A Quick Look at the Business Potential on EBay

eBay has nearly 150 million registered users who bought and
sold $24 billion worth of merchandise in 2004. There are
430,000 eBay sellers who make their full-time living by selling on
eBay. The potential is staggering.

Of the registered users, more than 60 million are active. An
active user is someone who has bid, bought, or listed an item on
eBay within the previous 12 months. That is a lot of people
using this site!

eBay estimates that gross merchandise volume (GMV), or
the total value of all successfully closed listings on eBay, will
be $40 billion in 2005, and that 12 categories will deliver over
$1 billion in sales for 2005. Take note of these categories,
because there is a huge dollar volume potential in selling these
items.

� eBay Motors at $12.9 billion (this is the world's largest car
dealership)

� Consumer electronics at $3.4 billion

� Computers and networking at $3.2 billion

� Clothing, shoes, and accessories at $3.1 billion

� Books, movies, and music combined at $2.7 billion

� Home and garden at $2.2 billion

� Collectibles at $2.2 billion

� Sports at $1.9 billion

� Toys and hobbies at $1.7 billion

� Jewelry and watches at $1.6 billion

� Business and industrial at $1.4 billion

� Cameras and photo at $1.3 billion

On an average day, sellers list millions of items on eBay. The
site's thousands of categories range from toys, antiques, furniture,
and clothing to big-ticket items like cars and houses. Yes,
I did say houses!

eBay is global, too. People from all over the world buy
and sell on eBay. I ship about 20 percent of the items I sell to
foreign countries. eBay has local sites in Australia, Austria,
Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India,
Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the
Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,
Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and of course the United States.

All this can make doing business on eBay sound a bit overwhelming.
However, the good news is that small mom-and-pop
sellers, people just like you and me, still make up over 90 percent
of all transactions on eBay.