May 1, 2008

eBay started as an experiment

Its wonderful when you are able to make your hobby pay, this can take many forms from writing to teaching, but sometimes there comes along somebody who not only can make it pay, they can turn their hobby into a multi billion dollar business.

Granted this does not happen that often, but this is exactly how the world’s most famous auction house eBay started, as a hobby! Pierre Omidyar had a day job which paid the bills, while he worked on creating the auction house that started it all.

Now eBay holds over four million auctions every single day and all of those little payments all mounts into a staggering amount of revenue. This may have something to do with why he is worth an estimated $10 billion! Not bad for something that started off as a mere hobby.

Source [Young Entrepreneur]