Fun facts about eBay
It is the end of the month and things got quiet down a bit. So let’s have some fun.
I have come across a list of fun facts about eBay (99 of them) and I would like to highlight some of the best fun facts here:
- The very first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. (See, broken item sells – no wonder people sell things on eBay)
- eBay went public in 1998, and both Omidyar and Skoll became billionaires in just overnight. (Go on – if you want to setup your online business, better do than think!)
- JayAndMarie is the first eBay member to reach 100,000 feedback, which happen in 2002.
- eBay engineers have to add about 10 terabytes of new storage every week to cover new transactions.eBay has such high margins partly because it has no factories or inventory, but also because its customers do the work.
- If eBay employed the people who earn all or most of their income selling on its site, it would be the second-largest employer on the FORTUNE 500, after Wal-Mart.
- In June 2005, the wife of Tim Shaw, a British radio DJ on Kerrang! 105.2 sold Tim’s Lotus sports car with a Buy It Now price of 50p. This was after Tim’s wife heard him flirting with model Jodie Marsh on air. The car was sold within 5 minutes.
- A toy is sold every 24 seconds on eBay Australia.
- Every minute a mobile phone sells on eBay UK.
- A piece of jewellery sells every 6 minutes on eBay India.
- Insertion fees were added in May. The first attempt was a flat $1.00 insertion fee, which due to “extreme member displeasure”, lasted about 10 days.
- The Feedback Forum began in February, 1996. Originally, Omidyar handled disputes between buyers and sellers via email.
- eBay has already expanded to almost two dozen countries including China and India. The only places where expansion failed were Taiwan and Japan, where Yahoo! had a head start.
- On an average, eBay.com runs into issues for about 50 seconds per day.
- There was at one point an auction for the first ride on Kingda Ka, the tallest roller coaster on Earth. The winning bid was $1691.66, and the winner rode in the front seat.
- One of the weirdest item sold is a chewing gum spat out by Britney Spears which went for £270.
PS. Talking about that, I am going to launch a ebook regarding earning money from eBay effectively.
Tags: ebay, ebay facts, fun ebay
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under E-Commerce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
