“You just don’t find enough time to do everything yourself before you need some help,” says Harmon. “I have certainly committed the sin of trying to do everything myself. I can’t do that anymore. We have two full-timers and several part-timers wandering around our warehouse at any one time.”
His wife Linda and their two children might also be found helping with packing and shipping. “Finding time for your family is the hardest part of running your own business. People talk about how wonderful it is, doing what you really like what you do, but keep in mind that you are going to spend a lot of time doing it. I work 70 hours a week; I love it, I involve my family too. My wife has started her own business on the side, and she will occasionally help with shipping or whatever she can do to bring our family together. My four-year-old is all over this place. We use a third-party company that gets mail every day. They do all our shipping. We pack it up and put labels on it, they insert it into the post office system.” Most big-time eBay PowerSellers use some kind of selling tools to expedite the management of their sales. Many start with eBay’s own Selling Manager or Turbo Lister. The most successful sellers move beyond software that is available “off the shelf.” They hire a programmer who creates software that is customized for their own business. David Hardin (see Chapter 7) uses custom software in his various shoe stores on eBay. So does ExpressDrop (also profiled in Chapter 7). And so does Kevin Harmon. “At first, I was using eBay’s tools—we still use Turbo Lister, in fact. As we grew, I moved to my own software; we developed software that can launch and manage auctions (see Figure 11-3). We are plugged in directly to eBay at this point. Our applications send data to eBay behind the scenes. To grow to a modest level, and bigger, off-the-shelf tools work up to a certain point.”
“I Never Buy Anything Unless Research It First on eBay”
Looking ahead, Kevin Harmon strikes a cautious note. He indicates that in the future, he isn’t going to expand his business as quickly as he did over the past few years.
“I would advise new sellers to not even bother to start an eBay business if you can’t find things to sell on eBay. Sourcing the product is the most important thing you can do on eBay. If you can find something that is rare and unique, there are so many things out there that you can sell. You have a big personal advantage: Before you buy on eBay, research it. I never buy anything unless I research it first on eBay. I still find new suppliers today. It’s a consistent, constant search on my end, because DVDs are a massively popular product. eBay provides you with a unique opportunity to find out what something sells for, nationwide. So always do your research.”
Like many of eBay’s most active sellers, eBay’s own price increases have forced Harmon to look beyond eBay to sell merchandise. “eBay’s price increases for eBay Stores hurt tremendously. Now it costs us more to do the same thing. For someone like myself who has 130,000 items in store, when they take dead aim at you, you have to say, ‘OK, eBay is a large portion of the business, but it can no longer be the only portion of the business.’ A lot of the larger sellers are launching web sites, and we are launching a web site, too.”
His wife Linda and their two children might also be found helping with packing and shipping. “Finding time for your family is the hardest part of running your own business. People talk about how wonderful it is, doing what you really like what you do, but keep in mind that you are going to spend a lot of time doing it. I work 70 hours a week; I love it, I involve my family too. My wife has started her own business on the side, and she will occasionally help with shipping or whatever she can do to bring our family together. My four-year-old is all over this place. We use a third-party company that gets mail every day. They do all our shipping. We pack it up and put labels on it, they insert it into the post office system.” Most big-time eBay PowerSellers use some kind of selling tools to expedite the management of their sales. Many start with eBay’s own Selling Manager or Turbo Lister. The most successful sellers move beyond software that is available “off the shelf.” They hire a programmer who creates software that is customized for their own business. David Hardin (see Chapter 7) uses custom software in his various shoe stores on eBay. So does ExpressDrop (also profiled in Chapter 7). And so does Kevin Harmon. “At first, I was using eBay’s tools—we still use Turbo Lister, in fact. As we grew, I moved to my own software; we developed software that can launch and manage auctions (see Figure 11-3). We are plugged in directly to eBay at this point. Our applications send data to eBay behind the scenes. To grow to a modest level, and bigger, off-the-shelf tools work up to a certain point.”
“I Never Buy Anything Unless Research It First on eBay”
Looking ahead, Kevin Harmon strikes a cautious note. He indicates that in the future, he isn’t going to expand his business as quickly as he did over the past few years.
“I would advise new sellers to not even bother to start an eBay business if you can’t find things to sell on eBay. Sourcing the product is the most important thing you can do on eBay. If you can find something that is rare and unique, there are so many things out there that you can sell. You have a big personal advantage: Before you buy on eBay, research it. I never buy anything unless I research it first on eBay. I still find new suppliers today. It’s a consistent, constant search on my end, because DVDs are a massively popular product. eBay provides you with a unique opportunity to find out what something sells for, nationwide. So always do your research.”
Like many of eBay’s most active sellers, eBay’s own price increases have forced Harmon to look beyond eBay to sell merchandise. “eBay’s price increases for eBay Stores hurt tremendously. Now it costs us more to do the same thing. For someone like myself who has 130,000 items in store, when they take dead aim at you, you have to say, ‘OK, eBay is a large portion of the business, but it can no longer be the only portion of the business.’ A lot of the larger sellers are launching web sites, and we are launching a web site, too.”
