If you have never heard of the secretive eBay Mature Adult category, you’re in for an eye-opening experience today, to say the least.

Let’s start with the basics: What IS the eBay Mature Category? Well, to put it simply, it’s everything from what you would expect (dirty movies, magazines, toys and so on) to what you probably would never think of, including:

• Used clothing with the private part areas cut out by hand
• Tons of actual nudity
• Whips, chains, rope
• Photos… like, you can buy photos OF the seller from the seller
• Used Panties
• Trashed Shoes (yes, there’s a massive market for this. In fact, the more destroyed they are, the more they sell for.)

And more. Lots more.

The eBay Mature section is like a miniature “dark web” being that you can’t really access it through “normal ebay”. You instead have to go here: https://www.ebay.com/b/Adult-Only-Items/319/bn_1858594.

Then, in order to view the items you have to have an eBay account and you have to be of-age. You have to confirm your age by logging in otherwise no product images will appear and you will not be able to purchase.

So now that you know what the Mature Adult (AKA “MA”) Category IS, let’s discuss being a seller in this alternative society.

To begin, the sellers are actually almost all 100% “normal” people that you would never expect to be soliciting adult items on eBay; they’re your nextdoor neighbor, your waitress at Applebees, the man who rang up your groceries at the corner store and your cousin. The thing all of these people have in common is the drive to make money and the mental ability to deal with the not-so-normal of buyers. Not a single MA seller who I have met has ever done it for a thrill or because they loved it, although I’m sure there’s seller out there who participate in Mature Adult for these specific reasons.

THE UPSIDES OF THE MA CATEGORY

1. Your items don’t need to be quality. People buying them are doing it for a fetish. This means you can obtain inventory from basically anywhere ranging from the thrift store to a yard sale to clearance racks… you name it.

2. The sell price: Where else can you sell a pair of Sketchers tennis shoes with a hole in them for $35? Where else can you sell a shirt with a giant hole in the breast for $19.99?

...that's it.  Seriously, that's it.  Now let's discusss:

THE DOWNSIDES OF THE MA CATEGORY

Pretty much everything else, including:

1. Endless Obscene Communications: Since you are knowingly selling to fetish people, you should expect nonstop lude emails. This will range from potential buyers asking you to take dirty photos of yourself wearing the item to send along with the merchandise to buyers just wanting to chat with you about how “dirty” you are. As you can likely assume, 99.99% of the communications are from men. And being a male MA seller doesn’t excuse you from the crude communications; you will get almost as many. Additionally, it’s easier for people to behave in an unruly way when they get to hide behind their keyboard, so you have to be able to not be offended or freaked out by what would upset and scare other people.

2. There’s a LOT of run-around, meaning freaky people who just want someone to chat with, so they pretend to want to buy your items but they actually have no intention on it. Sure, you could argue that every online seller deals with this crap, but the MA category is entirely “next level bullsh*t”. So if you don’t feel like spending 3 hours a day on your pc answering questions like “What type of panties do you wear?” or “What’s your bra size?” (if you’re a man, you’ll get a lot of length and position questions), then this industry will drive you insane.

3. Fellow sellers HATE (and I mean HATE) you. There’s such thing as “healthy competition” but the MA category is similar to a mafia that chooses to invest time into destroying their competitors by filing bogus reports to have listings removed and accounts suspended to trying to set you up by having someone buy several REAL items from you, leave you good feedback multiple times, then contact you outside of ebay to try to entrap you in communications that they will turn over to eBay to have your account terminated. And those are just a couple tricks randomly pulled out of the basket of tricks like Felix the Cat.

So, if you are willing to deal with the harassment and you are ok with spending time chatting and continually having fellow sellers get your listings removed and your account paused, then this might be a good fit for you.  

Tomorrow we will be discussing How to Get Inventory to Sell in eBay's MA Category, so stay tuned!  

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