📖 Taking Over eBay (Idea #4) (1)

⚾The Elevator Pitch

A browser extension that shows a real time historical price comparison for eBay items, empowering you to make better buying decisions.

🤝 Introduction

eBay is a $25+ billion ecommerce marketplace company that facilitates consumer to consumer sales across a plethora of categories. Many shoppers go to eBay in the hopes of purchasing a pre-used item at a cheaper price.

The problem that many eBay shoppers have found, however, is knowing how much something in a pre-owned marketplace should cost. This is especially the case in some markets such as sports cards and other collectibles, where they are almost entirely a secondary market, meaning, after the initial sale of an item, it could be flipped/resold potentially hundreds of times. In these industries, customers would benefit from having historical sales information. That is where this browser extension comes into play.

💡The Idea

To assist buyers when purchasing on eBay, this browser extension, upon installation, will show buyers in real-time if the listed product is being sold at a higher or lower price than historical sales. See a sample mock-up of the extension interface below using a PlayStation® 5 as the product for sale:

The existing industry competitors for finding historical prices are separate websites, such as Watch Count or 130Point. This idea brings price comparisons to eBay itself.

👷The Work

Fortunately, browser extensions are rather straight forward to develop. All you need is some sort of JavaScript/web development background. Tutorials are readily available on YouTube to get started.

For this idea in particular, you could take the following steps:

• Pick a niche industry you would like to create this browser extension for (i.e. Basketball cards)

• Try to replicate an existing website such as Watch Count or 130Point for your industry.

  • Identify any issues you face pulling eBay’s data from either an API (Application Programming Interface) or other method.

    • For instance – the eBay API , while free, requires approval to exceed a certain number of API calls (information pull requests) per day.

• Convert the website/prototype you created to a browser extension.

• Launch and refine.

• Expand to other industries/niches or all of eBay.

💸The Finances

Expected Sources of Revenue*

• Service Subscription Revenue (Scaled Pricing Model):

  • 0-500 price comparisons/month – Free

  • 501 – 2,000 price comparisons/month - $10/month

  • 2,001 – 5,000 price comparisons/month - $25/month

  • Unlimited price comparisons/month - $40/month

Expected Expenses*

• Chrome Webstore Fee ($5)

• Developer Tools ($100+)

• Marketing Costs ($1000+)

*All values are estimates and do not necessarily reflect accurate revenues/costs.

👍The Good Stuff

• Low-cost prototype/Low long-term expenses

• Scalable – Expand to new industries and websites (Whatnot, Craigslist, etc.)

• Market Size – According to Business Insider, the global collectibles market was $412 billion in 2021

• Browser extensions can be successful - Like the $4 billion sale of Honey to PayPal

👎The Risks

• Data Accuracy – Descriptions and images can be misleading on eBay, so it is possible not all data points you are comparing to are accurate.

• Platform Dependency – What if eBay or another platform changes their data accessibility?

• Competition/Access – eBay could create their own browser extension and/or block yours if they choose.

📚 For the Road

• The top 10 most expensive sports cards ever

• How To Invest In Collectibles

• Using Bots and Bid Sniping on eBay