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T A B L E__T A L K When macro viruses strike! What do you do? Exchange tips and horror stories in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Where's the rest of me? Showdown at the HTML corral The little operating system that could User-friendly?
Results of Challenge No. 10 - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE - - - - - - - - - -
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Going once, going twice _________and growing like crazy
EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN IS ON SALE IN EBAY'S ONLINE AUCTIONS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY JANELLE BROWN
You can, without exaggeration, find virtually anything you're looking for on eBay, the biggest, oldest and most successful auction site on the Web. Since eBay's inception in 1995, it has sold more than 12 million items. On any given day, you'll find close to 500,000 auctions, with 70,000 or so new auctions added every 24 hours. That's a lot of people selling their treasures -- or their junk, as the case may be. Pierre Omidyar, a software developer who is now eBay's chairman, founded the site, as its pages proudly state, as a "grand experiment in Internet commerce." It's the ultimate free market: a place where anyone can sell anything, as long as there's an interested buyer -- and 70 percent of the time, there is. Because of this, eBay has become the locus of the dollar-bill dreams of a million would-be entrepreneurs. But as an open market, eBay is not all about antiques and collectibles. It also increasingly provides a home to just about anyone hoping to make a buck: with multilevel marketing schemes, "Get Rich Quick" deals and odd information packets. There's even a thriving community of pornographers. eBay is a microcosm of the Internet, with all of its communities and all of its crooks -- and apparently they're all getting along just fine. eBay's leaders still believe that "communities can be built on trust, now more than ever," says Steve Westly, eBay's vice president of business development. "There are always those few people doing things on the periphery. But the great majority of the people here are doing this the fair way, meeting people with their same interests and coming to a site every day that has the products they are looking for." The model for eBay is beautifully simple: Users can register any item they want to sell for 25 cents and build an ad using the provided template. eBay also profits from charges for premium placement, boldface type and other classified-ad style enhancements. If the item sells, the auctioneer has to give a percentage to eBay, varying from 1.25 percent to 5 percent based on the value of the item. Auctions last anywhere from three days to a week, during which time any registered user can bid. All money transactions are conducted solely between the buyer and the seller. Which, of course, means caveat emptor: buyer beware. eBay is an idealistic system based on faith and trust -- there are no watchful authorities, and no one is policing fraud except for the eBay members themselves. If you send your check and never receive your merchandise, or if the auctioneer deceptively advertised the product you end up receiving, it's your tough luck. You can complain to eBay, but odds are they won't be able to do much about it. N E X T__P A G E .|. Can you get rich quick by selling guides to getting rich quick? |
