WILMA'S CAREER
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
In 1976, the American singer-songwriter Tom Waits released a song called 'Step Right Up', in which he impersonated the souped-up sales-pitch of a veteran street hawker. 'Everyone's a winner, bargains galore,' he began, describing an array of items including perfume, an engagement ring, smoke-damaged furniture, and a mythical product that lasted a lifetime, mowed your lawn, picked up the kids from school and removed embarrassing stains from sheets. The product, which never needed winding, was being sold at an unrepeatable price because it cut out the middle man. Earlier this month, tickets for a Tom Waits concert went on sale at Ticketmaster, and, this being his first London show for many years, sold out in about 30 minutes. Thirty minutes after that, the same tickets for the same show began appearing on the internet auction site eBay, alongside 25 million other goods such as engagement rings, perfume and lawn mowers.
eBay boomers | Life and style | The Observer
BBC NEWS | Business | Making it big on eBay
In the tradition of technology start-ups, he's confident that the losses he is sustaining today will be nothing to the profits he will make tomorrow. Increasingly we have small businesses who use eBay as their primary distribution channel "We certainly still have the individual sellers who sell one item at a time as sort of a recycling [process], their kids have outgrown their clothes, or used sporting good equipment. But increasingly we have small businesses who use eBay as their primary distribution channel," she says. Under the name the Gathering Goddess, she lists women's clothes and accessories, and hopes that with a high enough turnover, she can make money from the slim profit margins she can get after acquiring and processing her stock, and paying eBay fees. The reality of her London apartment, stuffed with new clothes on rails, is still far from the large scale selling operation she dreams about.Entrepreneurs start up on eBay - Times Online
Families with children will lose an average of £511 a year under tax and benefit changes which come into effect tomorrow, the start of the new financial year. An analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) of austerity measures announced by George Osborne in the Budget last month underlines the scale of the squeeze faced by middle-income families. It also reveals that despite the row over the so-called granny tax, pensioners will suffer the least as a result of the coalition’s policies.
How to start an ebay business, setting up an ebay shop - startup
What is eBay? Internet auction website eBay is one of the biggest retail phenomena of our time. The opportunities offered by an eBay business stretch way beyond the chance to sell unwanted bric-a-brac, or discarded Christmas presents. eBay was started by Pierre Omidyar in September 1995 as a result of his wife’s desire to add to her collection of sweet dispensers; not even in his wildest dreams could Omidyar have predicted how far his venture would go.Less than a decade after the San Francisco enthusiast, Pierre Omidyar, responded to his wife's desire to collect Pez candy dispensers and interact with other collectors over the internet by building the first online auction site eBay, the sector now connects an estimated 150 million consumers worldwide. Hosting an entrepreneurial orgy enjoyed by people ranging from hobbyists to high street players, it has become an £18.8bn marketplace where more than 2,000 small businesses and kitchen sink enterprises now turn over in excess of £750 a month. "Whether you're looking to make a little extra money on evenings and weekends or planning to launch a full-time company, online auctions have made setting up a business very accessible," said eBay UK's Elspeth Knight. "We give you access to a huge marketplace and all the facilities you need for free, so you don't need any working capital or even a lot of stock to get started."
Net a healthy profit from the global cyber marketplace - Spend &
“It’s not get rich quick, you have to work at it” : TameBay : eB
That was the message from eBay’s Jim Griffiths on this evening’s Money Programme . The programme looked at three UK eBay sellers: Simon, aka godblessthismess , fitted the traditional image of the eBay seller of rather bizarre collectibles. Trying to expand his business, he has a problem that many of us have: falling in love with his own stock. Sadly his love for and bidding on an item he was selling for a friend cost him a week’s suspension from the site: a salutory lesson for him, but a positively managed demonstration that the site does not tolerate artificial bid inflation (“ shill bidding “) by sellers. Wilmamae Ward, trading as Gathering Goddess began her business in the same way many sellers do: selling off her own excess eBay purchases.
"I travel 200 days a year, and Londoners are always going out for dinner instead of organising dinner parties, so it's impossible to meet like-minded people," he says. "When I lived in Kiev in the 1990s, dinner parties were the only way to meet people because there was no other entertainment around." Grant recently threw a cocktail party for club members in his house. "There were 60 guests and I met lots of great people. The evening was a success, but that might also have something to do with the 2.5 kilos of caviar I brought back from Kiev," he boasts. In the latest edition of Fund Strategy Magazine, he says he is selling his house and investing the money in the land of the rising sun.