About Online Auction Sites

Ever since the first online auction site became popular, many more have been created and continue to bring in buyers and sellers. Online auction sites are seen as both a way to make money from home as well as to buy items online for less than they would cost elsewhere.

History

The first online auction site, eBay, started in 1995 with one single item up for sale. The site grew quickly and was soon a successful business that attracted auction traffic from all over the world. The success of eBay led to several other large online auction sites being created. Among these was Yahoo auctions. However, no other online auction sites have reached the same success as eBay and Yahoo Auctions. Many eventually closed.

Significance

Online auction sites provide a way for people to buy a wide variety of items in one online location. The items include antiques as well as new items. Many shoppers go to online auctions to find rare and hard-to-find items that would be much harder to get at local stores. In other cases, the items for sale are handmade or one-of-a-kind items that aren't for sale anywhere else.

Function

For sellers, selling their items through an online auction is easier and less expensive than setting up a yard sale or renting a flea market booth. Large-scale sellers choose online auction sites because they can sell their items for far less than it would cost them to rent a retail store and to hire employees to help run it. A retail business can be run from a home or from a small office without the need for specific retail space and the costs associated with it.

Identification

The largest and best-known of the online auction sites may be eBay, but there are a host of other sites that are also popular with online buyers and sellers. Silkfair.com is a similar site that has individual stores for its sellers to sell their items through. Overstock auctions is one of eBay's largest competitors and has similar categories and auction features. EBid.com is another online auction site that is attracting attention. Like eBay, it has an American site as well as several foreign sites to cater to the buyers and sellers of several different countries.

Warning

Online auctions are popular places to buy and sell items, but they are also popular among scam artists. There are several scams that have been noted over the years involving buyers and sellers. One of the most popular is to ask for a Western Union payment for an item and then to never deliver the item. Other scams are phishing emails that are sent out to members. The emails ask for the members' passwords and the auction account is hijacked and used to scam other people with fake auction listings.

Resources

• SilkFair is a popular, newer online auction site.
• OverStock Auctions is a large online auciton site.
• EBid is a network of several auction sites.