WASHINGTON - Hawking baby and children's clothes, along with some garage sale and thrift store bargains, on eBay helps Sunni Wojnarowsky bring in some extra money so she can afford to stay home with her two young boys.

The additional money is great, but does she really need to hassle with the paperwork and report her small profit to the Internal Revenue Service? Her question, posed to the online auction site's discussion board for sellers, generated much advice -- and more confusion.

"You can't get an answer from anybody," Wojnarowsky said in an interview from her home in Brunswick, Ohio. "It would be nice to have a straightforward answer of yes, you file taxes, or no, you don't."

More than 135 million people have registered to use the auction site that calls itself "the world's online marketplace." Buyers bought more than $34 billion worth of merchandise there last year.

Some people make money by cleaning out items from their closets; others use the site to run small businesses.

In tax law, there is no clear, bright line that separates fun from profit, or a hobby from a business. But IRS instructions make it clear that all income -- a category that includes bribes, gambling winnings, kickbacks and money made in illegal activities -- can be taxed.

"When you're working on the Internet, it's kind of a gray issue," said Bart Fooden, a certified public accountant in Woodbury, N.Y., who advises small businesses and individuals. "The big issue is whether you're doing it as a business or not."

The IRS can apply a list of nine indicators that might prove whether someone's online auctions amount to a business. These indicators include evidence that the taxpayer depends on the income, acts in a businesslike manner, or puts enough time and effort into the activity to suggest a profit motive.

Fooden said the difference between a hobby and a business can often be the seller's intent.

If someone is selling the junk that is collecting dust in a garage or basement, then that person probably is getting less than he paid for it. No profit here.

If someone is buying goods in bulk from a wholesaler and hoping to make a few extra bucks reselling each one, then that person could have just started a profitable business, Fooden said.

Some categories are not so clear.

If a great-aunt's collection of antique china fetched top dollar from collectors, that might mean capital gains taxes are owed.

If someone scours garage sales for great deals on comic books to resell on eBay, that might amount to running a business.

It often is best to ask a tax professional, said Bob Miller, who says he spends about 18 hours a day on eBay, selling collectible postage stamps and advising other buyers and sellers from his home in northern Utah.

"When the person that you owe the money to can throw you in jail, it's always a good idea to get professional advice," he said.

While it might sound like nothing good can come of the headache involved in claiming a small profit from online auctions, consider the perks. Business expenses can be deducted from profits. That includes the cost of the goods sold, fees, supplies and maybe a home office -- if the qualifications are met.

Wojnarowsky said she plans to report her eBay profits, which she estimates at about $2,000, but she is not looking forward to it.

"I talked to a friend of mine who does eBay, and she's not filing because she said it's not regulated," Wojnarowsky said. "But my fear is, yeah, but what if you're wrong? I don't want to pay the fine."

AuctionServices.com is pleased to announce the launch of three new, integrated auction portal sites. These sites are designed to provide value, above and beyond, a standalone portal web and include Auction News - a dynamically updated list of category specific information and auctions from the AuctionServices.com calendar system, an auctioneer search, properties for sale and auction, videos and more.

The initial portal content matter was chosen from analysis of auction searches conducted via the National Auction List website over the course of the past year. The most frequently searched categories were crafted into three portals: (Push, Pull & Dig - your heavy equipment auction directory! ) (Land and Shingle - The Internet's easiest way to shop for real estate - for sale or at auction.) and (Back of the Closet - The Internet's collectibles, memorabilia and personal property/estate online resource.)

These portals are optimized for all major Internet search engines and will provide higher search engine ranking for each individual auction. A diverse set of portals will give search engines different points of entry to query and rank each individual auction. This increased ranking will give much more valued exposure to the auctioneers and their auctions. These portals are just the first of many to be launched in coming months.

For auctioneers to start using these portals right away, they simply post their auction information to the AuctionServices.com calendar system via any of the available calendar administration tools: NAA, State Association, or direct via their AuctionServices.com hosting account. Auctioneers only need to list their auctions and items for sale one time in the calendar system and it will populate all of these high traffic portal websites automatically. This time saving technique will prove to be a marketing advantage for all who choose to utilize the AuctionServices.com calendar system to its fullest.

In a talk that began with Ackley emphasizing that eBay, which will be ten years old this year, was not an enterprise software application but a platform, he explained how eBay's goal is "to make sellers more efficient so that they can sell more."

