I’m currently working on a few projects and I’m grateful for any help you might be able to provide. Perhaps you can be of assistance?
1) I’m very interested in speaking to people who bought and sold on eBay between 1995 and 2001. It doesn’t matter if you are still using eBay or not but I’d like to hear stories from people who used eBay in the very early days. Especially interested in Brits who started usuing eBay.com before eBay.co.uk was launched.
2) Are you, or do you know anyone, who is using videos in their eBay listings? I’d love to see examples and talk to eBayers who are utilising moving pictures to drive sales.
Either leave a comment on this thread or email. Contact me here. Thanks in advance.
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Hi Dan – I’ve been an eBay member since April 1999, when I started making purchases. I began selling a few weeks later in May 1999. Two years later I was a power seller and earned my living that way for about 18 months until 2003. Though most of my selling experience comes after 2001, I’d be happy to reminisce about the good/bad old days.
whats the fee ?
I remember sweating razor blades watching auctions with five minutes to go
hoping the site did not crash before the last minute bidders could get their bids in,
I remember spending two days working out how to post a picture using html
and thinking I had scored a goal at wembley when it worked.
I remember thinking the postie was santa when most payments were made in US Dollars cash sent by post
I Remember
WHEN EBAY UK HAD NO LISTING FEES! AND NO FINAL VALUE FEES!
for a few months,
And I also remember Dan when he posted on the UK chat board when it was A US board
PMSL @ Norf.
I remember when cheap listing days were FREE – except that one time they forgot to switch the fees off, and Henry was on Q&A being yelled at at 3 o’clock in the morning. Happy days 😀
I too was an ‘early starter’ but developed as a ‘service provider’ not a seller as such. I used the theory that comparing eBay to a street market, on a wet and windy day, the only people to make any money are the people who collect your stall rent or sell you coffee and bacon butties.
For more info, see the (my) AuctionBytes article :
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y206/m12/abu0180/s07
Morning Dan
Just catching up on a few things.
Yes, been there done that, know *exackly* what norty norf is saying. “The good old days” where you would start an auction and fret as it neared its end, the sending of US dollars in the post to a total stranger and getting goodies back, an amazing experience!
These young pups don’t know how easy they’ve got it.
Warmest
Sean_CoolNess
Ahh the good old days were pre PayPal and you could easily send cash in US dollars to buy whatever you wanted from the UK (or anywhere really). I also remember
Feedback given and received for warm fuzzies as well as transactions
Being able to have your email address as your ebaY userid
Being able to contact anyone with an ebaY userid (this was great for rival bidders splitting up weird lots of items amongst themselves when they had divergent interests)
Extremely long periods of time when no new sellers were allowed to sign up for TurboLister (most of my seller friends were signing up for AuctionRover then)
The ‘intermittent outages’
Being spammed with ‘please click my link and sign up for PayPal so I can get $10’ emails (which is yet another reason to hate PayPal)
Although technically ebaY was a more primitive site, it was way better then. IMHO ebaY jumped the shark when they bought PayPal