I was introduced to ebay via a friend who is called Jim. We were having an evening out in a bar when he started to talk about the items he had bought and sold on the auction website. Jim talked with passion and seemed surprised that I had never used ebay before.

I rather cheekily asked whether Jim would be kind enough to show me how to sell items on ebay as I had rather a lot of unwanted goods in my own home. He was quite eager and willing to show me the ropes as it were therefore we arranged to meet.

Now please do not get me wrong this is not something that I do for a living; in my actual work life I offer cheap calls for mobiles, as well selling front doors. I am also involved with offering a stuttering therapy service.

I will never forget this first auction that I held, I was selling my old mobile phone. I now had no real use for this particular phone and it had been sat idle in the cupboard for the last four or five weeks. Jim told me that I could make some money by selling it, therefore I took his advice and put it up for sale on ebay.

I did not think that it would sell at all and I started the auction, which was over five days, at only ninety-nine pence. At the outset things were very quiet. This for me was some what annoying and I needed to have a lot of patience. It was now the final few hours of the auction but still nobody was bidding but then with around two and a half hours to go – there it was – the first bid. I could not believe it, I could make ninety-nine pence! With five minutes to go the auction had still only had one bid, however it then went a bit crazy. Over the next five minutes the phone had another six bids and sold at around ten pounds. I have to admit that I was more than happy with the amount that the auction fetched.

I was now hooked and started to look around my house for other items to sell. I have now sold many different items, including music records, football programs, clothes and antiques.

My favourite item to sell has to be antiques. This is because these type of auctions seem to get more people bidding on them than other auctions I use. You can also find some real bargains in this sector. I would say that around eighty percent of the items I sell are now some form of antique.