A key strategic initiative of eBay, Ackley stressed, is to open up the platform. "People are doing some amazing stuff," he stressed, on top of the eBay platform. "Innovative applications are taking center stage, all enabled by Web services."

eBay started outside the firewall but was dragged kicking and screaming into Web services by its users, said Ackley. This caused eBay to develop the API so as to make it more efficient. eBay sees functionality moving off the browser - there's an API just enabled that would allow wireless bids to be made on eBay - and he imagines for example some kind of Web service that combines RSS feeds with a Web service so that a buyer can identify the top five books of the week, sayh. and then search across all the channels to find the cheapest prices for those books.

View "eBay Keynote" Live on SYS-CON.TV 

"We're going to see a lot more off the browser, off the Web, on the desktop," Ackley declared, before introducing a TiVo/eBay hybrid -"literally, eBay on TiVo" as an example of how the platform will be harnessed in the future.

Once you go away from the eBay platform,do you lose some of the quirkiness that characterizes the  eBay user experience? With 135 million users registered globally -430,000 people in the US for example make their living full time from eBay - what matters most, noted Ackley, is that 25% of every dollar spent online is spent with eBay, and that percentage is growing.

With developers in 68 countries - eBay itself is in 32 countries - there is a huge eBay community, and 42% of all listings come via the eBay API, which allows considerable flexibility - listings can include Flas, for example. The developer program - with 15,000 developers - is an ecosystem, responsible for 1,000 live applications allowing either selling or buying on the platform.

"We see such rapid development by third parties that it's amazing," Ackley enthuses. PayPal was one of the original innovations to come up through the Developer Program, and indeed his own company back in 2000-2001 was the very first company in the program.

eBay has 60,000 different categories so sometimes eBay helps developers develop an application for a particular vertical, many of them harnessing the power of Web services. Ackley introduced an application - called Configurator - that helps buyers configure their own listings.

"It is pretty difficult to develop on eBay," Ackley conceded. "There are many different formats - over ten - that we have to try and open up." In one interesting partnership, Macromedia's front end expertise allows you to create an eBay store, everything integrated into the Macromedia application. 

eBay rolls major functionality every 2 weeks, so insulating third parties from the rapid pace of change is an issue, said Ackley. 

Having been largely successful in encouraging developers to make their applications API-enabled, the next challenge is to encourage third parties to use Web services. "We need to continue to do that and improve," he continued. 

eBay maintains compatibility levels for its APIs and has invested a lot of money in Web services, including for example creating a full replica of the US site - the eBay "sandbox"- so that applications can be tried out by members of the Developer Program.

But communicating the eBay roadmap to its developer community is a challenge. An innovation like "free listing days" requires a heads-up to third parties who will see a huge spike in traffic, but the day that a "free listing day" falls needs to be kept a secret. Challenges like that abound, but eBay is fast at solving them.

What's next?

Open-sourcing some of eBay's tools - the eBay SDKs for example - may have some "very interesting ramifications for the way eBay develops in the future," Ackley said. What would happen if they did it? "We're going to take a closer look at that."

By allowing - for example - PC sellers on eBay to compete against white box giants like Dell, it is the WWW heavyweights like eBay, Google, Amazon.com that are leveling the playing-field.

By Rob McGann | March 24, 2005

Most online consumers (59 percent) begin their shopping searches on aggregator sites rather than at merchant sites, according to a report conducted by BizRate Research on behalf of Shopzilla. Aggregator sites include search engines, comparison shopping sites, shopping portals, and auction sites.

This represents a 13 percent rise since late 2002, when approximately 46 percent of online shoppers reportedly went to aggregator sites, and the majority (54 percent) went straight to merchant sites.

"The key message is that fewer people start their shopping at merchant sites than at aggregators," said Chuck Davis, Shopzilla's president and chief executive. "It is a trend that is continuing."

The findings are based on a survey of 923 online shoppers conducted February 22 - 28, 2005. Respondents were selected from a panel of 790,000 online shoppers. A similar study was conducted December 4-9, 2002.

One lever apparently driving the growth is the degree of price comparison available on the Web. The survey found approximately 87 percent of online shoppers compare online retail offers with catalog merchants and retail stores to find the best price. Roughly 71 percent said they were able to find better sales and discount offers online than with offline retailer or catalog merchants.

Davis also attributes growth to increasing broadband adoption. BizRate found home broadband consumers shop online about 50 percent more than shoppers with slower connections.

