McGarvey’s Words
EBAY MANIA
I was reading The Perfect Store: Inside eBay, Adam Cohen’s thoroughly enjoyable book about the online auction house, when it dawned on me: I had never bought or sold anything on what has to count as one of the most extraordinary successes of the dotcom era. Here I am, Mr. Big Internet Expert, and I don’t know squat about eBay. Had to change that, and fast.
I glanced over at a bookshelf stuffed with software boxes, mostly unused, some not even opened. I see “Microsoft Windows 2000 Server.” What the heck is that? Why do I have a copy? I do not know the answer to such questions but I logged onto eBay, did a search for that software, and tumbled from my chair when I saw bidders were offering upwards of $500 for that title.
So I listed it – and pay attention now because I will tell you both how to make money selling on eBay and, even better, how to fill slow nights in hotel rooms by buying, selling, and hanging out on eBay.
How many times have you read about the “Internet bubble,” “the dotcom disaster,” and the rest of the put-downs of the first phase of e-commerce? Don’t believe a word of it. Yes, there were truly stupid Internet plays – how could anyone think there was money to be made shipping 50 pound bags of dog food crosscountry and not charging a dime for s & h? – but for every dumb company, there was a smart one.
And no one is talking about the smart ones any more because they have gotten integrated into our lives and are taken for granted. The Internet is the always-open shopping mall for business travelers with no time to drop into bricks and mortar stores. I buy from Amazon monthly, ditto for BN.com, I bought a car via AutoWeb.com, I refinanced my house online, I bank online, I buy flowers from 1800flowers.com, I bought a terrific Samsonite carryon bag (list price: $200) for $40 from overstock.com, I buy gifts from http://4gifts.ie/, a superb vendor of Irish products, and a friend even bought me pasta sauce from http://www.raos.com/, the online outpost of the impossible to get into Harlem eatery. As she told me, probably I will never get into Rao’s in the flesh – but, virtually, I could eat the traditional pasta and sauce.
But I had never sold anything at eBay, never bought anything, and, by many measures, eBay is the homerun hit that defines the Internet age. It made a business work where, before the Internet, there was no way to create a national market for selling and buying the stuff that clutters our garages. With eBay there’s no guessing what a Radio Shack Model 100 laptop (from circa 1988, this is more properly called a proto-laptop) is worth. I tossed mine a few moves ago (no excuses, it was just dumb on my part), I’ve regretted it since, but now at eBay I have a bid in to buy one for $20 from a guy in Wilmington, Delaware, a town I have never been to, but surely I am excited about the possibility of acquiring his “mint condition” Model 100 for pocket change.
This stuff quickly gets addictive however. First I listed that Microsoft server software and, almost immediately, bids tumbled in. Great! I poked through my garage and came up with a never registered copy of GoldMine 5, a clunky little Intel DSL modem, and a slick Cisco DSL modem/router that I disconnected when I switched to cable-modem access. All went up for sale on eBay!
I – jokingly? – told the girl friend, a collector of many knickknacks, that when she next left the house, I’d put up for sale a few dozen of her things. “Who’d miss a little Egyptian alabaster cat?” I said. “We could say it responds to ‘Cleo,’ at least occasionally, and rake in the dough.”
She remained unenthusiastic, however, so I resigned myself to selling only my tech junk – and, even so, I have to say this is an incredible high that reminds my why when I saw the Web in 1995 I knew the world was changing. As I write this, some stranger has offered me hundreds of dollars for software I’m selling on eBay – can you imagine how weird that idea would have seemed in, say, 1990? “I’m going to send $500 to a guy who lives in the desert and who claims he has some groovy software.”
“How do you know you won’t get empty boxes?”
Well, you don’t, not really, even though eBay builds in safeguards (such as an escrow service) – and, despite that, millions of people are buying and selling and at day’s end the ultimate policing is that eBay’s community rates buyers and sellers and, for sure, habitual deadbeats are sent to a cyber Coventry where they can do no more harm. How wonderfully Age of Aquarius!
But listen up: here’s your assignment for next week. Bid on something on eBay, anything. Sell something, anything. Then tell me you too don’t marvel at the power of the Internet to link strangers in productive ways. Of course you will, you will because this thing is changing how we live – and if you need a cure for hotel room boredom, I just gave it to you . Remember when, such a short time ago, we all tracked online our stock portfolios and every day was a winner because it was up, up, up?
Tracking eBay activity is every bit as much fun. Register and you get a ”My eBay” page that neatly tracks everything you’ve ever attempted on the service – purchases, sales, unsuccessful offers. All right there. And it will keep you engaged.
The only question left is how to explain to the significant other how it is that you are in Akron selling chemicals but, back home, there’s a steady stream of delivery vans bringing ever more esoteric computer memorabilia to your door.
I’ll save that explanation for another column because, frankly, I’m still working on it myself. Who has time for such finesse when I’m busy eBay-ing!
Upcoming Columns:
o Why I use Poco Mail (never heard of it, huh?).
o Are Frequent Flyer programs another word for slavery?
o World Phones: When will they be for real?
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o Email-Country. Of Ricky Skaggs, cruising, Yahoo, and the ubiquity of email.
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About Robert McGarvey
Author of How to Dotcom (Entrepreneur Press), McGarvey is working on a book about Google and the rise of instant knowledge. A onetime columnist for BizTravel.com, he is a frequent contributor to dozens of magazines, ranging from American Legion to Electronic Business and Rutgers. For the past five years, he has served as "The Ombudsman" for PORTHOLE Cruise Magazine. Still curious about McGarvey? Read up on him here.
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Copyright 2003 by Robert McGarvey
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