Hello! Thank you so much for checking out the Auction Mentors blog. My name is Karen and I've been listing, selling and earning a living at eBay and other auction sites since 1999.
What started out as a way to earn some part-time money while I was pregnant with my first child became a full-fledged, full-time business that is still self-supporting in 2010. At the time Count Your Beans launched and started selling at eBay under the username CountYourBeans, my husband John was working at a Fortune 100 company in the Silicon Valley. After a couple of years, he was a victim of the big dot.com bust, however I'd like to think he was actually given a great gift and wonderful opportunity! The door closing at Lucent became a window of opportunity for Count Your Beans to expand. John joined me full-time in early 2001 and our business grew exponentially. We launched the CountYourBeans.com website, sold at Yahoo, Amazon and other channels and in 2010 will be launching other new enterprises too!
As of today, we currently have over 20,000 overall positive feedbacks at eBay and are proud of both our 100% positive rating and our PowerSeller status. It's taken a lot of hard work and a lot of long hours, but there are so many benefits! We have the blessing of being able to work from home and take care of our two young boys and their special needs. We have the freedom and flexibility to schedule our days and evenings. We can come to work in our PJs if we'd like!
Let's see... what else? We bought our first house. We are our own bosses! We get the opportunity to purchase lots of cool stuff at wholesale pricing. We have had the chance to travel for our business on a vendor's dime... Our business opportunity provided opportunities to experience life in ways we never could have if we were employed full time in another profession!
I would like to show others that they too can start an eBay business at home and earn a part-time or full-time income. Although most sellers at ebay are part-time or hobbyists, there are still many entrepreneurs out there that earn a full time income. Will you be one of them? I can't answer that for you. If you'd like to be,
perhaps I can share some tools that will help.
Most of the self-proclaimed gurus that sell "how to get rich at eBay" manuals and ebooks have never have sold physical products themselves or if they have, the products have been primarily informational. They talk in concept and theory but have never been through the trenches. They haven't attended trade shows to source new product, haven't developed relationships with vendors, haven't created a niche for their selling, haven't spent tens of thousands of hours listing, emailing, marketing, packing and shipping the items they've sold.
We have.
Not only do we talk the talk, we've walked the walk... and do to this day!
The Auction Mentors blog is about helping empower other people to success in their desire to become a successful online auction seller. There are a lot of people out there looking for alternative income streams and we're here to confirm that people can and do make money on ebay everyday.
As mentors, we plan to provide resources, tips, anecdotes, insights and product sourcing information. Since we still run our own business and spend a lot of time on that, the postings on this blog may be a bit sporadic at first. My desire is to create a wealth of FREE quality information that entrepreneurs can turn to. As the number of articles, postings and links grow, I look to invite other people to this blog to share their own auction mentoring tips. I feel that I have been richly blessed by God with hope, options and opportunity and I enjoy the opportunity of paying it forward by sharing some of the secrets to my success in this industry.
I invite you to follow my blog, share with your friends and check back frequently! Here is to our mutual success!
Karen
As this blog is just beginning, please let us know how you found us!
