Lynn’s eBay ezine Volume V, issue number 13

It ends tonight at Midnight

Wouldn’t you like to be more productive, leaving you more time for your family and the other things in life that really matter? You have a great opportunity now to own my Boot Camp in a Box at our lowest price ever. That’s right, we are celebrating the launch of my latest book by having a sale on your chance to learn The Dralle Method at home!

Here is a letter I received recently from Jeanine after attending my eBay Boot Camp:

‘It’s Always Too Soon to Quit’

by Lynn Dralle, The Queen of Auctions

When I decided to rewrite this article I realized that I have been selling on eBay for almost 11 years! Wow! I started on eBay in September of 1998. What a long eBay career.

As you all know I LOVE selling on eBay. I LOVE the hunt and finding the treasures and then selling them quickly. Immediate gratification at its best! It is like Gambling but you NEVER Lose. After being in Las Vegas last week (and losing $50–my max), it makes me realize just how true that statement is!

You must love selling on eBay or please don’t make it your career. It is the same with anything–follow your passion, never quit, and the money will follow (that is what my grandmother always told me.)

Over those eleven years, I have had three major forks in the road… And at some of those forks, I wanted to quit and seriously questioned if I could REALLY make a good living on eBay. I had the same self-doubts that you may have experienced. Let me walk you through how I turned it around and have made my eBay business what I consider a super success.

#1 Challenge–Finding merchandise after the shop closed.

From 1998 to 2002 I was spoon-fed my merchandise. It all came from my grandmother’s antiques store and I think that there were literally 1,000,000 items there. I wasn’t selling for me; I was selling for her and the business. I didn’t have to rely on the eBay sales for my personal income. However, we were selling a lot–up to $20,000 a month. Those were the days!

When I moved to California in 2002, I had over 80 boxes of items left from the shop and began to rely on those items to pay the bills. It turned out that there weren’t any big hitters in those boxes–items that would sell for over $1,000 like I used to find in my grandmother’s personal collections. I was discouraged and wondered if I could really make a good living selling on eBay. I hadn’t discovered my “Dralle” method yet and I started dipping into my personal collections.

I really hit rock bottom in May of 2003 when I had to sell a Moorcroft pitcher that my grandmother had given me. (Read about it below in story number 75 from The 100 Best Things I’ve Sold on eBay.) It sold for over $1,000 and I was able to pay the mortgage–but taking that sticker off of the bottom that said “Property of Lynn Dralle” in my grandmother’s handwriting broke my heart.

Click here to read the story…

It was the next week that I started going to Thrift stores and hitting garage sales.

This was my first turning point. The garage and estate sales and thrift stores were the place to get my merchandise! No emotional ties and the stuff was cheap! This is still true today.

Here is a garage sale find that I currently have for sale on eBay. This mosaic frame is one I found for $3.00 at a garage sale. I think it might sell for quite a bit. Click here to see.

#2 Challenge How to take the summer off or even a week off!

It was the first summer that we were living in Palm Desert–the Summer of 2003. The weather was over 100 degrees, often getting up to 120 degrees. The kids and I planned to spend two months in Bellingham to escape the heat and the $800 a month air conditioning bills. I decided to move my entire eBay operation to Bellingham, WA. I would find the merchandise, write it up, sell it and ship it in bulk from Bellingham to Palm Desert and my assistant Mari would then ship out the individual orders.

Within a couple of weeks I realized that shipping in bulk from Bellingham to Palm Desert did not work. It was a huge expense and the breakage when shipping 50 things or more a week was insane. I did this for two months and at the end of the two months I found that overall I had lost $45. Not a smart way to run a business.

The next summer (2004), I only went for two weeks because I couldn’t stand to continue to lose money. And finally, in the summers of 2005 and 2006, I had it dialed in and got it all figured out. I went for three weeks both summers, did not lose any money and in fact made $3,500 during those three weeks without working more than 15 hours a week.

It was all due to the Dralle Method that allowed me to leave the merchandise in Palm Desert and listing it from Bellingham. I had finally got it right! There is too much to explain in this ezine so if you want to learn more about the Dralle method, click here.

#3 Challenge–The ups and downs of auction sales.

This problem plagued me from day one in 1998 until about 5 years ago. Some months I would sell $10,000 at auction and the next month I would sell $1,000. By 2004, I was consistently selling $4,000 a month but it wasn’t enough to cut the mustard (pay the bills.) I needed to be bringing in at least $8,000 a month to ensure myself a $100K sales figure.

It was in October of 2004 that I figured it out! Mo had just started working for me and I said to her, “I think we should try selling some other items in my eBay store–Things like dinnerware, flatware and unusual antiques.” She was new, relatively inexperienced and quickly agreed. I love Mo for letting the blind lead the blind!

You see, I had thought that only commodity items sold from an eBay store. Things like my books, auction tools, Royal Copenhagen plates and other items that I bought directly from manufacturers. It turns out that I was dead wrong. I was amazed to find that anything and EVERYTHING sold from an eBay store! I also found that almost everything would eventually sell–especially if I let it sit in my store long enough!

Here is another antique mosaic frame that sold recently from my eBay store. It had belonged to my grandmother and I got a great price for it! I wasn’t going to give it away and was quite happy to let it sit in my eBay store for four months until I got the PRICE I wanted. Check it out here.

Putting more emphasis on my eBay store was a real awakening to my eBay business plan and a wonderful kick in the pants. It was just what I needed to take my business to the six-figure level. That extra (almost guaranteed) $3,000 a month from an eBay store was what I was waiting for. It turns out I needed the eBay store to round out the edges. For more information on eBay stores click here.

Here is a story from my new book Home Run about an item that sold out of my eBay store.

Click here to read the story…

So those are three of the major turning points in my eBay adventure. I hope that my three forks in the road will help you to understand that if you have passion and purpose, a strong belief in what you are doing and never quit–you will eventually get to where it is you should be going. I hope it is the top of the mountain! Your forks in the road may be different than mine (a family naysayer, a lack of capital, or health problems), but remember, “It is always too soon to quit!”

Happy eBaying!

Lynn

We are looking for your eBay success stories to share with our ezine readers and possibly make it into a book of our reader’s best eBay stories.