- Yinka Ogunsunlade built a six-figure eBay side hustle over the last 20 years.
- He started reselling items as a law student, with the goal of earning enough to pay his phone bill.
- His business, Fashionably Legal, now earns $120,000 a year, providing “a double salary.”
Yinka Ogunsunlade’s earliest eBay memory is bidding on a watch as a teen.
“It was one of those cubic zirconia style watches,” he told Business Insider. “I won the auction and actually went to the post office, got a money order, and put it in the mail.”
Ogunsunlade, who grew up in Maryland, frequented eBay throughout high school and college: “I bought hundreds and hundreds of items — football jerseys, basketball jerseys. Jerseys were kind of all the rage in those early 2000s.”
It wasn’t until he was home for the holidays during his first year of law school in 2005 that he considered listing items as a seller.
“My mom always got the most Christmas gifts. She always had excess,” he recalled. That particular year, she received a perfume set she wasn’t going to use. Out of curiosity, he listed it on eBay. “I sold that item fairly quickly, and thought, ‘If I can sell something I know nothing about, I’m sure I can sell items that I know a lot about.'”
