 Welcome to ebay life the podcast your one-stop shop for all things ebay my name is Carl and I'm an ebay seller reseller just like you like you I know the ups and downs of ebay and I'm here to share my thoughts and experiences and advice with you in this podcast we'll dive into the world of ebay reselling exploring the joys and challenges and everything in between along the way we'll chat about sourcing listing handling customers and everything else that goes into running a successful ebay business whether you're a seasoned reseller or just starting out I hope to help you remember you're not alone and maybe help you get through another day in the world of reselling so grab your favorite beverage and settle in for a relaxed and informal discussion about all things ebay we'll take this reselling journey together and uncover the secrets to success in this exciting and ever-changing marketplace being as this is the first episode I think it's probably best if I was to give you a little bit of background into myself I know we all have our own journeys of how we've reached this point in our lives of being on ebay selling on ebay and trying to make some money on ebay for me it started about four years ago I pretty much got to the end of the journey that I've been taking in my career and well I got made redundant and was at a point where I was kind of sick and tired of working for the band working for the corporation and just had enough of the whole damn thing to be honest and for me I wanted to do something for me I wanted to create something for me that I could be proud of and that could support me and give me the freedom of not sitting on that hamster wheel every damn day now for me I knew very little about ebay other than obviously what it was yes it had fixed price items and auctions and you could make a bit of money on things you don't want but as a business I knew nothing about business I had to teach everything to myself learn it find it look for the all the hints and tips and tricks and they don't come easy so if you're about to start this journey don't think it's gonna be easy it's not you're not gonna make an overnight success you're not gonna be rich within three months it's just not gonna happen it's a difficult stressful and sometimes downright lonely life but it has so many rewarding aspects to it that you I wouldn't choose any other career now that I'm four years in still struggling like many of you out there still but the freedom of just being able to work when I want even though yes you work longer hours I mean don't kid yourself for that even if you're part-time around your family and your normal job you'll be putting in a lot of hours early morning starts late-night finishes over the last four years I have lost count of the amount of times I've been up until three or four o'clock in the morning listing creating photos tweaking optimizing researching is it can be exhausting and the problem with it as well as you can lose track of where you're going and what you're doing on a daily basis if you don't structure your journey so as I say for me I started shortly after I became redundant obviously I signed on and then you go into this rabbit-hutch chicken coop type system of sitting down and trying to justify what you do every day looking for work and just so you can get a minimal benefit that you've already paid into for 40 50 years of your life and you still have to justify it and wasn't for me it just wasn't for me so I took the journey on to eBay I started researching looking at it and deciding what was the best platform I looked at Amazon that was not for me it might be for you but it wasn't for me eBay was the platform I wanted to sell on work on and build my future on so like many I started off by selling things from around the home sourcing things from local secondhand stores and what you call in America thrift stores or as close as we have but it's a lot more difficult for us in the UK than it is for the US I can tell you that for sure you can't get the sort of bargains you get there we can't get bargains but nothing like you can get you have yard sales garage sales we don't get those you get car boots over here which is basically stalls set up at the back of your car in a rows and rows of other cars and they'll either be on a field or in a car park and the thing is most of the people they already know what the value of their products are and you're not going to find cheap cheap things or at least not the sort of things that you want to be selling on eBay as a whole but there are those out there that do make it work I won't take that away from them they do but it was the car boot aspect wasn't for me to be fair and the thrift stores or second hand stores they're a struggle but you can find some lower priced items in there and you can make a small profit off of them but for me it was looking for the right business plan to move forward and it would have helped if eBay was more I don't know what the word for it is but supportive as far as the way they are on the way they work as a platform because that they're really not simple they're not simple at all I mean you get vague instructions of what you should or shouldn't do but they leave it so vague and so open and so cryptic so that they've always got to get out of jail free card but you never really know what the heck you're doing until you do something wrong but they're very quick to let you know when you have done something wrong but then they're always not necessarily forward in telling you precisely what it is you did wrong so you kind of have to sort of make a a quick detour side turn on what you've been doing and try a different approach and then you find yourself moving on to things like YouTube for advice and then you find other channels like this one to just help you along your journey and find the right answers to the questions that eBay should be supplying it can be so destroying to be honest I mean unless you're in a either a relationship or a partnership with someone that has some experience or is as dedicated to it as you are and if you have that sort of connection your leaps and bounds ahead of the place where I am I mean I have a loving partner I can't knock that door she's amazing she supported me throughout the last four years trying to build this business up but the actual business itself learning how to do it I've had to do that myself and it's a struggle you lose sight of friends