This past week I was cleaning out my workbench of a lot of items that just weren't getting enough attention from me and I decided to sell on EBay. Now I've sold stuff on EBay before so it wasn't a big deal. The auctions went smoothly and the payments in PayPal started rolling in soon after they finished yesterday. While I was packaging the items last night a thought struck me: EBay is amazing.
Consider this: in less than 10 days a person with no retail experience, sales contacts, anything resembling business acumen, managed to sell 20 different items to the highest bidder from around the world and recieve payment for those items. The ease of which I was able to do so, not just in one auction but in 20, without once needing help from EBay staff is a testament to the hard work their developers have put in to make sure it not only works, but is relatively straightforward. Choose categories, write description, add pictures, choose shipping options, post auction. Repeat.
Combine with the almost seemless integration with PayPal for internet payments and you have a winning formula of a successful internet business, charging miniscule fees per auction and transaction to pay for their services. Multiply it by the thousands of auctions each day and you can see how they make an easy profit.
And to think, ten years ago almost no one ever heard of EBay.
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