The Rise of eBay

EBay was created in September 1995 by a man called Pierre Omidyar, who lived in San Jose. He wanted his site - then called 'AuctionWeb' - to be an online marketplace, and wrote the first code for it in one weekend. It was one of the first few sites of its kind worldwide. The name 'eBay' comes from the domain Omidyar used for his site. The name of his firm was Echo Bay, and "eBay AuctionWeb" was originally just one part of Echo Bay's website at ebay.com. The first thing ever sold on the site was Omidyar is broken laser pointer, which he got $ 14 for. 

The site quickly became very popular (because of good web traffic), as sellers came to list all sorts of weird things and buyers actually bought them. Referring to the trust seemed to work remarkably well and meant that the site could almost be left alone to run itself. The website has been designed from the start to charge a small fee for each sale, and it was this money to Omidyar used to pay for Auction Web’s expansion... The fees quickly added up to greater than his current salary, and so he decided to quit his job and work on site full time. That was in 1996 that he added the feedback facilities to allow buyers and sellers rate each other and make business safer for its customers. 

In 1997, Omidyar changed Auction Web’s - and his company's - name to 'eBay', which curiously what people had called instead for a long time. He began to spend a lot of money on advertising, and had eBay logo designed. In the same year marked the one millionth item was sold (it was a toy version of Big Bird from Sesame Street). 

In the year 1998 - the peak of dotcom boom - eBay became big business and the investment in Internet businesses at the time made it possible to bring in senior managers and business strategists, who took in public on the stock market. People were encouraged to sell more than collector's items, and quickly became a massive site where you can sell anything, large or small. Unlike other sites, but eBay survived the end of the boom and is still going strong today. 

1999 saw eBay go worldwide, launching sites in the UK, Australia and Germany. EBay bought half.com, an Amazon-like online retailer, in 2000 - the same year introduced Buy it now - and bought Papal, an online payment service, in 2002... 

The man who created eBay, Pierre Omidyar has now earned an estimated three billion dollars from its creation and still serves as chairman of the board. Oddly enough, he keeps a personal web log at http://pierre.typepad.com. Every day, worldwide, there are millions of goods bought and sold on eBay. For every $ 100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $ 14 is spent on eBay - it's a lot of laser pointers. 

Now that you know the history of eBay, perhaps you'd like to know how it could work for you. Our next email will give you an idea of the possibilities.