P1: OTA/XYZ P2: ABC
c11 JWBT144/Gordon September 25, 2009 19:28 Printer Name: Courier Westford, Westford, MA
TRUMP UNIVERSITY ENTREPRENEURSHIP 101
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Revenue streams: Initially only sellers paid a small fee to list their
products for sale. Now eBay also offers myriad products for sale that
they do not physically own, and do not sell via auction.
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Operational features: Because it is a virtual connection mechanism, eBay
goes to great lengths to ensure the trustworthiness of sellers. Other
operational features: simplicity of site design, flawless navigation, and
user-friendly customer-facing pages.
What other business design options could eBay have implemented on
start-up? Consider Craigslist (www.craigslist.com). It also connects buyers
and sellers of products, as well as services, over the Internet. In addition, it
offers connections for jobs, personals, discussion forums, community involve-
ment, housing, and more. Craigslist serves more than 200 cities around the
world. At this time, its revenue stream comes only from employers offer-
ing jobs in many cities; all other connections are free. Its apparent goal is
to build traffic and momentum before implementing other revenue streams.
Today, traffic is huge, tens of millions of unique visitors per month, and the
company is rapidly displacing and disrupting classified advertising sections of
newspapers.
The point of this comparison between eBay and Craigslist is to highlight
the concept of business design options. Both companies connect buyers and
sellers ...