Lane Chen sounds glad with the prospect of moving his family business, Big Apple Watch Store out of the house and into a larger space. "We've reached the point where our home is too small and we have to rent a professional office and hire full time employees. We now have three full time and two part time people here. We started small, making about $500 per month. Now we're Platinum PowerSellers!"

"We started about two and a half years ago," Lane relates. "At the end of 2002, my wife Cindy quitted her 9 to 5 job as a supervisor at an import company in Manhattan. She has an accounting background and owned a retail business before. She was looking to start a online business, which doesn't have a strict schedule and long hours of standing, like most of the traditional retail business. eBay is a perfect fit. We have done a lot of research and tried selling a number of things on eBay to make a profit before settling down on selling name brand watches."

Like many eBay businesses, Big Apple Watch Store

http://stores.ebay.com/Big-Apple-Watch-Store

started small, with a couple thousand dollars, in Lane's words. With Lane's computer savvy and his wife working from home on eBay full time, the business took off. "We were able to grow very quickly. We started using Sellers Assistant Pro and that helped us carry more inventory. I set up small network at home and started to help her on the side, answering e-mails and doing some of the packing while I was holding a full time job as a computer network engineer. About a year and half later, I joined her doing eBay full time."

If you want to see a great example of eBay Store customization, look at the Chens' store. With custom categories named after the brands they sell, they can be found during Internet searches for these brands from Google, Yahoo, and many other search engines, besides eBay's own internal search functions. They also have custom pages built specifically for gift shoppers. "The Store is very important," confirms Lane. "Not only can we list items to sell, but also we can have a central point for customers to see everything that we have. Also, we link from our web site to the eBay Store. Basically the Store allows the customer to come back and find us easily."

"In terms of the tools, we started with SA Pro and it has worked out great in the past. We’re reaching the capacity of the software, and we're anticipating the software upgrade. eBay asked us for input about what we'd like to see in the new software, and I provided some of my thoughts." Lane isn't the only one excited about the upcoming upgrades to eBay's listing software. Watch out for more news in the coming months on eBay and in the PowerUp e-mail newsletter .

In general, Lane uses Gallery photos on all listings and will occasionally use Featured Plus! to promote special items and draw greater traffic. In terms of listing format, "we combine auction-only and Buy It Now listings. We also use reserves for high-end items. To promote Buy It now, we often offer free shipping for BIN customers. We encourage BIN to complete transactions more quickly."

Listing quality makes a difference in Lane's estimation. "Try to give it a professional look," he advises. "The detail of the description and how an item is presented is very important."

This doesn't require a lot of extra effort or expense, only simplicity and directness of approach: "We do our own pictures, and we use a relatively inexpensive camera."

"We also offer a return on any item. That's contributed to our success. We put ourselves in the buyer's shoes: buyers feel much more comfortable with a return. And we actually don't get that many returns. The benefit of a return policy is much greater than the cost.

"eBay is a very competitive and ever-changing market place. An eBay seller cannot afford to stand still; he/she must have a good feel of the marketplace and keep changing or expanding the products and selling tactics to adapt and compete. He/She also needs to constantly keep a close eye on the bottom line of the business as what sells, what doesn't sell, how to expand, and how to improve. Because Seller's Assistant Pro uses an open database, we are able to create all kinds of custom reports to keep track of our sales, inventory, cost by category, profit by category, sell-through rate, and others. It allowed us to see how the business performs at any given time and if any change or adjustment is needed."

Our belief is that if we have a decent product and combine it with good customer service, we can make a decent profit."