The bandwidth cost must be huge with millions of people post and
uploading images but how do they make money?

I am not looking for detailed answer but general ways of how they make
money. I have used ebay but dont see how they make there money, i
would think that retail shops make a lot of money because they can
post everything they have with and only ship it when they get there
money.

Hi again jashnimal!

I remember asking myself this same question a quite some time ago.
Now, if all you do is purchase something every now and then from eBay,
it's not all that clear how they're making any dough. But, try selling
something of your own, and it will all make perfect sense.

When you sell an item on the site, eBay takes a cut of the profits you
make. For example, let's say I started an auction selling one of my
CD's, and I start the bidding at $10. A few days later my CD sells for
$15.

In this situation, here are the fees that I would now owe to eBay:

	- Insertion fee (Fee for starting an auction): $0.55
	- Final value fee (A percentage of what the auction ended at): $0.79

So, eBay made $1.34 just from me selling one CD. And with thousands of
auctions taking place every day, eBay is quite a profitable business.

There are also many other features eBay charges for as well. You can
find detailed information on eBay's fees on this page here:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sellerguide/selling-fees.html

I hope this answers your question, please let me know if you have any
concerns before you rate this answer. Thanks!


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