social life because you find if you're not careful you can't not be working you have to be working there's stuff you have to get on on onto the platform you've got to get listed you can't not get these tasks done and then when things do go wrong or if you do have a struggling day or a very exhausting day who do you share it with or if you have a good time good day even you can go oh yeah look we've had loads of sales today great and then that's it you're moving on to the next conversation whereas if you've got a community of sellers a community of other eBay sellers you can share stories and that's the purpose of channels like this and many others that are on YouTube we may just be voices at the other end of a click on a keypad but we are real people too we're all real people we all have experiences we all have emotions and stresses and challenges that we all face on a daily basis I want you to know you're not alone all here together we're all aiming for the same goal aiming for the same I wouldn't say trophy but we all want to get to a point where our business is smoothly running as it can be there are always going to be challenges there's always going to be curveballs there's always going to be readjust your business plan and your your model of of how you work and as we can see even on the platform even when you think you've got it right and even when you are going on the right direction and it's been working smoothly they can pull the rug from under you they can throw your curveball and you're like oh what I mean what do you do you know I mean who do you who do you you just want to scream on the inside I know I know this isn't a very positive sounding start to the first podcast but that is the point of this podcast is it's not our normal content it's not the the high octane or the highly entertaining or the informative on the levels of visual graphics and text and things but this is the raw hard truth this is how life is you know I mean if we're not creating listings sourcing stock shipping items dealing with customer queries working out profits and taxes and editing images for listings then you find ourselves sitting there researching researching categories researching the platform trying to find ways to improve our visibility on a platform that should literally just let the platform run they're always looking for ways to game it and unfortunately in those ways of gaming end up costing us and that's another major point that they seem to miss or maybe they don't but I think they do I think they miss it I think they don't see us as businesses and I think that's one of the major problems for the communication between eBay and eBay sellers they don't look at us as businesses they look at us as people that are just trying to flogs and bits and bobs make a few quid and be happy they don't seem to get that we are a business like they are granted we're on a much smaller scale but we're still a business and every penny they take away from us every change they make on the platform without helping us understand it makes the gap bigger between us and I definitely think eBay have lost sight of the fact that we are real people with real businesses in the real world trying to get ahead support our families maybe just have a few extra bit of funds for holidays or day trips or maybe just treating your family or your partner to a nice meal or an evening out maybe that's all you're after maybe that's all you need but they don't make it easy so here we are looking at our computer screens whilst we're working and in our minds we're thinking what more can I do there's been a lot of changes of late and there's been a lot of loss of sellers on the off the platform yes there was a lot more on the platform due to COVID and the economy but it's getting that tight now there's the margin is getting more and more difficult for many sellers out there and then when you see eBay finding other ways to strip away the profit margin strip away the progress stripping away the humanity of the individuals that are sellers that are businesses on the platform it's no wonder that their sales are going and their profit margins are going through the floor and they are I mean you've only got a look at this last week I mean what the heck have they been thinking I mean yes they did exactly what I said they would do they would start making the charging options for off platform advertising I knew it now social platforms are next 100% guarantee it they're going to keep stripping away at the promoting that they do and make it even harder to have your items seen unless you pay to play they found a way to double and triple their their the profit margins by charging for promoted advanced promoted advanced beta they've now got the off platform advertising I'll guarantee you love social media advertising soon and then at that point there'll be nothing advertised on the platform for free I'll guarantee it now we need to pivot we need to figure out other ways to promote other ways to get our product seen at the lowest cost possible I mean we can see it in the traffic already I mean in the last three days my traffic has dropped by 75% 50% of that almost within the last 48 hours I haven't dropped my promoted percentages I haven't reduced my my products literally as soon as that tab came up on the top for the off platform advertising the traffic went down but this is it this is exactly what we're all struggling with you know on a daily basis every single one of us there's always a new angle that we have to look at an approach a new challenge for us to overcome but eBay know that they've got the biggest platform next to Amazon of course it's a difficult time it's a difficult time what are your thoughts if you could pop them in the comments below I'd like to know your journey how you got to being an eBay seller how you became who you are and where you are in your journey now what challenges have you faced because I can tell you it's been a hard struggle for myself I'd love to say it's been an easy journey but it hasn't it's been a long long learning curve journey I've made so many mistakes along the way and to be fair to some degree I'm glad I have made them because the fact that I've made them I've learned from them and the fact that I've learned not only have I learned not to do it again or to avoid something that I may have done but I can also see other pitfalls that are not related to something I've done but something that's