Buy a town to work at home?

If you want to work at home, eBay offers several ways. One of the more unusual is to buy a whole town, complete with a post office (with its own zip code), a gas station, a grocery store, a “Spaghetti Saloon” restaurant and a four-bedroom house. You can lease the Washington state commercial properties or run them yourself, and the minimum bid is about $350,000.

Too rich for your budget? How about an eBay store? You’ll need an inventory of items you bought at a price low enough that you can resell them at a profit on eBay, a digital camera to take high-quality photos, and the shipping and packing supplies to make sure your stuff gets to its destination in good shape. Experts say that a budget of $2,500 to $5,000 is realistic for a first-year investment in an eBay business that earns three to five times the cost of inventory, eBay fees, and supplies – if you pick the right category, of course.

Still too expensive? Then perhaps the Easysale Ambassador program is for you. There’s no investment, and no fees. You can work sometime, part-time, or fulltime, even if you already have another job. There’s nothing to sell. It’s the first work-at-home job that rewards people for helping their friends and family de-clutter their homes and cash in their collectibles. All you need is a phone, an Internet connection, and good contacts in your neighborhood.

“We have worked with the National Association of Professional Organizers, for several years,” explains Easysale executive David Goldstein. “When someone calls an organizer, they are often ready and eager to get rid of clutter, so they’re perfect candidates to consign unwanted items.

“Getting organized is just one life event that makes someone a perfect consignment referral. Consignment is a great option for families who are moving, retiring, remodeling, sending kids off to college, making room for a relative moving in, or planning some other change. But these families may not know that there is a business out there that will come to their home, help them identify saleable items, and then sell them for them on eBay.

“That’s where the Easysale Ambassador’s program comes in. It’s perfect for realtors, teachers, moms who are active in their churches or communities, neighborhood watch volunteers, mail carriers, or anyone who keeps up with what’s happening in their neighborhood,” Goldstein adds.

Easysale, Inc., the North Texas eBay consignment store chain with locations in Southlake, Plano, Dallas, Arlington, and Addison, is recruiting work-at-home consultants to help them reach people in these areas who are interested in selling items on eBay, but don’t want to invest the time or money to set up their own auction business. The new consultant program is unlike multi-level marketing programs which compensate people for recruiting other people – Easysale Ambassadors are compensated for setting up an appointment for a potential consignor to meet with an Easysale representative.

There are two levels of Easysale Ambassadors – those who work part time or even “sometime”, and set appointments and those who take a free training course to become a Certified Ambassador who can meet with potential consignors on their own, and give them a general idea of how their items might sell at an online auction. Current postings for this very real work-at-home job are now on the DFW edition of craigslist and other job boards, and complete details are on the Easysale website.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/ / CC BY-SA 2.0