This is the only eBay stealth account guide you will ever need.
Really.
The exact steps are laid out in crisp detail. If you follow them one by one, you will have in your possession a stealth eBay account that works.
Who is this guide for?
Whether you want to scale your eBay business or protect it, stealth accounts will get you there. Think of them as an insurance policy.
Protect your income.
If you’ve come over here from my post about why eBay merchants need stealth accounts, you’ll have a pretty good idea of the risks that come with the online selling territory.
To boil it down, it’s easier than you think to get an account ban on eBay. You don’t even have to do anything wrong. (Which totally takes the fun out of it)
So in order to prevent the loss of a blossoming eBay empire, creating stealth accounts give you solid plan B’s, C’s, D’s…
Instead of losing all your accounts or your only account, you just lose one – of many.
Scale your business.
Perhaps you’re here because selling ten items a month is not doing it for you. The selling limits on eBay are a drag – I can sympathize.
In a nutshell, you can abolish selling limits by making as many stealth accounts as you please.
Increase your visibility.
You can list the same item on eBay many more times across multiple eBay accounts.
Sell again after suspension.
There’s no need to wait around for eBay to lift a ban or suspension on your account. Time is money, and stealth accounts can have you up and running today.
Save on insertion fees.
Obviously, you’re already saving money by not having your account taken from you, but you can save money on insertion fees too!
Disclaimer:
The order I present these steps is important to keep each stealth account hermetically sealed. Hermetic means that nothing gets in or out.
In our case, you want to make damn sure you log in with the right IP address and browser cookies. If eBay can tie your accounts to each other in any way – the gig is up.
PART ONE: DO NOT GET LINKED
This part involves gathering personal details for each stealth account you will operate.
- Decide how many stealth accounts you want to start out with.
- Make a spreadsheet on Excel (or write it down on paper if you’re old school like that).
- For each account, make a shopping list that looks something like this:
Name
Thankfully, eBay does not link accounts with the same name. As you can imagine, that would cause problems.
The only non-negotiable for each stealth name is that it’s verifiable by PayPal or eBay if you use debit or credit.
That means that you either need to use your own name or that of a person who will verify the account.
Option 1: Use the name of a family member or friend
Find a person that will give you consent to use their name to create a stealth account. It’s best if they do not have an account on eBay or PayPal already. (We’re looking at you grandma)
Option 2: Use your own name or a slight variation
It’s fine to use your own name if you are just creating one or two other accounts. If you want ten or more stealth eBay accounts, make some changes to your name. Your bank will not mind the little tweaks. For example, you can change John to Jon, or Stephanie to Steph, Steff, or Stephi.
Option 3: Use an assumed name
In the United States, you can use a Doing Business As (DBA) or Limited Liability Company (LLC) name to create as many stealth accounts as you want.
Other countries have similar titles for assumed names that give you a number to replace your Social Number for tax time.
All of these options work for verification purposes because they tie to a bank account. You could use a completely random name, with a virtual credit card (VCC) – but it sets off a lot of red flags for eBay.
Home Address
Make sure the home or office address you use is a real address and one that you have access to – that has never been used for PayPal for eBay before.
Option 1: Grandma’s Address
Not necessarily your grandma, but the physical address of the friend or family member who kindly let you use their name. (It shouldn’t be a huge ask after they let you exploit their banking information already.)
Option 2: P.O. Box
Probably the better option of the two, a P.O. Box means you don’t have to rely on your friend or relative all the time to receive returns. (Unless they’re really nice and you’d like to see them more often.)
Sure, you have to pay to rent a P.O. Box, but you can write that off as a business expense.
To get a P.O. box, just search your local post office on google. You may be able to get it online, but will have to drop by in person for a key.
Email Address
This is the easiest piece of information. Just make a separate Gmail account for each stealth. It will seamlessly integrate into your different user profiles on Chrome.
Phone Number
You need a phone number that you have access to for phone verification. Like your address, it has to be new to eBay so they cannot link it to another account.
The easy solution would be to hire a phone answering service, but it’s not the best option. These numbers may not be unique or in the right geography. Anything that may give a clue to eBay that it is not a real number will earn your account further scrutiny.
If you’ve come this far to create an impenetrable stealth account, it won’t be hard to buy a SIM card to set up each one.
If that’s out of your comfort zone, then try something like VOIP with a landline.
PayPal Account
You need a bank account to connect to your Paypal account, so you can get paid. The bank account needs to have a real name that the bank can verify with personal identification.
Option 1: Grandma’s account
Again, not necessarily your grandma. (It could be your neighbor’s grandma.) The idea is that you need a bank account that you can withdraw or transfer money.
This will only work for smaller eBay stores.
Option 2: Open a new account with a modified name, or a business account with an assumed name
Pick one of the altered names or business names from your list to create a new bank account. From here you can also get a credit card. This option is a little effort-heavy but will secure your stealth accounts in the long run because you will be able to verify your ID.
Option 3: Launder your money through a service platform like Upwork or Fiverr.
Not the most legit option and I do not recommend it. But if you don’t find out about it here, you’ll read it somewhere else – and I’d rather you do it with the right information, if you do it at all. You will also lose a percentage by paying commission fees to the 3rd party. So again – it’s the last resort.
Create a freelancer and a client account and hire yourself for jobs. Simple as that. Literally like hiring a ghost to transfer your money to your bank account for a 10-20% fee.
Set up each PayPal AFTER you activate the residential proxy and matching user profile.
User Profiles
You just need to make sure you use each account with the matching user profile, and NEVER with another one.
You should also warm up each user profile before you create an account to give it more credibility.
IP address
The IP address is the most reliable method that eBay has to link accounts to each other. To get around this, you need to use proxies.
You could use a VPN, but they aren’t very trustworthy. Read more about it here.
Proxies allow you to use the internet through another server with a different IP address. Don’t use datacenter proxies, because just like VPNs – eBay doesn’t like them. There’s also a chance that they’ve been abused in the past.
The best solution to change your IP address is to set up each account with a residential proxy – the most trustworthy of them all.
Then, assign a fresh proxy to each account to manage it long-term. The reason for using a fresh proxy is so you can access your store from anywhere in the world and know that no one else will ever use it.
You should have your proxies before you create a new user profile or eBay account. Get them here.
PART TWO: THE SEQUENCE
(Part 2 is short, thank goodness.)
Now you have a unique set of details for a number of stealth accounts you will soon launch. The order is important, but not difficult.
Step 1: Activate your residential proxy. Confirm that it’s working here.
Step 2: Open your browser with a unique user profile and set up a Gmail for it.
Step 3: Sign up for a regular eBay account with the stealth account’s details from the Excel list, and browse some listings each day for a few weeks. The longer the better. You can skip this step, but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t work.
Step 4: Make sure that you use only the matching user profile, activate the residential proxy, and put up a few listings.
Step 5: Slowly add more listings and increase your activity.
From here on out, you’re on your own. Just make sure you keep it hermetic to avoid account linking.
Rinse, wash, and repeat, for each stealth account.
Over time, you will probably see a few account bans – don’t let it get to you. You now have the ability to make more without losing your entire business.
Welcome to stealth mode.
If you scale intelligently, one hundred account bans may be a necessary sacrifice that fertilizes 20-30 healthy, successful eBay stealth accounts.
