I had some vouches which I had no intension of using so I thought to sell them on eBay. I sold $10 vouchers (less than their original value) and pay eBay for listing and selling But Paypal charged fees for money received in my account. That made the me cost a lot. The $10 voucher returned me hardly $5 oho.

Paypal should provide facility for using eBay and helping their business grow but instead people got to pay and I find it unfair deal. For any thing which is used and sold for any price is different thing but for brand new untouched thing. Pay pal should not charge fees for selling its partner site (eBay). Paypal already getting business by getting members and in other words members are paying penalty. May be Paypal look at his seller members as business partners that’s why charge fee.

 I found this out when I sold one of my items through eBay and the buyer told me that she wanted to have the items shipped to USA, but she can’t change the shipping country in her PayPal account since she has a Hong Kong-based PayPal. I decided to check it out myself. Using my Philippine-based PayPal, I was surprised to see that I can’t change the shipping country to USA. It tells me that I’m not allowed to have my items shipped to USA! It’s a definite setback for PayPal. A lot of Filipinos buy tons of stuff online and have it shipped to their relatives living in USA. So it should not be a problem. Furthermore, it cuts off the seller from more potential buyers. 

 I tried to use my Philippine-based PayPal in drugstore.com, but it told me that the website does not ship to that country. They definitely lost 1 customer and a $300 order because I was not going to have it shipped to the Philippines..It was supposed to ship out to Los Angeles, California. 

I wish they’d just go back to their old policy. Because I used to be able to change the shipping country to USA. It could save me dozens of email exchange with the buyer trying to explain, plus I don’t lose any international buyer at all! 

On Monday, eBay announced it would lay off 10 percent of its 16,000 workers, including 1,000 permanent employees, and pay $1.35 billion to acquire the Web payment firm Bill Me Later and the Danish classified advertising companies Den Bla Avis and BilBasen.

EBay, based in San Jose, Calif., said most of the layoffs would be in its core marketplace division, which has suffered from declining single-digit growth rates while online commerce has been growing at a double-digit clip.

In an interview, John J. Donahoe, eBay’s chief executive, said the layoffs were the first significant cuts in eBay history, and that he would be communicating via webcast with eBay’s employees around the world to convey the bad news. “We are treating the affected people with the kinds of values you would expect out of eBay,” he said.

Meanwhile, the company is doubling down on what it sees as the most promising parts of its business, like online payments. Revenue from PayPal, which eBay acquired in 2002, is expected to grow at a 35 percent rate this year as large companies like Southwest Airlines and Wal-Mart stores offer it as a payment option on their Web sites.

PayPal got its start by allowing individuals and small merchants to send money to one another over the Internet from their bank accounts or credit cards.

EBay is paying $920 million in cash and options for Bill Me Later, an eight-year-old firm based in Timonium, Md. The company takes a different approach to online payments. It allows people to buy items on the Internet and then sends them a bill within 30 days, at which point they can either pay the bill outright or take out a loan.

Bill Me Later works by asking consumers for their date of birth and the last four digits of their Social Security number and then performing a rapid electronic credit check. Because it also knows what people are buying and where they are shipping it, Bill Me Later says it can conduct sophisticated analysis to determine whether purchases might be fraudulent and whether the buyer is capable of paying the bill on time.

Amazon.com, eBay’s main rival in online shopping, invested in Bill Me Later last year and has integrated the payment service into its site. It is unclear whether that relationship will continue. Amazon declined to comment on the transaction.

Shares of eBay fell on Monday along with the overall market, dropping $1.05, or 5.5 percent, to $17.89. Although eBay’s stock is at a five-year low, Mr. Donahoe said the company’s strong balance sheet and cash balance have allowed it to take advantage of Bill Me Later’s declining value in a market that has been rough on all companies in the finance sector.

“We feel a little like Warren Buffett. We are a strong company, and at times like this we can move to take advantage of the market environment,” he said in an interview.

EBay also announced on Monday that it was acquiring the popular Danish classified advertising site DBA.dk and the automotive marketplace BilBasen.dk for $390 million, from the Danish media mogul Karsten Ree. The deal is one of the largest in Denmark’s history. A local newspaper reported that the companies had negotiated on and off for four years.

EBay has been steadily building or buying classified Web sites and already owns properties like Kijiji, Gumtree, Marktplaats, LoQuo and mobile.de. EBay also owns a 25 percent stake in the American online classifieds leader Craiglist, but its interest in buying the firm outright led the companies to sue each other this year.

EBay’s attempt to stitch together a global network of classified advertising sites is partly intended to create an alternative to its sagging traditional business of auctions. For the first time on Monday, eBay disclosed some financial information about its classifieds holdings, saying they generated $260 million in revenue last year — which it described as three to four times the estimated annual revenue of the closely held Craigslist.

Source : Nytimes

- always start your bid very low, it will promote more easily the bids

- always put a picture of your product, sometimes a picture is better than a description

- if you are going to sell similar products, better to put some space time to your selling

- do the promotion of your product by showing the original price for example

- put the maximum days for your bidding (10 days)

- select the right hour when it will end your bid (ie 9PM)

- dont put a wrong price for your delivery

- try hard to have a good reputation (better to have 100% of positive evaluation than 90%)