Skype has proved to be an important part of eBay’s third quarter results, even as the online retailer and auction host continues to try to sell Skype. The online communication hub has posted a revenue growth of 29 percent, a growth that has helped eBay to post a revenue growth of 6 percent to $2.24 billion.
Analysts did not expect eBay’s revenue to grow so much, instead predicting an average of $2.14 billon for the company. According to eBay, this year-over-year growth was mostly driven by continued growth in its PayPal and Skype divisions, as well as by the expansion of its …read more

Are you creative, but not sure where to sell your creative wares? There are quite a few online places where you can set up shop to sell your handmade, or creative products or ideas.
If you’ve thought about starting a business around a craft or if you have something creative you’d like to try to sell. There are many online avenues to explore.

If you’re looking for a place to sell your handmade products, your photos, or your graphic designs online, here are some places and ideas for you to check out.

eBay
Etsy
Zazzle~ Set up a shop with your own graphic designs, or …read more

On Tuesday, General Motors dealers in California will reportedly start using eBay to sell new cars. After declaring bankruptcy, General Motors said they will change they way they operate to become more efficient. This move to eBay, the largest online marketplace on the internet, is part of that plan.
About 90% of General Motors dealers in California will take part in the eBay program. While the Tuesday launch hasn’t officially been announced, multiple sources indicate the announcement will take place on Monday.
The cars will be searchable on GM.eBay.com. Additionally, there will reportedly be a built in function to include the Cash …read more

EBay’s Marketplaces unit has suffered throughout the recession from a general lack of sales, forcing the Internet retail giant to take some steps to alleviate the problem. In order to draw buyers back to the website, EBay plans to cut the fees that its top sellers must pay and to push these sellers higher in their listings because of their power to draw buyers to EBay.
 
This means that EBay’s most reliable sellers will have even more of an incentive to continue doing business on the website. About 150,000 sellers throughout the website will be designated “Top Sellers” and will be …read more

Everyone knows eBay as the largest online marketplace on the internet. However, some marketers ignore how eBay can be used for more than just auctioning goods. Here are five ways to market on eBay:
1. Sell goods
Even if you have goods available elsewhere, it sometimes helps people find your goods if you list them for sale on eBay.
2. Sell coupons
If you are marketing coupons, selling them on eBay is a great way to get the word out. People love to save money, especially people who frequent eBay.
3. Sell instructional packet
Selling instructional packets, perhaps in the form of an e-book, can help …read more

As General Motors tries to rebound from its bankruptcy process, many different ideas are being bounced around. One idea that is gaining momentum is the idea of selling new GM cars on eBay.
While selling cars on eBay isn’t a new concept, usually cars that are being sold on eBay are used cars. Selling new cars in a true auction format would be a new avenue for General Motors.
Right now, nothing is set in stone. General Motors and eBay haven’t come to an agreement about how the relationship would work. Additionally, it appears as if GM would limit the idea to …read more

Currently, eBay has approximately 700 customer support employees in the Canadian city of Vancouver. On Tuesday, eBay announced that they will be closing that Vancouver facility. Those 700 employees are expected to be out of work by September 30th.
At the same time that eBay announced the Vancouver closing, they said that a similar facility that operates out of Salt Lake City, Utah will be expanded. At this point, around 1,000 customer support employees work for eBay in Salt Lake City.
Despite the customer support firing, the company says that the customer service aspect of their businesses won’t be negatively affected. Not …read more

This week, eBay made an aggressive move in South Korea by purchasing Gmarket for $1.2 billion. Gmarket is a marketplace with a large presence in South Korea and eBay plans to align it with Internet Auction Company, a property eBay already owns that also operates in South Korea.
The plan outlined by eBay has the California based company purchasing the Gmarket shares for $24 each and the company says they will acquire at least two-thirds of Gmarket’s shares. Many experts believe eBay is targeting South Korea due to its emerging market and the fact that internet commerce is the company’s specialty.
In …read more

A couple years ago, StumbleUpon was sold to EBay for $75 million. Today, the original founders of StumbleUpon have purchased the website back from EBay for an undisclosed amount of money.
Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith are the two original founders of StumbleUpon. Those two founders got help buying back the website from other investors including Accel Partners, August Capital and Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures.
When EBay purchased StumbleUpon, there were less than three million users. Currently, the most recent estimate has StumbleUpon with approximately 7.5 million users.
The StumbleUpon service is a recommendation service in which users recommend websites to other …read more

Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis became billionaires when the sold the Internet phone company to eBay in 2005 for over $3 billion. Since selling their baby, the duo hasn’t slowed down – they’ve founded a venture capital firm and supported video service Joost.

Now, however, it seems that the two have another business move in mind – buying back Skype. When eBay bought the service, it had around 53 million users, but today, there are more than 405 million people using Skype to make free calls between one another and very cheap international calls to non-Skype users. In the …read more