When I first started, I had no clue where to begin. In fact, I did not have any intention on joining eBay until I began to read more about it on www.entrepreneur.com. This is the single best website for ideas on running and starting a small business. If you have not been there, then you are missing a wealth of information and articles and the majority of it is free! I researched eBay and its offers for over a year before I really began to take the serious dive into it.
My story begins where some have in being misled. If you are looking to get rich quick – eBay is probably not the place for you, especially if you are going to stay committed to growing and nurturing a business from home.
I, however, like jumping into things sometimes without letting them fester. I was up several late nights with my newborn son, and I came across an infomercial that was too good to be true but it did offer some good advice about getting started. My first business expense was the $45 purchase for material I could have found easily on eBay’s community boards.
Now, this was a great investment for me now that I can tell others about the wealth of free information on the eBay community boards. The offer from the infomercial was really a ploy to get you hooked and get your mouth watering and then to get you into their business coaching which is expensive!
There are places for business coaches and most are great. This one probably is great but I do not risk money as easily as some and that is my correction process for jumping into the boiling kettle.
So, have you seen the good money saving advice in this section yet – Go to Entrepreneur, click on their How To Guides, and then make sure to READ the eBay community boards which are easily accessed through every web page on eBay!
I, myself, do not want it to cost me my family or my friends. I especially do not want it to cost me my relationship with God. I am a minister so bear with me. The Bible says to count the costs. Is getting rich worth the cost towards family? Or to health? Or to my character? For me the answer is no.
So, I am working hard not to get caught up in the excitement of fancy schemes that promise unthinkable wealth, in order to keep me from forgetting where I am headed and why I began the journey in the first place.
No where in the Bible do we find that we are not to make money or to become rich. We are cautioned greatly however to beware of the love of money because it is the root of evil. That warning is for those who would sell their brother downstream for a few extra dollars. I am constantly trying to be careful of how I see this business, and where I see it taking me. I am all too ready to quit if necessary. But that is me.
You have to make your own decisions about how far you wished to be stretched and what boundaries you wish to set so you know when you have crossed the line.
This book is not about that. It is about this journey we are hopefully taking together. Thus, I am a sojourner. A sojourner is one who resides in a place temporarily. As a sojourner, I do not wish to stay the same. I want to grow and improve.
More than avoiding the get rich quick schemes is avoiding the fake emails that quickly start coming into your email box. The thugs and criminals out there scamming people are awful.
Fake emails come in all shapes and sizes. The ones “from” eBay usually want you to immediately log on to your account because of problems with it. They give you a link to click on to go to “security” or some other fake place.
The ones from Paypal are getting smarter but not that smart. They tell you that you have paid for some large item or that they have put a lock on your account in order to fix it, and they also give you a bogus link to click on. Their main reason for this is to capture your eBay or Paypal account ID and password.
Both eBay and Paypal have security sites that will walk you through how to spot fake emails. The community boards have great information on how to avoid fake emails.
The number one reason people get into account trouble is because they clicked on a fake link and gave away their passwords which gives the enemy dogs access to credit cards and bank accounts.
One way to tell if you are logging onto eBay is to note whether the https:// is in the address window or not. That stands for hyper text yada/yada security (so I’m not tech savvy). AGAIN, never log on to eBay or Paypal from an email!
ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS log on to eBay and Paypal from your server’s window that you opened up. You will know a fake eBay mailing because it does not identify you by your name and eBay ID. The Paypal fakes are missing numerous key items that Paypal intentionally places on their mailings. Go to the security sites for eBay and for Paypal and find out for yourself how to spot the fakes (so that when you get one you can immediately report it).
Here is an example of a fake email:
Ignoring the words that have been jumbled when I copied and pasted this email, it looks very authentic. In fact, this is one of the best I have seen. This person went so far as to include an actual item I had up for sale.
Many of the links are actual links to eBay. This spoof email creator only needed to get me to click on the fake link in order to steal my password.
Because I spent time studying fake emails, I ran my pointer over the “Respond Now” button. It gave me the first clue to how fake it is. The address it gave was to a .edu and it probably led to a perfect remake of eBay’s sign-in page. NEVER sign in to eBay from an EMAIL!
Another key is the eBay logo is located in the top right. Real eBay emails will have the logo in the upper left hand. If you notice, it also identifies my eBay ID at the top, but eBay correspondence will put the ID in (XXXXX), and will identify you by name.
Save yourself and spend time learning about fake email, and you will not get taken to the cleaners.
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