BY MARTA HEPLER DRAHOS
TRAVERSE CITY -- There's no clutter in Lora Herrmann's house.
Her closets and drawers are virtually empty. The same for her garage. Even the walls are bare of pictures.
Since discovering the Internet trading site eBay, Herrmann has sold off everything her family doesn't need. The joke is that she'll even sell her husband's shoes if he takes them off.
"It is very addictive. But I'm not the true addict," said Herrmann, of Irons, southeast of Manistee. "There's a woman in my town who has 4,000 listings. She does 150 posts a day."
EBay users traded $52 billion worth of merchandise last year, according to SmartMoney.com. While some are content to make a little extra spending money cleaning out their closets and drawers, others comb thrift shops, yard sales and estate auctions for items they can sell online for a profit.
"We do them all," said Linda Fox, one of nearly a million people who depend on the auction Web site for all or part of their income. "I love to go to church sales because you get a lot of volume for one drive in."
Over the last eight years, Fox has sold "anything and everything" on eBay, from Legos, college textbooks and jigsaw puzzles to a vintage blown glass Christmas ornament she shipped to Russia. Though some of the items go for as little as $5, one of her biggest sales was a Fire King batter bowl she bought for $5 and auctioned off to someone in Japan for $600.
"Every so often you hit on something like that that's really good," said Fox, of Alden, a part-time unit clerk at a nursing care facility and one of three eBay-selling sisters. "That's what keeps everybody out there hunting around. You never know."
At the Women's Resource Center Thrift Shop, eBayers hoping to make a buck have joined hobbyists and antiques collectors as the latest shoppers, said manager Carol Rose.
"When I started 20 years ago, it was the guy who didn't have money who shopped here," Rose said. "Now it's one of the few businesses where you're going to see every kind of car in the parking lot, from the car in the back that won't start to Hummers."
Debbie Kendra and husband Peter began selling on eBay after their daughter paved the way.
"She's 24 and when she was 10 she was selling pogs on eBay," said Kendra, referring to the colorful discs used to play the game of the same name.
Now the couple sell their own things to supplement their income and to reduce a large household inventory they hauled with them after moving here from Canton two-and-a-half years ago.
"We sell a lot of things we've been collecting over the years: vintage kitchen items, postcards, magazines," Kendra, 47, said. "Our children are all grown and gone now and we have way too much stuff."
The Traverse City woman estimates she spends about five hours a week on the computer, uploading photos and descriptions of the items, answering questions about them and monitoring bids. In return, she brings in about $100 a month to add to her regular income.
"I do housecleaning, so if there's a cancellation or snow day or someone's sick, I can do this instead," she said.
Herrmann started out small after her son bought her a digital camera. Soon she was doing so well that her employer, the U.S. Postal Service, began paying her to teach others how to sell on eBay. Now the Irons postmaster trains postal employees in the Greater Michigan District and 496 and 497 zip code customers at free "eBay Days."
"They're every kind of people," she said of those who attend the two-hour seminars covering everything from how to register on eBay and set up a PayPal account to how to research, list, sell and ship items. "They're business people who want to reduce their inventory, they're Hallmark store owners. I had a little mom and pop with no kids and a whole bunch of antiques to get rid of, and farmers wanting to learn to sell farm equipment.
"The average person has $1,100 worth of stuff in their closets and drawers," she added.
For sellers, part of eBay's appeal is its simplicity, Herrmann said. All you need to start is a computer, a camera and a scale. Once you register as a seller, eBay walks you through the process step by step.
While it isn't hard, selling can be time-consuming.
"You've got to research your items, decide what to put on, monitor bids and answer questions. If it sells, you have to box it up and ship it," said Fox, who lives a convenient block from the post office. "It can keep you busy if you have a lot going on.
"For me, probably the toughest part is just the boxing and shipping. Half the garage is full of boxes and bubble wrap and a lot of messy stuff."
Then there's the hassle of disposing of items that don't sell -- Fox has an annual garage sale for the purpose -- and dealing with the occasional disgruntled customer or item that breaks during shipping.
And while registering to sell on eBay is free, there's a charge for listing each item based on its starting price, and an additional charge when it sells based on the sale price.
"By the time you pay everybody off and (subtract) what you paid for the item, you might get $2 or $3," Fox said. Income must be reported to the IRS.
To make it easier for customers, the postal service offers flat-rate boxes, online labels and international customs forms, and free co-branded shipping boxes and package pickup for priority mail.
Sellers can even have the postage deducted from their account with PayPal, an eBay service.
Showing people how easy it is to sell on eBay also means more business for the postal service -- already the preferred shipping carrier of 75 percent of sellers, said Fred Farage, acting postmaster for Traverse City.
"If I teach them to eBay, they will ship," Herrmann said, noting that the postal service moved more than 1 billion eBay parcels last year, making the auction site one of its best customers.
For sellers like Fox, that means an increasingly crowded eBay market.
"That's the down side for our sellers," she said. "It's being pushed so much, it's harder and harder to find good inventory. I think our glory days have passed."
Melissa Smewing hopes not. The former house painter attended the Traverse City Post Office's first eBay Day Feb. 8 in hopes of building an eBay business that would in turn fund a Web site she says would help service providers and sales people.
"Times are tough all over the country," said Smewing, 34. "It's a good opportunity in a bad time for people to be entrepreneurs."
Herrmann agrees, especially when it comes to selling overseas.
"Our economy is bad at the moment. Theirs is booming," she said.
And in case that's still not enough incentive to scour your attic, here's a little more.
Beginning Wednesday, Feb. 20, eBay will lower and even eliminate some of its fees.
