EBay: The First 10 Years

Yes, you read that correctly: ten years. eBay was created in September 1995 by a man named 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 a weekend. He was one of the first sites of its kind in the world. "EBay" The name comes from the domain Omidyar used for his site. The company name Echo Bay, and AuctionWeb "eBay" was originally just one part of Echo Bay site ebay.com. The first thing to be sold on the site was Omidyar broken laser pointer, earning $ 14.

The site quickly became a massive popular, as sellers came to list all sorts of odd things and buyers actually bought them. Relying on trust seemed to work very well, and meant that the site could almost be left alone to run itself. The site has been designed from the beginning to pay a small fee for each sale, and it was money that Omidyar used to pay for the expansion of AuctionWeb. Fees quickly add up to more than his current salary, and so he decided to quit his job and work full time on the site. It was at this stage, in 1996, which added structures feedback, to get the number of buyers and sellers together and make buying and selling safer.

In 1997, Omidyar changed AuctionWeb - and his company - called "eBay", which is what people have called the site a long time. He began to spend a lot of money on advertising and the eBay logo was designed. It 'was this year that the millionth item was sold (it was a toy version of Sesame Street Big Bird).

Then, in 1998 - the top of the dotcom boom - eBay became big business, and investments in Internet companies may be time to bring senior managers and AFFÄRSSTRATEGERNA, which took over the public equity markets. It 'started to encourage people to sell more than just a collector, and quickly became a huge place where you can sell anything, large or small. Unlike other sites, though, eBay survived the end of the boom, and is still going strong today.

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

Pierre Omidyar has earned about $ 3 billion from eBay, and still acts as chairman of the board. Oddly enough, keeps a personal blog http://pierre.typepad.com. At the time, literally millions of items are bought and sold on eBay every day around the world. For every $ 100 spent in the world, it is estimated that $ 14 is spent on eBay - which is a lot of laser pointers.

Now that you know the history of eBay, you might want to know how it could work for you? The email gives you an idea of ​​the possibilities.