Hidden in the bill that Bush signed to regulate the brokers and lenders in the housing market so that another meltdown does not occur is - I have read - a segment that will oblige eBay to send out a W2 Income Tax form to sellers.
A majority of the millions of part-time sellers will likely kick it when that happens. People who occassionally hit the yard sales or estate auctions to see what they can buy and then sell online. Other folks selling clothes their kids no longer can fit into, etc.
Which may be why in the past year ebay has been diligently courting giants like GM. And Buy.com, who list thousands of items daily on ebay, reportedly not paying a listing fee like the peasants have to.
(But the sell-through rate of buy.com is very, very low. A lot of mass-produced junk, not the special and collectible items that propelled ebay into corporate megaspace ten years ago.)
Some thusly think that ebay's long-range strategy is to shed the smaller sellers and make their site into a kind of online Walmart.
In any case, their big money maker is PayPal.
Ebays stock has declined in the past 12 months by almost 50%. Trading today at about $23. Down from over $40 sometime last Labor Day. They are still very cash-rich tho. And reportedly buying back a lot of their outstanding stock.
While they may still "exist" in a year or more, it will be radically different than what it was.
A majority of the millions of part-time sellers will likely kick it when that happens. People who occassionally hit the yard sales or estate auctions to see what they can buy and then sell online. Other folks selling clothes their kids no longer can fit into, etc.
Which may be why in the past year ebay has been diligently courting giants like GM. And Buy.com, who list thousands of items daily on ebay, reportedly not paying a listing fee like the peasants have to.
(But the sell-through rate of buy.com is very, very low. A lot of mass-produced junk, not the special and collectible items that propelled ebay into corporate megaspace ten years ago.)
Some thusly think that ebay's long-range strategy is to shed the smaller sellers and make their site into a kind of online Walmart.
In any case, their big money maker is PayPal.
Ebays stock has declined in the past 12 months by almost 50%. Trading today at about $23. Down from over $40 sometime last Labor Day. They are still very cash-rich tho. And reportedly buying back a lot of their outstanding stock.
While they may still "exist" in a year or more, it will be radically different than what it was.
