To me it's a turn off. I figure if they have to fluff the ad up, then the items isn't good enough to sell itself.

Its not really a matter of fluffing the ad, I think for service industries its a more professional presentation and even a chance to show examples of their work in addition to what you can do with a regular listing. For businesses or people who list alot having an ad format you can just plug in item specific details into saves time. For example I could write an ad from scratch or I could have a template with my contact info, address, etc and all I have to do is plugin a few pics and description vs writing an entire ad from scratch

years ago before i even really got serious about storage auctions id occasionally sell stuff. i never really looked into printing shipping through ebay thought it seemd complicated so would go to post office and use the automated machine. i was selling tshirts and light stuff and paying $5 for shipping. I realized way down the road that if you print online you can send first class but thats not an option at the machine so where I could have been sending stuff for like $1.40 i was paying $5 even for somehting that only weighed an ounce or two.

one of my first units i ever bought had a set of bose in wall speakers. i think i wound up getting a few hundred from them on ebay

If you've never reached your limit you don't need to be concerned about raising your limit. I've never reached my limit and I know guys who never did anything but keep on listing and they've never reached their either (one has 6K feedback, one has 11K feedback).

If it ain't broke don't....you know.

I never reached my limit while selling stuff from storage auctions but I wound up basically falling into a good source of merchandise that sells well on ebay consistantly. I was running into problems where I couldn't selll as much as the demand was because my limits were too low. I now have a 3.5 million dollar limit and don't have that problem. Even though I will probably never hit these lmits I still continue to get them raised. Also an FYI for anyone doing big stuff on ebay. Once you do over 250k in a month they will often hold up to 20% of your money each month for chargebacks and disputes. If you have high limits they wont do this.

For most people you'll probably never hit these limits yet I thought the same thing and am now glad I have the lmits I do. It costs nothing and takes 2 minutes to make the phone call so my attitude is why not do it.

Hey guys as I'm sure you all knwo ebay has limits on accounts. The more volume you do and the better your feedback and DSR scores are the more you can sell per month not only in terms of dollar amounts but also in terms of number of items.

Even if your not doing a lot of volume now you never know when you come across a supply of something, sales grow and your wishing  you had higher limits. Every month call up and raise your limit. They'll normally give you a 20% increase each month you call and you can call every 30 days. They will rasie number of items you can sell and dollar amount.

Another reason to do this. Sometimes people will reach out to you and want to buy your ebay account. It's techinically not allowed to sell ebay accounts though if its part of a business which anyone can form an llc real quick its allowed. People will pay upwards of 50k for established ebay accounts iwth high limits.

Just something to think about

Net on 230K in sales was a little over $21,000. We work on relatively small margins and ebay fees hit hard. I think last year we paid ebay over $16,000 however last years numbers were nothing compared to this  years. Even though I'm making money using ebay I'm sure I'm going to be sick at the end of hte year when i see how much we've paid in fees but I guess as long as were making money its still money we couldn't make without ebay.

I try to use ebay to drive my ebay customers off ebay to my websites, the problem however is that most ebay people stick to ebay so it's hard to convert them. The other problem is ebay is such a competitive market I normally wind up having to offer lower pricing on ebay than my site so not only am I selling for lower prices but I also am paying ebay fees on top of it. Ebay customers also seem to be some of the most difficult customers as well, the type who message you 2 minutes after buying wanting tracking numbers, wanting to know why they havn't received their item yet, etc.

As for products, we sell items ranging from say $10 up to $1000. Our most popuar products and probably average dollar amount per sale is probably around $110.

As far as reporting income, if you just want a little hustle on the side by all means deal with cash and do things how you want to do them but anyone who wants to run a serious business, owna  brick and mortar shop, accept credit cards, or even accept paypal in amounts exceeding 20k and 200 items per year your going to have that income reported whether you like it or not.

Also, if your reporting income you can justify large writeoffs. if your not reporting income you cant be writing off thousands of dollars worth of merchandise because when they come asking you cant say I buy storage auctions cuz they'll say then why didnt you report that income.