eBay owns what I consider the smartest online business model. It owns sophisticated auction-listing and payment software but hardly anything else. They don't own Viagra paperweights, Ferrari cars, rookie cards of the Greatest Living Ballplayer, Alyssa Milano autographed photos or
State Farting Champion t-shirts. They don't own these items but eBay will take a cut on the sale of each, as well as millions of other items every day.
And they have customer lock-in. Sellers are not apt to flee for another service with fewer buyers. And buyers are not apt to search for items at a rival site featuring far fewer products.
So there's a lot to be learned — both good and bad — simply by surveying eBay. We learn the true value of goods, as prices realized are the only accurate measure of worth. Which is why filtering results for "Completed Items" is the most accurate price guide available anywhere for anything.
eBay also presents an intriguing study of how people act when major news breaks, how many new products hit the market after the death of a celebrity, how people paid upwards of $75 for a 25-cent New York Post with an untrue news item about Dick Gephardt being tabbed a running mate (the same issue can now be had for $5), how crafty sellers throw misleading keywords (such as the recent "grilled cheese" craze) into titles simply to get attention for their widgets.
Monday's cover of the Post featured a story about a man who tried to sell the domain name tsunamirelief.com for a minimum of $50,000 after a woman had donated it to him for what she believed was a non-profit effort. It turns out there are 2,340 items on eBay with the word "tsunami" in the title. They range from a ton of products being sold to fund tsunami relief (ya think all that money's gonna make its way to charity?), but also include items that have "tsunami" in the title but make no reference to being part of any relief effort. Such as:
• E-Book on being "prepared for the next big wave"
• "Tsunami" car audio RCA cables
• Make Money Tsunami Relief Fund Effort: Real products sources exposed
• "Tsunami" Shoremaster 6' Deep Sea Boat Rod
• Tsunami of visitors! Submit URL 1000000 search engines
• Tsunami 'Wave of Destruction' 2004 JFK half-dollar coin
• "Tsunami" LD400 12' golf graphite club left-handed driver
To its credit, eBay itself has set up a Tsunami Disaster Relief page that directs users to places where they can donate directly, buy products where 10-100% of proceeds to charity, or sell items with the relief effort in mind.
You can learn a lot about people by watching what they do online, most certainly on eBay. Both good and bad.
Ah yes...the good, bad and ugly of ebay.
I remember right after 9/11/2001 looking up WTC related items on ebay out of curiosity. There were suddenly 10's of thousands and many obviously fake items. Apparently many looking to cash in on one of the worst days in the history of our country. I just don't get how people can be such whores to make money off of others misfortune.
Posted by Cass at January 4, 2005 10:42 AM