Forget your preconceptions that online auction behemoth eBay is a place to sell quirky Pez dispensers and broken printers, I did a survey of the market potential of the site for Internet Marketers and you’d be pretty pleasantly surprised by my findings.

Rather than recycle subjective opinions from blogs and forums, I went to Nasdaq.com and pulled eBay’s financial stats.

San Jose-based eBay has certainly come a long way from its beginnings as a sole proprietorship in 1995.

In case you think it’s only holds sway as the dominant player in the auction space, think again. The addition of electronic payment provider PayPal and Internet telephony VOIP (voice over internet protocol) provider Skype, means that it is a force to be reckoned with in the e-payment and communications arena too.

The financials show that the 30% year-on-year growth to sales of $5.96 billion in sales last years and a $1.125 billion net profit, mean that it’s position as a digital exchange for products and services is pretty much cemented.

Especially when you look back and see two major initiatives in 2004:

• The $153 million purchase of Germany’s Mobile.de, the biggest auto classifieds Web site, which brought eBayers a choice of 800,000 used vehicles
• New York States choice to auction surplus items on eBay, rather than conduct its own auctions.

These and more recent intiatives have helped build up eBay’s standing.

In a recent IDC (International Data Corp) report “The State of the Consumer Digital Marketplace (Mar 2007)”, the “most important Internet companies” were analyzed, and the listing included:

• Amazon.com Inc
• eBay Inc
• Google Inc
• Time Warner Inc.’s AOL
• Yahoo! Inc
• Microsoft Inc.’s Online Services Business (OSB), the former MSN
• News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media (MySpace)

What turned the tide for me was hearing from eBay specialist Adam Ginsburg during Matt Bacak’s Marketing Madness in Atlanta.

Adam’s sold $20 million (more…)

• ebay auctions
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It’s been about 5 months since Amazon launched it’s own Wikipedia-type site, where users could tag and submit their opinions and review.

So what’s happened since the launch?

In Jan, when WebProNews announced the Amapedia launch, early feedback was along the lines of:

The site looks pretty raw currently and has little info in it – it is after all brand new.

And now nearly half a year later, I find 15 product reviews on the site, none of which are particularly inspiring. Worst still, some product discussions haven’t had an update in 55 days.

Ghost town?

For sure.

Critics will question, Is it even a worthwhile exercise for the mammoth online retailer?

Let’s look at the demand for Wikipedias, or user-contributed content sites:

So there is high demand for online information reference sites.

And the chances are, once you’ve discovered wikipedia, you’re likely to bookmark or keep it in mind, and head over there to bone up on unfamiliar topics.

I’ve gone over there a number of times in the course of my blogging and site development efforts to fact check or build up my background knowledge.

So where has the story gone wrong for poor Amapedia?

The site design certainly looks polished and is consistent with Amazon’s branding and consistent sitewide design.

I do find the (more…)

• Internet Marketing
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