Do you remember the first item you ever sold online? Let us know by sending an email to ina@auctionbytes.com and we may publish your story. Today we hear from Marie from Michigan, whose trading partner in Montreal helped her through her first sale - a BMW cup-holder!
I had a BMW car and took a trip to Europe where we stopped in at a BMW dealer. They were so excited to have some from the USA visit that they gave me a number of BMW items as gifts that I think they had laying around. One item was some sort of cup holder but I had no idea which model car it fit or really even where it went in the car.
It was this that I decided to first list on ebay as I had no use for it. I described it as best I could.
A woman in Montreal knew exactly what it was and that it would fit her car and she was the winning bid. You can imagine I was happy and fortunately she wrote in English and not French to me. She knew how to send me a payment in dollars and instructed me on how to ship to Canada. I'm really glad she knew what we were doing as I was such a novice.
So that was my first item. After that I would try to put between 10-20 items up a week and most often I would sell nearly everything listed. In those early days my husband use to say you could sell "dirt" and someone would buy it.
I remember my first paypal experience. I had won something and the gal wrote me that if I would sign up for this new PayPal I would get $10 and she would get $10. A pretty good deal and of course I took her up on that.
Marie
Leslie, Michigan
mec37
About the author:
Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and AuctionBytes.com and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @auctionbytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.
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