eBay, a household name nowadays, all started as a small part of founder, Pierre Omidyar’s website. The website’s focus was far from selling things on the internet with the selling part actually just a small fun part of it. After selling his first item in 1995 – a broken laser pointer sold to a collector – Omiyar realized that he had a good business model and continued selling items on the internet until 1996 when he hired Jeff Skoll as eBay’s first president. Of course during that time the company wasn’t named eBay yet. The company was officially named eBay in 1997.

From its humble beginnings eBay is now the number one online auction and shopping website where people can buy and sell almost anything you could think of. Anything that is except for a prohibited items such as academic software, alcohol, animals and wildlife products, artifacts, credit cards, drugs and drug paraphernalia, firearms and weapons, human parts and remains, tobacco, used cosmetics, etc. To know whether the item you intend to sell is allowed or not just go to eBay’s Prohibited and Restricted Items List.

The list may seem long but that shouldn’t be a problem for serious business men and sellers who just want to have fun since the list of things you can sell is even way longer. People have been known to have sold things as silly as a leftover pea from the previous year’s Thanksgiving dinner to really expensive stuff like corvettes and airplanes. eBay has enabled people to buy and sell anything, anywhere, any time.  It has truly revolutionized eCommerce and empowered ordinary people giving them the ability to trade with so many people with an ease never before imagined.

Since eBay has such a wide range of products and services catering to people all over the world they have 26 global sites to address the specific needs of people in different countries. The 26 countries are: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and United Kingdom. Each site uses the country’s own language and currency. The categories in each country are also different reflecting the trend in market demand in that country. The global sites encourage local buyers and sellers to trade using eBay since there is less difficulty regarding transactions.

Local sites enable buyers and sellers without dollar accounts to trade. The time it takes for transactions to be completed is also significantly faster with local sites since banking transactions don’t have to go through international channels. Buyers can also expect the items they bought to arrive more speedily and postal fees are of course minimal. Global sites are however, not beneficial only to the countries’ locals. People from other countries are welcome to buy and sell in these local sites especially if you are interested in some specialty items certain countries offer.

Note however that even if you are already a registered eBay user on eBay’s main site you still need to register on eBay Local sites to be able to participate in selling and buying on the local sites. The process of buying and selling on each eBay local site as well as the list of prohibited items are all the same. Sellers are also expected to meet international eBay standards, which means that the item they sell should be as advertised and that they should make sure that the item is well packed and delivered to buyers speedily. Whichever eBay site you decide to join you can be sure that the quality of service remains excellent and security is always assured.

eBay not only has global sites for you to shop in but also several has specialty stores. eBay’s newest specialty store is called eBay Express. eBay Express offers an incredible selection of brand new products (more than 10 million different products) and allows to customers to buy items by department store, by aisle or by product type. It also uses the shopping cart method which enables to customers to choose items from different merchants and save it on their shopping carts before paying all of the items “in one quick checkout: instead of having to pay for each item individually. And like all eBay transactions purchases are covered by Buyer Protection guidelines allowing customers to buy at ease. eBay Express is the newest online super shopping mall.

An older eBay specialty site that is very similar to eBay Express is the eBay Stores. eBay Stores is simply a collection of online stores you can shop in. eBay stores suits buyers who have favorite stores to shop since eBay stores make it very quick and easy to shop in each store and even allows buyers to tag their favorites stores so that it’ll be even quicker for them to revisit the store. eBay Stores is beneficial not only to the buyers but to store sellers as well since 75% of surveyed sellers claim that their sales increased with the opening of their own eBay store. This makes sense since opening an eBay stores are able to boost their brand through their web presence. Having the name of eBay back up a store is also a powerful marketing tool since it not only enables the store to reach a larger customer base but also lends credibility to the store’s name.

Another eBay specialty site is the popular eBay Motors. eBay Motors specialize in the buying and selling of both used and brand new vehicles as well as vehicle parts and accessories. In eBay Motors buyers can find almost any kind of vehicle they are interested in. eBay Motors offer everything from used cars to collector cars, motorcycles, military vehicles, boats, aircraft, RVs, buses, go-karts and even snow mobiles.

A cool eBay specialty site is the eBay Live Auction. Live Auction means just that – a live auction. Bidding on eBay’s live auctions means that the bids aer received by bidding houses real time. Because of these unlike any other eBay site joining in on live auctions requires customers to have a minimum system configuration to ensure that the bids arrive on time. However customers can still browse for bids, search lots and even place absentee bids using computers that do not meet the minimum system requirements.

And last to be discussed here, but definitely not the last of eBay specialty sites, is the eBay Want It Now. The Want It Now Site is dedicated to helping sellers know what buyers want. Buyers get to post items that they want for free while sellers in turn get to browse the things that buyers say they need or want.