How I Quit my Office Job and Started Selling Online Full Time

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It’s no secret that I’ve hated the typical 9-5 rat race since before my adult years. I remember being a teenager and seeing my family members tired and not all that happy while chipping away day after day at their day (and sometimes night) jobs. I knew that I wanted no part of that lifestyle, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t be a part of the rat race. I would have to get creative, but I just knew that the boring and miserable work life was definitely not for me.

My twenties have taken me on a journey through several different work experiences and industries, and I wouldn’t change any of it because it has only reinforced that I want a work life with more freedom and less working for somebody else. Why would I trade my time for small amounts of money while making others rich instead of myself?

I’ve had an entrepreneurial spirit since my early twenties when I realized that working for myself was the key to financial and mental freedom, and in that time I have started several different companies while following multiple different business paths. I found success in some of these companies, and some flopped – but I don’t regret trying them because I learned so much every single time.

Taking a leap of faith is one of the most important things that you can do when planning your businesses. Strategy and planning will keep your businesses running, but faith is what will get you started and keep you pushing through when times are hard. In 2014 I started my most successful business venture, and I am so unbelievably happy that I gave it a shot and believed that I could do it. That was the year that I first started selling on eBay, and it is the step that I took that would later allow me to quit my full time office job and start working for myself instead.

I spent a few years selling on eBay part time while I worked at my office job (which was simultaneously one of the best and worst jobs I have ever had), and in that time I slowly learned what worked for me and what didn’t. I could have quit my job sooner if I had put more effort into my business earlier on, but I’m happy with the path that I took because I learned a lot as I went and I was able to ensure that I was in a stable position before quitting my job and pursuing selling on eBay full time.

I wrote this post detailing exactly how I got started selling on eBay, and I still fully believe that’s exactly how everyone should get their start selling on the website. Nothing to lose, and everything for you to gain. So what did I do after I got my footing on eBay and started to feel more confident in my selling? I took the knowledge that I had gained already and rolled it back into my business.

In my early days selling on eBay, I tried my hand at selling just about anything and everything. I learned what wasn’t worth my time, and I learned about some surprising products that I wouldn’t normally look twice at (like 20 year old electric hair curler kits – turns out they’re worth some money!). So I took my hard earned knowledge and hard earned profits and put them back into my business with the intention of growing it even further.

I still list in multiple categories and sell a large variety of products, but the category that I decided to focus on and now do the vast majority of my sales in is women’s clothing. I sell preowned women’s clothing, and I sell a whole heck of a lot of it. Over the past few years I’ve learned what sells, what doesn’t sell, and I’ve been able to build it to a point where I’m earning a full time income just from selling women’s clothing. It has been an exciting journey to this point, and I’m grateful for all of the knowledge that I’ve accumulated along the way.

So now for the exciting part – how I do I actually make a full time income online selling women’s clothing? I buy preowned clothing from my local thrift stores and flip it for a profit on eBay. If you flip enough of it each month, it turns into a full time income!

The goal with selling anything is to source your products for the cheapest price possible and sell it with a good profit margin. I’m lucky to have 5 medium & large sized thrift stores all within a 10 minute drive from where I live. Sourcing inexpensive items to resell online has been quite easy for me since I’m in such close proximity to so many stores and it has definitely helped with growing my business.

Over the past few years I’ve learned some amazing tricks to help with consistently acquiring cheap inventory:

seek out all of the thrift stores and preowned stores around you. One way that I was able to discover a few stores that I otherwise wouldn’t have known about is to search ‘thrift stores’ on Google Maps. It turns out that my local animal humane society has two small thrift stores in different locations in my city, and I may not have ever found out about them if I didn’t search for them
subscribe to your local thrift store’s email lists and social media accounts to find out when they’re having sale days. I almost exclusively shop at my local thrift stores on these sale days because their prices keep going up over time, and being able to buy clothes for 50% off the tag price helps my profit margin immensely
when you’re in the store and browsing through the aisles, branch out and look at racks and aisles that you normally wouldn’t take the time to search. I’ve found countless women’s clothing items that were mistaken for children’s clothing and were tagged and filed away in the kids clothing section. It’s worth the little bit of extra time to look!
always look at the fresh racks that the employees wheel out with new merchandise to be put onto the floor. These products haven’t been looked through by other customers yet, and you’re very likely to find something great
always look at the racks near the dressing rooms that hold discarded to-be-put-back clothing. I have found SO many great pieces here that someone else decided against buying

Consistency is key when it comes to success with online reselling. The more that you list, the more you will sell. I’ve found that when I’m more active listing and selling on eBay, the algorithm picks up on that activity and rewards me with more sales. If I take a week off from listing and don’t feed the beast, my sales start dropping and things start to stagnate.

Quantity is the biggest factor in keeping you from selling online part time and full time. If you’re going to make a full time income selling online, you need to have enough inventory to support that full time income. I started making a full time income when I hit around 800-1000 listings, and I’ve seen even more growth as I’ve gone above those numbers. There is no limit to how much you can make selling on eBay, and that’s one of the reasons that I love it so much. My income is decided based on how much effort I put in, and I think that’s how it should be for every job.

Keep acquiring your inventory, keep listing it on eBay, and you’ll keep making more and more money for yourself while working online!

If you’re new to eBay and want to start selling on your own account, you can sign up for one here!

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