happened to me like scamming cuss scamming buyers there's always some buyer out there that wants to try and scam the sellers and unfortunately it's the platform still gained in their favor but you become more and more focused and alert to trigger sounds and trigger messages and trigger wordings and activity that buyers do and you'll learn and if you see something that's in your gut you think that's just not probably something I'm comfortable with you're probably right there's probably something behind it so be careful you don't want it to affect your business but sometimes you just have to pay off let them go block them and then make a point of looking back over the experience with that buyer making sure that you've you've learned what you need to learn to avoid it the next time so as I say I've been selling now for four years on eBay I've seen several variations of the platforms progressing changes even in that short spell am I deterred no I'll still be selling on eBay whatever it takes I will keep going I will keep selling and nothing is gonna stop me from reaching the goals that I intend to achieve I'm 52 now yes it'd be nice to say I've got a long life ahead of me but I know I'm past the halfway stage for sure so all time is precious to me there are goals I want to achieve there are things I want to do in life I've got no time for time wasters I've had no time for stupid stupid choices but at the same time I can't I can't ignore what's happening on the platform now we don't like a lot of it but it is what it is so we have to work even harder okay I can work harder but I'd rather work smarter now if that means taking two steps back and refocusing maybe just reevaluating maybe completely rechanging and revamping certain aspects of how I do my business or what type of sourcing I do or what efforts I put into my listings how I approach it it might be something really simple that just needs a bit of a tweak maybe that's all you need if you're finding me it's not working for you at the moment there might just be something that you know you've got to step out of your comfort zone and go if I want to carry on with this business there are a couple of things that will not guarantee but will certainly improve my chances of achieving my goal within my schedule and you're gonna have to go okay this is what it will take can I do it how do I do it and if I don't know how to do it where do I go to get that information and then once you've got that information decide if that's what you want to do eBay might not be the platform for you going forward you might need to look at other options I will only choose eBay I'm not flying the eBay flag but I have learnt how to use eBay how to achieve the goals I want to achieve or at least I did there's a lot of changes happening and there'll be more to come for me it's just a case of can I learn the new change fast enough before they change it again and I think a lot of sellers are having this issue and it's very hard when you're seeing a lot of conflicting information from a lot of different resellers and youtubers and YouTube resellers etc it's difficult to know there's so many tests going on so many people doing their own beta tests what's the right way of doing it some things are working some things aren't and I think a lot of those results are geographic based they are account based as in account history of the seller themselves but we can get through that's the thing you have to remember you can get through but you don't have to do it alone when you find yourself sitting there stupid o'clock at night cup of coffee in your hand staring at the screen keep pressing F5 for a fresh hoping to see a sale or an offer or something don't procrastinate don't do that if you've reached a point where you're pressing F5 go to bed go spend time with the loved one go read a book go for a walk step away from the business take some time for you to remember there is a world away from that four sided shiny screen it is a business you do rely on it but there is more than just that screen now I know a lot of this podcast has been mental state driven and that's fine as a first episode it was what I wanted it to be I wanted it to be more open more honest not such a highlight reel and visually entertaining as there are many many videos out there that do that style and we will do that style too but it's not what this podcast is about at least today's podcast I wanted to give a real insight to the the mundane the the slower pace of what eBay life actually is you're always busy you're always running around you're always doing things there's no there's no stopping for sure absolutely and your head is always thinking running things processing ideas all the time trying to come up with new sourcing approaches new listing new selling strategies but this is more of a thought-provoking or at least I hope it's more of a thought-provoking content that kind of resonates with you out there that's sitting there listening and maybe just in the background whilst they're doing some work just trying out seeing what this is about and then maybe there's just something in there that triggers and goes hey it's got a point there is some truth in there and I'm not alone I don't have to keep my my thoughts and my emotions hidden inside my own head all the time you can share them because if you share them other people will are guaranteed will be going through similar experiences and they may have ways to help and then together we can get through this now we will cover a lot more fun and entertaining and enjoyable topics too and many insightful hints and tips and discussions around the changes that are happening and things to do to improve our businesses but I think for this first episode I just wanted to make it a little bit more raw a little bit more down to earth and realistic and I hope it's resonated with you a little as well and I hope that you feel even just a little bit appeased knowing that you aren't alone because you're not so let's head this journey up together let's take it by the horns let's not take the feet let's not get down let's sit up straight head high and figure these things out because it can be done it can be done so with that I'm going to leave you today let you get on with your work or if you've done your work for the day let you get some downtime spend time with the ones that you love or doing the things that you enjoy but at the end of the day keep it real