BOSTON, Massachusetts: The world wide web is not just a place for trawling information and posting blogs.

Increasingly, more Singaporeans are earning additional income by selling items on the internet.

Some have even switched to a full-time online career.

David Huang and Wu Kum Kee started out on eBay as buyers.

Today, they are among the top sellers in Southeast Asia.

Hungry for more success, they went to Boston, Massachusetts to learn how to improve their online businesses.

Huang, together with his wife, sells memory cards.

Business is so good that he quit his former job and hired five employees to handle the workload, which is about 200 shipments a day.

David Huang said: "The business is growing to a state where it's not only providing a comfortable living for my family, I'm also able to pay my staff regularly and on a good salary basis as well."

Huang's selling power has reached consistent levels of about US$25,000 every month.

He believes a platform, like eBay, can open up a potential global market of more than 200 million online customers.

Most of us would think of internet sellers as faceless merchants, but that is only partly true.

At the eBay event here in Boston, one would see the faces of thousands of merchants out there in one location.

There are about 1.3 million eBay merchants worldwide – about 280,000 in Asia Pacific and about 4,000 in Singapore.

Just like the 10,000 or so eBay merchants who gathered in Boston, many have gone through difficulties in the beginning.

Wu Kum Kee started out by selling gem stones online as a hobby. He has since made it his full-time career.

Wu said: "It was a very tough decision for me to make because working as a product manager gave me a very stable income. I had to struggle with a lot of things. First of all, is the emotional element. A lot of people don't perceive selling on eBay as a business. My family initially did not encourage me to do that. Anyway, I made that decision, and as time went by, my family became more supportive."

For those who are thinking of pursuing that line of work, a tip is to start small by selling your own unwanted possessions.

If that is successful, do more research and come up with a business plan.


- CNA/so