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Fork in the Road: For sale on eBay -- your business
Thursday, July 27, 2000 By Bob Starzynski, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Time to sell an old baseball card collection, a limited edition Bob Marley album or a lawn bowling set? Think "hip," and head to eBay.
But when you decide it is time to sell your young Internet business, is a consumer auction Web site, popular among the 'N Sync crowd, the best place to find suitors?
Jim Joyce thinks so.
That is why the Emsworth entrepreneur posted his 4-year-old Web site, Bikexchange.com, for sale on eBay this past Sunday in hopes of attracting another entrepreneur to take his pet project off his hands. Joyce, who has a day job as a mobility instructor for blind people, just doesn't have the time anymore to devote to his Web business.
Bikexchange.com is not the kind of business for which you hire a Wall Street investment bank to shop for a suitor. It is small potatoes in those eyes. But it is a legitimate business, with a content-rich, albeit graphically plain, Web site that also hosts one of the Internet's larger classified sections for buying and selling bicycles. It attracts 400 customers a day and has several banner advertising relationships. In fact, type "bicycle classifieds" into the Yahoo! search engine, and Joyce's business is one of the first selections you see.
"This started off as a hobby," he says of Bikexchange.com. "But to keep it up is a lot of work. In the last four years [since the site was started], I've gotten married and moved to Pittsburgh and started this other job, which keeps me traveling around quite a bit."
He knows his site needs to be taken to the next level by someone with more resources. As is, banner advertisements are not very profitable for the site, and the classified section is free to customers and doesn't generate any revenue. But, Joyce reasons, a buyer may appreciate the value of the eyeballs that see the site every day, or appreciate the value of the brand name attached to the classified section.
Joyce first tried shopping for a buyer for his company several months ago. He casually approached site advertisers and other biking enthusiasts for starters and didn't get a nibble.
But the brokers of billion-dollar deals aren't going to drop what they are doing to shop around a home-based business with a trickle of revenue.
When one person suggested that Joyce sell Bikexchange.com through an Internet auction, he thought it wasn't such a crazy idea. "I thought it sounded quite novel," he recalls.
What does he have to lose?
With eBay, he can set the minimum bid and run an auction on the popular site for almost two weeks. If he doesn't get a substantial enough bid (a magic number that is somewhere north of the minimum bid), he doesn't have to sell at all. If the company doesn't sell, he's not out any money.
Only one rather major hitch. How do you convey a sense of credibility and attract serious business prospectors on an auction site that has over 4 million items for sale -- most of it attracting small-time consumer spenders?
Granted, eBay has a special section of its site dedicated to the sale of businesses. That section currently has almost 950 businesses for sale.
But consider a sampling of the caliber of the businesses for sale on eBay.
There are a number of non-snake-oil-selling companies -- such as Bikexchange.com -- for sale on eBay, but there are not many interested parties. Of the roughly 175 businesses listed on the site this week for more than $1,000, fewer than 15 have received a single bid.
Joyce's company, which first posted on eBay Sunday night with a minimum opening bid of $5,000, had no bidders as of noon yesterday.
"I was a little worried at first that someone might think this is just a [gimmick], but it seemed like an interesting thing to try," he says. "If you're serious enough to pay the money, you must be interested in the business."
And if the business doesn't get any takers, Joyce is not out any money or much time.
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A Web site called HotGolf2000.com, which touts itself on eBay as "having been valued by experts for $50,000! Yes, $50,000!" This site is for sale for $1 and, as of Monday, had no offers.