oatesey – western maryland

[oatesey]

Hello everyone!

Going by oatesey here. Nice to meet y’all.

Have been selling online on and off since 2011. Now it is my full time gig.

I am grateful to have found this community and the podcast.

I sell a little bit of everything – clothes, shoes, anything I can get for free or cheap that I can sell. My favorite stuff to find is vintage kitsch, anything tacky and wonderful.

[Jay]

Welcome. Whats the story behind selling on eBay becoming a full-time gig?

[oatesey]

It has been a long path for me. I have always been non-traditional in a sense. I did graduate from college, with a degree in philosophy. After graduation, I hoped to further develop my reselling business, but I got side-tracked with a regular job.

I worked for another person’s small business for about 4 years, which made me realize, hey, why am I trading my labor to make someone else’s dreams come true, when I can use my labor to make mine come true. Even if they aren’t fully realized, at least I tried. That and my personality was not a match for that employment. But I did learn a lot about ecommerce and customer service. It was a vape shop that caught the initial wave of the trend before the market got over saturated. An interesting learning experience. But not one I could tolerate further. I’m just not built for middle management.

So here I am. Dove all-in in 2016. Still not quite fully there yet financially. I have some other freelance gigs that I work to make ends meet (writing, clean airbnbs, door dash, etc), but they are self-directed so I feel good about em. I’m also “building the eBay pipeline” as y’all say. Growing every month. And working on lifestyle changes, personal development, etc. Thanks for the question, Jay. 🙂

[Jay]

Yeah, working for someone else is nice because they have to figure out how the business makes sense. But if you can be organized, better to work for yourself. Sounds like youre doing it.

The only thing I know about vaping is this video:

[oatesey]

Bahaha, well you stumbled upon a good primer. Lol

It can be a very “bro” culture. Not always, but yeah. I’ve been to a cloud comp or two. I swear that dude from the video was there. 😂😂😂

Jury’s still out on vaping and public health but anecdotally, many folks at my shop seemed happy to transition to what they saw as a less harmful way to get their nic after many years of smoking. Some studies have backed up those observations as well.

I would say the genie’s out of the bottle tech wise so I think vaping is here to stay. I wrote vape articles on Fiverr for a while, and some articles for Vape magazine. But personally, I’m no longer very interested in it.

I just sold a book about vaping on ebay the other day. So bolo. Bahaha. The vape swag like cleaning cloths and shirts and whatnot is probably collectible. Some of the brands have their loyal fans.

[Jay]

I have no doubt that not inhaling tobacco smoke is a good thing. The big question is what all those Vape chemicals are.

[Author]

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