Hi eBay sellers! It’s Suzanne A. Wells and welcome to my new podcast. I have a lot of fun and interesting topics planned to help you with your eBay business so make sure you follow me so you can be notified about new episodes.

In this first episode, I wanted to introduce you to the podcast, explain my vision for the content, and give you my personal backstory and how my eBay business has evolved over the years. My goal is for this podcast to help you become a more successful eBay seller. This podcast is designed for the full or part time at home seller who loves the thrill of the hunt, the reselling process, and wants to build a business and a life they love. eBay is a lifestyle not just a way to make money. We are all in this together! So whether you are a seasoned seller, just getting started, or even thinking about starting eBay, you will find helpful information here. 

If you have been following me for a while, you might remember when I did podcasts on Blog Talk Radio, Talkshoe, and itunes over the years here and there, before podcasting is as popular and accessible as it is now. I guess I was ahead of the curve and my audience wasn’t ready for it yet. But now everyone who is anyone has a podcast so it’s time to get on board.

As a podcast listener myself, I understand the convenience and portability of podcasts when compared to YouTube videos, or God forbid, actually reading a blog post. Podcasts are a great way to get information just by listening, to keep you company, or even for entertainment. 

I love the convenience of listening to a podcast when driving, working on the computer, exercising, cleaning house, or working on my eBay business. 

Part of the inspiration for developing a podcast for eBay sellers is my own experience as a YouTube viewer. One of the most limiting (and aggravating) things about listening to YouTube videos is when you are on a mobile device, you have to keep YouTube open and can’t do anything else on your phone. But the real problem for me, as a YouTube viewer myself, are the incessant and disruptive ads, which have gotten completely out of control. 

Constant cutaway midroll ads where the video is interrupted and some are not skippable. It is pretty maddening as a viewer because your concentration is broken and when the video picks back up again, you have lost your train of thought and can’t remember what the person was talking about. If I am frustrated as a viewer, I am 100% sure that my audience on YouTube is frustrated, too. So it is time for something different!

Don’t worry, I am not abandoning my YouTube Channel! Learning about eBay is a visual process and I understand you need to see the photos of items or specific workflows on eBay. That won’t go away. My vision here is that a podcast will enhance the learning process, it will be another layer of teaching, communication, and sharing experiences, especially on topics where a visual isn’t necessary.

Another benefit on my end is that creating a podcast is so much more time efficient than videos. (Again, videos aren’t going away, I promise!) I preach time efficiency in everything so creating content is no different.  Podcasts can be created pretty quickly so that means more episodes more often. 

Your next question might be, “Suzanne, what will your podcasts be about?” Well, a variety of things including fun eBay seller stories, frequently asked questions, eBay updates, and the topics that are most important to at-home sellers. My goal is for this podcast to be useful, practical, interesting, and something my audience looks forward to. 

Ok, now for the backstory in case you have never heard why I started selling on eBay and how and why my business has evolved over the years. I’m Suzanne Wells and I have been selling on eBay since 2003. I started on eBay when I lost my job and went through a divorce at the same time, my kids were ages 6 and 8, and I was clawing and scraping to keep the bills paid. We lived in a nice middle class neighborhood  in the Atlanta suburbs and my goal was to stay there and not have my children’s lives disrupted any more than necessary because of a divorce. 

I was in the process of getting ready to have a garage sale when my next door neighbor suggested I sell my things on eBay instead because it is ongoing, 24/7. I didn’t even know what eBay was. She explained it to me and let me borrow her digital camera to get started. The very first thing I sold was my son’s Dale Earnhardt car seat, which had been sitting in the basement for about 4 years. I figured a collector might want it - we had lived in Charlotte NC for 6 years and I knew all about the NASCAR frenzy. I cleaned it up, put it on auction, and it sold for $80. I was hooked. 

I continued to sell things that I didn’t want, need, or use including used clothing, kitchen items (everybody has 2-3 of everything in their kitchen, right?), clothes and toys my kids had outgrown, craft supplies, linens, books, VHS tapes, you name it. I made $1,500 the first month and breathed a sigh of relief when the monthly bills were covered. So I did it again the next month.

