Ebay Omidyar still owns share in eBay worth over $4 billion

eBay is one of the great success stories since the inception of the Internet.

Ebay was founded by Pierre Omidyar back  in 1995. Born in Paris to Iranian immigrant parents, Pierre moved to the United States when he was six. His mother is a well known academic and his father a surgeon. Pierre was 28 when he wrote the code for the first version of ebay. He had originally wanted to call his site echobay, but upon finding that domain had already been taken, decided on eBay instead.

eBay was first launched on Monday 4th September 1995. Only 3 years later eBay successfully launched a public offering making Omidyar an overnight billionaire. Omidyar still owns share in eBay worth over $4 billion and according to the Forbes Rich List for 2011, was the the 145th richest person in the world.

Here are some facts about eBay in the UK

• eBay launched in the UK in October 1999 and is now the UK’s largest online market place.
• eBay has over 14 million active users in the UK
• There are over 10 million live listings at any one time on eBay.co.uk
• eBay.co.uk has well over 13,000 different categories
• According to Neilsen/ Netratings, Feb 2008, UK eBay visitors average 1 hour 46 minutes on eBay and 225 pages each month
• eBay is one of the most visited online retailers over the Christmas period
• There are an estimated 200,000 eBay members that use eBay as their primary or secondary source of income.
• In Q2 2005, eBay recorded its first $10 million revenue quarter

eBay Fees

The fees eBay charge are all to the seller, their service is free to the buyer.

As a seller, when you list an item for sale, you are charged an insertion fee. If and when the item sells, eBay then charge a final value fee. These fees vary dependant on the item and how it’s sold for but typically are between 1% and 3%.

More and more people are now using eBay to sell cars. For an auction style sale or a ‘buy it now’ only sale, the insertion fee for cars is £10, The final value fee is a minimum £20 or 1% of the final value up to a cap of £35. Listing you car in a classified format costs a little more at £14.99, but there is no final value fee applied.