Home | TrendTracker | PowerBlog Reviews | The Experts | Newsletter
ABOUT
SMALL BUSINESS TRENDS brings you daily updates on trends that influence the global small business market.
Anita Campbell, Editor
Past life: CEO, corporate executive, tech entrepreneur, retailer, general counsel, marketer, HR ... (more)
email me
free business magazines
FREE BUSINESS MAGAZINES
Trade publications FREE to qualified professionals. No hidden offers and no purchase necessary.
On Wall Street
The Deal
Computing Canada
CIO
Employee Benefit
Oracle Magazine
100+ additional titles. Click to browse.
ARCHIVES & SEARCH
Previous Small Business Trends articles can be found at the links below:
October 2003
November 2003
December 2003
January 2004
February 2004
March 2004
April 2004
May 2004
June 2004
July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
October 2004
November 2004
December 2004
January 2005
February 2005
March 2005
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
Or, use the search box below to find a
specific post:


NEWSLETTER
Sign up for our FREE Small Business Trends newsletter. (View Current)

We publish regularly and promise we won't share your email address with anyone. (Privacy Policy)
SMALL BIZ INFO & RESOURCES
BLOGS TO READ DAILY*
* Don’t have time to read several dozen blogs a day? Pick two or three. Your brain will thank you for it.
ONLINE COMMUNITIES
BLOG DIRECTORIES
THE BUZZ

SPECIAL RESOURCES
Small Business Trends Radio
Tuesdays, 1:00 PM Eastern U.S. time
on Voice America network
Click to listen

November 1st: Torsten Jacobi, CEO of Creative Weblogging, joins host Anita Campbell. Sponsored by Six Disciplines. Show details.
Thursday, October 16, 2003
Why Savvy SMBs Leverage eBay
The Internet has transformed small and midsize businesses. One of the reasons: it has inexpensively opened up marketing and sales channels that those organizations would never have had access to otherwise.

Earlier this week I reported that if you want to see where SMB business-to-business eCommerce activity is headed, watch eBay. Well, here's another reason to track eBay. According to the Neilsen Net Ratings, eBay is by far the leading starting point for shopping on the Web. In August 2003, eBay had nearly 43 Million unique visitors. The next closest was Amazon, with a little more than half that number, at 26 Million uniques.

When you consider that on eBay, the majority of sellers are small businesses, you can see why eBay is so important to the SMB market. Where else could a small business--even a single entrepreneur or home-based business-- reach an audience of 43 Million by paying a small fee?

If it were not for eBay, many of those same small businesses would not even exist. Most of them would not be in a position to open up a brick-and-mortar storefront, staff it, and run it as a traditional business. They are in business because eBay has made it possible for them to run a bare-bones "virtual" organization.

And eBay's Web commerce lead is growing. Their visitor numbers grew by 40% over the prior year. Obviously, a lot is happening on eBay. Keep watching what eBay does next.

Read Neilsen Net Rankings here.
More news... more trends... more insight...

Home | Privacy | Terms | SmallBizTrends
(c) Copyright 2003 - 2005, Small Business Trends LLC. All rights reserved.