Secrets of the eBay

CHAPTER 4: Think and Act Like a Businessperson 75
Melissa found herself working long hours. When she started having kids, her
sales activities grew even more stressful. “The business had taken over our
house, with inventory all over the place. I also had to work into the evenings
and on weekends. My sales had gone down because I had a baby, and it
wasn’t as easy to do the things I used to,” she explains.
Melissa also needed to find new ways to cope with increasing competition
and rising fees on eBay. “I deal in vintage pottery, porcelain glass, and costume
jewelry. Some weeks I spend my time going to garage and estate sales; some
weeks we buy whole estates.” She also teaches classes on eBay in her home
area, Clinton Township, Michigan.
She wanted not a handwritten document, but a formal business plan:
a systematic way of defining what you want your business to do and
projecting your costs and income over a period of years. That way you
not only determine that you are doing what you really want to do, but you
define what constitutes success, and when you expect to achieve it.
“It Helps to Have a Formal Business Plan”
Like many eBay sellers who deal in antiques and collectibles, Melissa is
a collector herself. As she notes on her About My Store page (http://cgi3
.ebay.com/ws/ebayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=sands-o-time), she
herself collects Taylor Smith Taylor pastel dinnerware. “I sell on eBay to
support my LuRay habit!” she jokes. She finds an eBay Store a useful venue
for reaching customers: in the store, she can offer multiple items at a fixed
price. Unlike eBay auction items, merchandise that’s put up for sale in a store
can remain up for sale for a long period of time: 30, 60, or 90 days, or even
an unlimited period of time.
But she felt a formal business plan was the way to take her eBay
business to a new level. “I am working on ramping up this year. It helps to
have the business plan in the form of a book, with all of our plans and goals.
We can say, this is who we are, and who we want to be; it has been a living,
breathing plan, so we say this isn’t working, we take this out of the plan. It
gives us a spot to strive for, and if something doesn’t work, we just say, ‘We
are going to take that out.’”
Part of her plan involved a new (and, some might say, surprising) way
to expand her eBay sales: she opened a brick-and-mortar store, shown in
Figure 4-1.