EBay

EBay Inc. is a global online marketplace that sells products across various categories such as garments, electronic gadgets, sports items etc. The Company manages the online shopping and selling site eBay.com. It offers services such as classified online advertisements through Kijiji; online ticket trading for an event through Stubhub etc.

• Industry: The Internet
• Founded: September 3, 1995
• Founder(s): Pierre Omidyar
• Headquarters: San Jose, California, The United States
• Subsidiaries: StubHub, Skype, Craigslist, Gittigidiyor, Paypal, Corrigan, GumTree, iBazar, Half.com, Marktplaats, Kijiji
• Website: ebay.com

History of EBay 

The French-born American-Iranian Pierre Omidyar set up the Company ‘AuctionWeb’ on the 3rd of September in 1995 in California where businessmen and consumers sold and bought a host of services and goods. This Company’s name was later on changed to eBay. The site eBay emerged due to the passion of the computer programmer Pierre Omidyar. The Internet Service provider told him that he needed to upgrade his business account for accommodating the high traffic volume to the website. The rise in the price of his Internet bill from $30 per month to $250 per month compelled him to start charging the users of eBay. He even hired the first eBay’s employee Chris Agarpao for handling the checks coming to his website for fees.

The first President of eBay was Jeffrey Skoll.  In the month of November 1996, eBay partnered with the ‘Electronic Travel Auction’ for using the ‘Smart Market Technology’ to sell the plane tickets and various other products of traveling.

More about Ebay

The business strategy of eBay.Inc includes international trade. The Company has expanded to many countries, including India and China. EBay offers a host of payment methods to its customers, such as Paymate, PayPal etc. It makes use of the escrow.com for processing its transactions safely.

Under the ‘eBay Network Partner,’ eBay runs the affiliate program, where the affiliate marketers are paid transaction fees of various eBay sellers, with the commissions varying from 50%-75% based on the price of the purchased items. The Company introduced the ‘Quality Click Pricing’ in October 2009, where the affiliates receive an amount decided by an unknown algorithm. ‘Earnings per Click’ or EPC is the amount obtained on diving the earned total amount by clicks, sent by the affiliate to eBay.

E-Bay announced the establishment of its new building in San Jose on the 8th of May 2008. The building is equipped with 3,248 panels to prevent the release of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Thus it is an initiative for contributing to a healthy environment.

E-bay has made a number of acquisitions, such as StubHub, Skype, Craigslist, GittiGidiyor, PayPal etc. The online site for ticket trading, ‘StubHub’is e bay’s acquisition for $310 million in January 2007. Ebay acquired the Instant service of messaging, the Skype Technologies in the month of October 2005. It acquired the ‘classified listing website’ Craigslist in the year 2004. In the month of March 2005 eBay launched ‘Kijiji,’ the classified service. The e-shopping Turkish Mall, GittiGidiyor is also a subsidiary of the eBay Company.