The eBay Millionaire: Titanium PowerSeller Secrets for Building a Big Online Business

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Like many of us, Vanessa Lee found herself with a garage full of stuff that she didn’t need anymore. Even so, she couldn’t bear to throw the clutter away. On the advice of her husband, she turned to eBay.

In Lee’s case, it was the flotsam from her business that was filling the garage. Lee made her living wholesaling costume jewelry to retailers. She cultivated her customers through overseas trade shows and the way good salespeople always do—by knocking on doors and showing samples of her wares to shopkeepers.

After years in the business, those samples were beginning to overtake Lee’s home. There were tons of samples that Lee didn’t need anymore, and they had turned into a disorganized mess—boxes and boxes of jewelry piled everywhere.

In Lee’s own words, she began to feel just a little bit “greedy,” hoping for a way to earn more money to supplement an already steady income.

So, in 2002, she began listing her sample jewelry for sale on eBay in earnest. She bought auction management software from ChannelAdvisor—it was the cheapest program and the best tool for small eBay sellers that she could find at the time—to enable her to manage a high-volume business. Even with that program, Lee worked like crazy, spending most of her time tending to her auctions and working her day job. Although she hired a helper to assist with shipping orders out, Lee was busy nonstop between eBay and her wholesale accounts. Sometimes she’d get only four hours of sleep a night.

Then, something ...