Many people hear the amazing stories of growth of online companies like google (now worth $450 Billion) and Ebay and not being very online aware ask me the question, but how can these companies be worth that much how? What do they do? Surely that's just all hype?



This is a hang over from the dot.com bubble burst. Many people heard of these flash in the pan internet companies worth millions one night and nothing the next. So many people still think the internet doesn't have any commercial footing. Nothing could be further from the truth. In any new industry there has always been the same pattern ? a new product is discover or becomes useful, every man and his dog sees the opportunity and jumps on the gold rush, one or two companies actually come to dominate the market. This pattern has been repeated again and again ? take oil ? originally thousands of small companies but after the original bubble burst, Standard Oil emerged to dominate the market. Computers ? Microsoft, Automobiles ? the big three ? Ford, GM, Chrysler, (now worth less combined than google), search engines ? google and yahoo.

Ebay is and currently remains, and I predict is high likely to remain the number internet auction site. Millions of items every day are put up for auction and ebay makes its income off listing fees and taking a cut of the final sale price. Whilst there are other auctions sites that have cheaper rates, ebay continues to dominate the market because it attracts the most number of buyers due to a combination of brand recognition, smart affiliate marketing, huge market share, ease of use, and good security protections in place.

Ebay is a buyers dream with just about everything available for sale (other than animals ? an opening for a smart programmer to start an online animal exchange ? consider the amount of cattle that changes hands in the USA each day, but back to the topic), and for sale at hugely discounted rates. If you have shopping to do ebay can make a limited budget go a long way. Further although a lot of second hand items are sold on ebay, its not just a place of other peoples unwanted junk, a huge quantity of the items for sale are brand new and often better than the shops. Take my wife's ebay business for example, selling baby clothes ? unlike your local shop, these clothes are still fresh in the original plastic wrapper straight from the factory, not tried on or handled by hundred of potential shoppers with a variety of hygiene levels as is the case in a retail store.

Joining ebay just requires clicking on a link to ebay. Click on a banner you trust as some criminals have set up copy cat ebay sites. Click on the banner which takes you straight to ebay and a sign up page, I've provided some links below. Here you will need to come up with a user name and a password. Make sure your username is something you a happy with as it will be your name on ebay, I don't recommend you use your real name and keep your password safe.

Ebay will want to verify you are who you say you are so will need a postal address (one account per address) and will receive a letter in the mail from ebay with instructions to on how to verify you are who you say you are.

An important concept on ebay is your rating. People can leave a positive or negative comment about their dealings with you. This is a reflection on your character and your behavior on ebay. Fail to go through with a winning auction bid, give a false description of a product, fail to deliver a product and you can expect a negative rating. Good transactions result in positive ratings. Of course though although most fellow ebayers are nice you get the one customer that you can't please no matter what you do, that's just life, very few people on ebay keep a 100% rating and this would be unrealistic to expect given human nature. To quickly build a rating in a day buy some ebook's and the like, you can get them cheap, there are even items for 1 cent. Buying some of these items can quickly and cheaply raise your rating to a level where others are more likely to be happy to do business with you.

Although the format of ebay can be a bit scary at first after a week or two you make get an incurable addiction and become an ebay addict, especially when you realize what you saved compared to retail price.