"A PIECE OF THE AUCTION"
Kathleen Jacobs
05/2000
Working Woman

On-line selling makes some a tidy living.

Move over, day trading: the latest route to rising prices, adrenaline rushes, and quick bucks is via on-line auctions. Thousands are discovering that the market for toys, artworks, and collectibles on sites such as Ebay, Amazon, and Yahoo is lucrative enough to warrant a full-time occupation. They even have a name: power sellers. What's the attraction? A flexible schedule and the prospect of an annual six-figure income. "Selling on-line is a gold mine," says Heidi LeVell, 27, a schoolteacher turned power seller who now makes $15,000 to $20,000 a month.

The auction market will grow to $19 billion by 2003, according to Forrester Research. It's even spawned a service industry. Auction management company Andale helps high-volume sellers coordinate auctions on multiple sites by monitoring, tracking inventory, and recording transactions. Andale CEO Munjal Shah, 26, estimates there are 40,000 full-time power sellers, and hundreds of thousands of part-timers on Ebay alone. "Four percent of Ebay sellers do 80 percent of sales, and 0.4 percent of those-all full-timers-do 35 percent of the transactions and $1.3 billion worth of business annually," he says, citing Andale's own research. His six-month-old company has processed $100 million worth of transactions.

LeVell was a toy fanatic who visited Ebay to buy hard-to-find Snoopy items. She soon switched to the sell side, scouring collector's guides before her forays to flea market and live auctions. Her big break came when she bought 30 boxes of loose Lego pieces for $1000. "I broke it into lots: 25 blue doors, a set of blue windows," says the San Jose, California, resident. "I arranged them on the floor-making sure the cat didn't eat them-then took a photo and posted it." LeVell has sold about two-thirds of the Legos for $17,000; if the remainder moves at that rate, she'll have a 2,450 percent return on investment. "My husband and I have savings for the first time," she says.

In Oklahoma City, 28-year-old Delinda Burger, a mother of three, tried selling her kids' old clothes. When those went quickly, the former barber offered hair-care products she purchased at a discount. "I can stay home, make money, and I'm not tired," says Burger, who expects revenues of $25,000 in the next six months. Karen potter, 54, of Oregon City, Oregon, retired from her flea-market and estate auction business about two years ago. Determined to rid herself of the odds and ends taking up storage space, the onetime computerphobe-known in the auction world as Granny-Goose-has invested in two computers, a scanner, and a digital camera to post about 30 items daily. "This will be my last career," says Potter. "As long as the Internet holds up."