The Allure of EBay

It was September 1999 when my husband and I had our first experience with EBay, as buyers. At the time we were just getting involved with scuba diving and needing to build up our equipment. Well, how handy was it to just sit in front of the computer screen and discover all that we needed to outfit ourselves from head to toe! On top of the selection and great prices, there was the excitement of timing the push of the enter key at just the right moment to achieve the Winning Bid honor! It was all so easy. As a buyer. For some reason, making the transition from buyer to seller was daunting for us. After a while the phase of our EBay pursuits faded, and though off and on I mentioned that I would love to get rid of some of our "stuff" on EBay, I couldn't get past the "wanting" stage to the "doing" stage. I always said it was because we didn't have a convenient way to take and then post the necessary photos to use for listing online. But it was more than that.

Fast forward to spring 2008. By this time we had moved to the Gulf Coast and had down sized from 3000+/- sq. ft. to 1400 sq. ft. You know how when you move you think you have done a good job culling out your unwanted possessions, but then you realize, like a rough draft, it takes more than one attempt to finish the job completely? Spring cleaning had hit and I started going through some boxes we had put to the side and finding more and more things that we realized we needed less and less. Well, I started telling my husband that I wanted to get rid of this stuff and there was no reason we couldn't list it and sell it on EBay. By now we had a good digital camera. I figured everybody else was making money on EBay, so why not us? Well, time passed and I found myself still "stuck". Why couldn't I just get going and post our things online? Could it be that hard? What's the worst thing that could happen? Everyone else can do this, why can't I? Then I realized, it's because I didn't know how. Being a seller is different. You have to know how to do something before you can do it, and I didn't know to sell on EBay, nor where to learn.