My self control Going, Going, Gone
 Sep 28th, 2002
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  dave27
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Member since:24.09.2000
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One of the major business successes on the Internet is the extraordinary auction site, Ebay - http://www.ebay.co.uk - and it's not difficult to see why. The extraordinary power and range of the Internet has opened up a million and one business opportunities, with its unique ability to link together the entire planet with a few pixels and wires, but many of the dot com empires of just a few short years ago have gone belly up, found out by the reality of business life, the need for both cash flow and profit. Fashion and fad aren't enough to guarantee a sustainable business idea, but for many years they were enough to lure in thousands of get rich quick merchants, seduced by this brand new medium, but initiative and innovation weren't enough. A decent business brain, a decent product and a decent process were needed.
It was also necessary to think about things in whole new ways, identify exactly how to capitalise on this brave new world. Ebay has managed to do exactly that and currently represents a wonderful success. The idea is simple. Ebay provides a worldwide auction facility, bringing together buyers and sellers from all over the world, allowing them to search for their chosen goodies, promoting a decent e-commerce
capability and turning a buck by charging a minimal commission fee, making the real money through the enormous volumes of goods being traded in their little corner of cyber space.
Selling an item can cost as little as 15p to list it, plus another 5% or so of the eventual sales price. Now if you ask me that's a pretty good deal to offer your wares to a worldwide market, with the minimum of effort. I'm afraid I've gotten the Ebay bug in a big way after my experiences over the last week or so. I've already covered some of the story in a separate op on Ebay addiction, but I hope you'll bear with me while I bring you the relevant info.
I'm a Leeds United nut, and I was scanning a website devoted to the Mighty Whites a week or so ago, when I came across an Ebay banner on the site, inviting me to search for Leeds United items. I've been in the market for books on the club for some little while, and when a couple came up in the initial search, I have to say that the die was cast, and my life took a whole new turn. (Before I forget, that little banner is an important factor here. If you have a website of your own, then banner ads can be a useful way to earn your daily crust. Ebay operate as part of the massive Commission Junction affiliate marketing program, and if anyone joins up via a link from your site then you will get three quid for the lead. I know it ain't an enormous amount, but if you get a lot of suitable visitors and just a few sign up then you can soon generate some quite good returns for just turning over a little bit of your virtual real estate to the advert.)
Anyway, moving on... Ebay has one of those ubiquitous search facilities that allow you to narrow down your hunt to some quite specific subjects and you can pretty much tailor things exactly to your own personal needs. For instance, I was only really interested in books, so my search string could have been "leeds united book". Alternatively, I could have searched for "leeds united" and then excluded badges, shirts and programmes to achieve pretty much the same results. You can also limit your results to items being sold in the UK or available to the UK. Believe me, the search facility is at least as good as any I've seen anywhere and with a bit of decent judgement you can get things just right. You can also save some of your favourite searches to use over and over again.
When you find the object of your desire (assuming you're a signed up member, and all you really need is an e-mail address - note though that if you have one of the numerous free e-mail addresses like Hotmail or Yahoo, then you'll have to lodge credit card details with Ebay - I generally hate such invasions of privacy, but in this case what it does do is give you at least some form of guarantee against the presence of cowboys and scam merchants), you just simply register your bid. You can put in the maximum price you're willing to pay and Ebay will make incremental bids up to that maximum so that you don't have to be too concerned about paying over the odds. It's a neat trick and well thought through. If your bid is the highest than your account (under My Ebay) will show you as the highest bidder, and you can keep track of items you've lost, items you've won and items you're bidding. There's an end date on each auction and you can see how long you've got left in days, hours and minutes. All round the information provision is really useful and makes it really easy to keep track of your activities with the minimum of effort.
At the end of the auction, the seller and the highest bidder are notified and invited to complete the sale. You can send a personal cheque or pay via credit card with Ebay payments or PayPal, and it's very easy and convenient. When you come to sell, things operate in much the same way. You load up the information on your item, complete with an image, a starting price, specify postage, payment method and choose how long you'll give it to sell (up to 9 days). You can even offer a Buy Now function at a set price if you've got a number of the products to sell.
Now when you bear in mind that other methods of selling via credit card are extremely complicated, time consuming and expensive, then the Ebay option is a wonderful idea, particularly when it combines the unique Ebay offer of allowing you to offer your goods and services the world over. I have bought one item through the site (which was a Leeds United book in particularly good condition), and just completed the sale of three books which I never thought would go. There's always a concern whether you can trust the people you're doing business with, but you can always use an Escrow function if you have concerns. (Escrow involves the funds being handed to a secure third party to hold while the potential buyer inspects the goods. You need to sort this out yourself, but it does provide some security to protect the higher valued goods) You also get the option to rate the other party in the deal, thus over a period of time anyone who is abusing the system will get shown up by the portfolio of their ratings - another great idea.
Just running through the features on the site in this way makes you realise exactly how excellent Ebay's service is, but there is a downside. The promotional activities of the people behind the site have led to the proliferation of pop up ads everywhere as a way of increasing Ebay's grip on the world, and you'll know exactly what I mean by this if you've seen them - they're extremely irritating and persistent. However, that gripe aside, Ebay is one of the great business ideas of the last five years, and for a change this is a win-win option, with them making a decent profit and us getting one helluva wonderful service. A marriage made in heaven, if dangerously addictive.
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30.09.2002 17:17
I use ebay too mainly to buy things but have also sold quite a few things on there too.
29.09.2002 19:35
I'm pretty hooked on Amazon Marketplace at the moment, made £45 in the last week selling 4 DVD's I never watched!
29.09.2002 17:28
I use ebay as well.