but not dependent on it anymore. I like it a whole lot more part time than I did full time. That's funny that you are using eBay to wean yourself from other things and I am using other things to wean myself off eBay! I've done the opposite before and had low eBay sales for the day, but then felt like I made up for it because I found a couple of mystery shops to perform, lol. Both mystery shopping and eBay can be so difficult and frustrating- it's good to have that happy medium when you can wake up and decide which thing you want to do that day. Salena (127) 25 Feb 2007 09:03 PMThe big thing about EBAY is they are so demanding ( customers) I got tons of negatives and had to actually open a new account becuase when one person steps on teh neg feedback wagon, it seems to give everyone that false sense of courage...No one seems to have the ability to communicate instead of just leave "negative" feedback and don't communicate with your seller. It's really sad. But yes, If I could do 500.00 a month with Ebay , 1500.0 or more auditing and then I do merchandising AND get death benefits from my daughters dad, I do ok as a single mom. If I make more on EBAY Yeah me...I just can't mail stuff as quickly as I'd like and yes, if I have a crappy day on Ebay, I do some extra shops, but if it's a crappy MONTH for Shopping ( Like Jan and Feb) and a crappy month for Ebay, I feel like strangling someone!!! Community Tags ebay, mystery shopping Discuss this article
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