The story of Ebay is similar to many internet success story. It wasn’t started by a corporation. There was no business plan in place. Nope. Ebay started as Auctionweb in 1985 from code written in one weekend by Pierre Omidyar.

The first thing Pierre sold was a broken laser pointer to a man who collected broken laser pointers. This first sale showed the amazing potential of EBay. Who knew that there were people in the world that collected broken laser pointers? The whole “PEZ Dispenser” story of Ebay’s beginnings was a public relations fabrication.

In 1996, Ebay was still Auctionweb, but the part-time job of running a novelty online auction site soon became a full-time job. Pierre Omidyar could now support himself full-time by collecting fees from sellers. This was also when the feedback system was implemented.

The early fee system did not work like the one we know today. I actually listed a few auctions in the early days of Ebay before Paypal. I was sent a bill via email that I mailed in with a check for my payment. Thank God for automation. There is no way billing could be handled in this way any more.

In 1997, Ebay finally became Ebay. It was what people had been calling it for a while, but now it was official. The yellow, red, green and blue logo that we now associate with Ebay was designed. Leave it to Ebay to brand the primary colors. And the one millionth item went up for auction, a Big Bird toy.

In ‘98, Ebay went public and greatly expanded their category structure to expand past their once niche appeal to collectors. Ebay became the site we know today where you can find anything large or small for sale.

In 1999, Ebay had sites in a multitude of laguages serving a multitude of countries. This is also the year they bought Half.com and introduced Buy It Now. Up to that point the only format was auction. Now you could offercutomers the ability to bypass the auction process and pay an instant price for your product.

In 2002, Ebay bought Paypal.

And that is a short history of Ebay. With that out of the way, we will get onto the more important topic of making money on ebay. This is also a test post to set up my new blog. So look for more posts in the future if not in the near future.