Kicked Off eBay Forever

I started selling on eBay 4 yrs ago in 2004. When I started I was square as a pool table and two times as green. I was sold on the hype that I would become a eBay millionaire. I read every book out there on how to sell on eBay and how much money you could make selling on the auction site. So I started selling old things around the house just to get the hang of selling on eBay. I did that for a couple of months while researching on terapeak.com what products really sell on eBay. I finally came to the conclusion that I would start selling baby clothes on the site. So I ordered a 300 piece mix lot of baby clothes. I listed the items that I ended up paying $5.00 a piece for and made a good profit. I was selling clothes for a while the found out that I really was not making that much of a profit due to the eBay fee's. I was still determined to keep selling there so I searched for a new product to sell that I could charge more for to offset the eBay fee's. I found a connection with a company that would allow me to purchase athletic shoes for just under retail. The shoes came from a retailer who had a store in my hometown. The shoes where real popular but people where selling the same shoes that I was selling for $20.00 less. Thats when I knew that those sellers where getting the shoes for much cheaper than I could get them for. So to compete with the other sellers I priced my shoes the same price as the other sellers to compete. I started getting many sales and developing feedback. Sounds good right? Wrong I was not making a profit at all. I was actually losing money with the fee's and low profit margin being made on the shoes. I continued this just to gain a lot of positive feedback thinking that once I gained enough feedback I could charge more for my shoes. My big break finally came when my supplier finally decided to let me in on the money and allowed me to purchase shoes at his price if I ordered with him. I relize now that by increasing his buying power with his distributor that his price actually dropped. So he really was not doing me any favors.
I call this part of my life success. After about 2 years I was making a profit finally. I started making $1000 dollars a week and quickly became a powerseller. I was on my way I thought. After another year of selling I was actually making a profit on eBay. But I was also being pimped by eBay with all there fee's. I was paying at least $1000 in fee's a month. Then I got a email from eBay, that listed all there policy changes including a fee increase. Thats when reality started to sink in. There was no way I would ever make a million dollars selling on eBay because ebay would steal half a million from me. The other problem I had was that sellers would no longer be able to leave negative feedback. It all went down hill from there. I ran into some scamming buyers who would order from me and ask for the shoes to be sent to a different address. Not the address that PayPal had for them. They would say that they where a gift etc.... I started receiving item not received disputes and a whole lot of other dishonesty. My reputation was being ruined and eBay/PayPal would always side with the buyer. I was running a honest business but was being manipulated by dishonest people. After a while my reputation was ruined and my account was suspended indefinatly. I was crushed because I could not figure out what I did wrong. Lately I have been hearing more and more horor story from ex-eBay-sellers. A lot more worse than what I experienced.
Since then I have created my own website where no one can pull the plug on me when they feel like it. To any existing eBay sellers, I would suggest you do the same. I really don't think that eBay will be a selling platform for private sellers for much longer, due to all the changes. If you like Athletic Shoes then please take a look at what I have to offer on my website.

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