I was still looking for a real job but really wanted part time so I could be at home for my kids after school. That was very important to me. I have nothing against working moms and day care. I tried that when my first child was born and it just wasn’t for me. I wanted to be there with my kids. So just to be clear, no judgement, you have to do what works for you and your family.

The inspiration to make eBay my full time income came when I was in a goodwill store looking for an inexpensive suit to wear to a job interview. I saw so many nice clothes - some gently used designer brands and some brand new with tags, but not in my size. Most were only $3. I had the thought, “Wow, I wish I knew someone I could give these to!” 

And then the booming voice in my head said, “You don’t have to, you can sell them on eBay!” I looked around to see if anyone else heard that. Great, I am now hearing voices in the Goodwill store. What wasn happening to me? But that was a brilliant idea! I bought $100 worth of clothing with my almost maxed out credit card and my eBay business was born. Keep in mind that this was back before eBay was a household word and reselling on eBay was mostly for collectibles and memorabilia. 

I started going to garage sales and thrift stores in the suburbs of Atlanta and quickly realized I was in the perfect location to make a reselling business work. This was back when eBay was not cool as a full-time job. But I had already made up  my mind I was doing this, and failure was not an option. I have sold everything imaginable over the years including clothing & shoes, military surplus, toys, groceries, old pennies, and recently, an old autograph book I found at Goodwill for $3 that sold for $1,000 to a collector in England. 

In the early days, I got a lot of criticism because people couldn’t grasp why a college educated woman with a business degree and a corporate background would want to earn a living selling used junk online. First they criticize you then they want to copy you.

Friends started asking me questions via email and responded with really long answers explaining all the details. Somebody suggested I start a blog to which I responded, Ummm, “What’s a blog?” Well, I figured out how to start a blog about how to sell on eBay called “Ebay Selling Coach.” I just thought my friends and family were reading it.

One day I looked at the analytics and saw that people all over the world were reading it. I was an early adopter of eBay and people around the world were learning from my experiences. A few years later I was approached by a company to conduct eBay coaching sessions via phone and Skype. This side hustle lasted about 4 years and I was able to help hundreds of clients learn ebay. But it became draining saying the same things over and over again for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. There must be a better way to scale teaching other people about eBay.

That’s when I got the idea to start teaching about eBay on YouTube. Create a lesson one time that thousands of people will see. At the time, most of the eBay content on YouTube was shopping hauls where people showed what they bought to resell, with no follow up on what actually sold. The hauls became reality tv type shopping trips through thrift stores. That just wasn’t my style. I knew that people really wanted to learn what to sell and how exactly to succeed on eBay. I developed a PBS style educational channel rather than a reality TV entertainment channel. 

And from that concept I created an online school for eBay sellers which now (as of March 2021) has close to 400 videos with 108 hours of material and new videos added each week. This is where my heavy duty educational courses go and they are ad free. I also offer unlimited email support so students can get help with their eBay business any time they need it.

I said all of that to say, that I come from humble beginnings as a struggling single mom who was determined to build a business, using local resources, while being at home with her kids.  After being downsized out of a job 3 times in 2 years (because I was either the last hired, or part time), I decided nobody was ever going to take a job away from me again. 

I understand that being a solo entrepreneur is a tough path but what’s most important to me is my freedom to run by life and my business as I want to. There are no guarantees and you have to learn to trust yourself and depend on yourself to make it. 

I have come at eBay and reselling from every angle including:

I have settled on a manageable inventory of about 400 items, being a picker, specializing in used and vintage items because that is what I love and find most interesting. After almost 2 decades of reselling, I have found the sweet spot and love what I do every day. 

I will be sharing more details and stories about my eBay journey in future episodes. I think it is important for listeners to know about their host and what experience they have to draw on. I have a depth of experience spanning almost 20 years and the wisdom I have gained during my journey can help other people fast track to success and avoid making the same mistakes I did.

So, welcome to the podcast! You can find me on Facebook (business page Suzanne A. Wells), YouTube as Suzanne A. Wells, or my website SuzanneAWells.com. Thanks for listening, and to all the eBay sellers out there, happy selling!