Not an attack on ebay...but thought it would fun to post old memories of the way it used to be from people. 12 years alot of changes...not just on the site..its really changed the whole country and commerce in general..
I Remember when.......
In 98 a friend told me about this little auction site called ebay
I decided to sell my old clothes and made 300-400 a week doing it.
Then
A buyer could browse through 2 or 3 pages of clothing listings
Now
Search for size 16 dress nwt and get 20,000 results
Then
I could refresh my sales page and watch bids go up to crazy values multiple times a day fromt he start
Now
Need to wait an hour before the end of an auction and hope someone just bids or is waiting to snipe or get that last minute bargain not to drive the price up
Then
Me and a friend would buy used bras at garage sales for 10 cents and sell them to cross dressers or weirdos for $20 bucks a pop!
Now
Good luck selling a new victoria secret bra at all
Then
I could go to the thrift store and stock a back up with used suits for $10
Now
Better hurry to get that $320 Tahari suit for $9.99!
Then
There was no gallery
Now
Gallery plus, gallery featured...stand out at any cost
Then
A transaction on ebay cost 10 cents
Now
Couple hundred, couple thousand a month in listing fees
Then
Id recieve dozens of checks and money orders in the mail at the post office. It was loads of fun
Now
Paypal came around. Made life real simple and made a killing in referral commissions. Used to have a 6% return now its down to about 2%. This is still a postive one for me tho it simplifies everything even if you do give out a 2% fee (lets face it if you had a real business and collected credit cards it would be the same)
Then
Id have drag boxes of mail to the post office, stand in line, and spend an hour paying for postage all the time aggrevating people behind me while explaining what ebay was to the curious postal workers.
Now
Point and click one stop easy shipping. Aggrevate my postal pickup lady now!
Then
Wanted to be everybodies friend and make everybody happy with a sale and maintain 100% feedback
Now
Hey Im older with a family now. This isnt for fun anymore I have bills to pay. I buy good stuff, sell at a fair price and am honest..if your not happy paying 80% off retail or unhappy about a wrinkled item.. leave me neg. feedback i dont care...im not going to bend over backwards to maintain a untainable level of customer service
Then
Ebay spread by work of mouth
Now
Adwords daily budget around $250,000 755k- 1 million clicks a day
Then
I remember when i heard ebay was going to go public and i did my best to get stock
Now
I lost out on that and could be retired and traveling the world instead of selling on ebay and making affiliate sales bummer...
Remember when
A guy named Pierre had a vision of a website. An online garage sale of sorts where the common person could sell their stuff they didn't want anymore to a global audience
Now
Ebay Inc.
Owner of Paypal, skype, shopping.com, half.com, prostores, stumble upon, rent.com, stubhub
84 million users
$60 billion worth of sold goods last year
Paypal revenure 1.9 billion
Skype revenue 337 million
ebay revenue 596 billion
Now i ask..do you really think they are going to go out of business cause of some unhappy sellers!
