I was that kid, and though my brief appearance in the article gave a glimpse of my shortcomings—I didn’t believe in the stuff, did it for insignificant amounts of money, lied to customers—it didn’t fully capture both my moral failure and how ludicrous the business was.

* * *

Whenever I told a friend I was selling items in eBay’s metaphysical category, I’d inevitably have to explain what that was. This didn’t surprise me: It was a corner of the site that few, except for the most wayward or lovelorn, knew of, even though it had tens of thousands of listings.

I had become well acquainted with the section in 2011 as an 18-year-old college freshman. Although I had vaguely known about it after stumbling upon some listings at least a year beforehand, I had to wait until I was old enough to register my own PayPal account to start selling things myself. At the time, I needed a part-time gig but didn’t want to lose my weekends, so after a brief and fruitless job hunt I revisited the metaphysical category. After a closer look at its listings, I saw how easy it would be to make some money selling items with such titles as “POWERFUL LOVE SPELL—HAVE THAT CERTAIN SOMEONE LUST AND DESIRE FOR YOU!” and “BANISH BAD LUCK AND EVIL SPIRITS SPELL—CAST AWAY NEGATIVE ENERGY IN YOUR LIFE.”

I started scouring eBay’s metaphysical section and all its subcategories for what sold, for how much, and why. The most popular listings were fortune readings (which went for a few bucks), love spells (around $20), and enchanted jewelry (upwards of $60). These sold at an attractive rate: Some accounts had feedback numbers in the tens of thousands, selling necklaces and power crystals for thousands of dollars every month. The most established vendors occasionally listed individual items for hundreds of dollars, and they appeared to sell, if only occasionally.

At first I was daunted by such large sums—these sellers were earning livelihoods, not just beer money. But working my way up to their level wasn’t exactly enticing either: I was troubled by the idea of making thousands of dollars from scamming people. I wanted a Goldilocks gig: enough money to keep me from taking on a real job, but not so much that I couldn’t keep the internal question of “What the hell am I doing?” an occasional and fleeting one. Eventually, once I’d figured out the market, I started bringing in about $150 a month.

Breaking into the business wasn’t difficult. The formula for selling was easily deconstructed, and subtlety was unnecessary and rarely practiced. The column of listings was a cascade of buzzwords and bawdy illustrations as sellers tried to outshout each other. For example, picture an angel—eyes closed, head tilted, serene in her heavenly backdrop—posing beside an all-caps tagline: “RARE SPELL—GAIN ABILITY TO SPEAK WITH AN ANGEL UP TO 3 TIMES FOR 1 SPELL!” That was one of mine.