Search engines are the most popular type of aggregator used by online shoppers, with 54 percent of the market. In second place are comparison shopping sites, which draw 24 percent of aggregator traffic. Auction sites and shopping portals draw less than 15 percent of traffic, but Davis cautions many consumers lack a meaningful grasp of the distinctions.

"Consumers get mixed up when you try to delineate between aggregator types," Davis said. "So the more meaningful figure is the 59 percent [who prefer aggregator sites to merchant sites]."

The most popular price-comparison shopping categories are books and clothing. The most searched-for individual brands are electronics and clothing companies, including Sony, Cannon, Gucci, Panasonic, HP, Louis Vuitton, Nike, Motorola, and Ralph Lauren.

As for consumer loyalty, 34 percent of online shoppers said they buy the same brand "most of the time" when shopping online; 62 percent reported buying the same brand "some of the time." About one percent reported buying the same brand "always."

Here we go again. Another challenge to the dominant online auction site eBay has poked its head up. This time it's SnappyBids.com, based in Manchester, NH.

An Internet auction site offers a new format and can deliver secured transactions, free unlimited listings, and no final value fees.

"We charge an annual flat fee for sellers of $36 and just let the sellers run their own business without stores and special treatment. We provide a user friendly format where sellers don't have to sort through a maze of fees. For buyers, it's all free and our SmartSearch feature will allow buyers to be emailed when an item they want is up for auction," said Gina Moore, SnappyBids.com spokesperson, in a written statement.

According to Moore, "The online auction industry is proven, and the growth prospects are phenomenal. Online auctions are expected to exceed $54 billion in sales in 2007 and will account for 25% of all online retail sales. Currently, online sellers are seeing more and more of their profits eroded by these fee increases and are searching for alternatives. Our flat fee format will save online sellers millions of dollars every year."

One interesting feature SnappyBids will also introduce is 10 Minute Live Auctions in the coming weeks.

"This is a very exciting feature for those who enjoy watching the bids change live on their computer screen", said Moore.

Users Looking for Alternatives
Many long-time eBay users have seen an opportunity for an eBay alternative given some of the difficulties the auction behemoth has dealt with since early January.

On January 11, the company announced listing fee and store subscription hikes effective Feb. 18. With the perceived number of successful auctions trending downward and several technical glitches that many users have said remained despite months of complaints, eBay Store owners and Power Sellers said they had enough and wanted a friendlier alternative.

The much-hyped Wagglepop, which was in development for nearly three years, turned into a bust only a week after its launch in mid-February. Other auction sites that have popped up this year include OnlineAuction.com and ClassifiedBuyers.com, but neither site appears to have made much impact with sellers or buyers so far.

A brief check with on the FreeAuctionScripts.com Web site, which is host to a number of auction forums, found no name recognition for SnappyBids.

"We may not be eBay, but we are the new way," added Moore.

Representatives from SnappyBids.com did not return messages seeking further information on the business.

LA PORTE CITY, Iowa (AP) -- Stu Hemesath has earned $29.95 -- as a prom date.

The high school senior from La Porte City auctioned himself off as a date on the Internet auction site eBay on Thursday. He will accompany Rachel Kay, 17, to her Cedar Falls prom.

The two say they have never met.

Hemesath said the idea just came to him as he was "thinking about proms and stuff."

"I came to school with a thought in my head, and I told my friends," he said. "They thought it was the coolest thing in the world, so I decided to go for it."

Hemesath posted pictures of himself and a description to secure some bids -- which came from people as far away as Alaska.

"That's pretty far," he said. "She was really interested. She showed me her picture, but it was just too far away for it to be a possibility."

Hemesath wasn't shy about his description, saying he's 5 feet 10 inches tall, 150 pounds, popular and a wrestler. He added: "I have a lot of girls telling me I'm pretty hot."

Kay said she e-mailed Hemesath her phone number so that they could get to know each other before the big day. She said she made her bid in an attempt to make an ex-boyfriend jealous.

"I didn't think I'd actually win, I was just playing around," she said. "He looks like a pretty nice guy. I thought his write-up was pretty funny. He says he's a wrestler, so that's good."

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Firefighters were fuming Monday after a fire helmet purportedly from the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks appeared on eBay for an asking price of $10,000.

The seller wrote that he is a firefighter who volunteered at Ground Zero after the attacks and that he found the helmet near the site. However, the seller's former rescue squad in Virginia suspects the helmet belongs to them.

"We're 99 percent sure it's ours," said Purcellville Volunteer Rescue Squad vice president Tommy Harrison. "We had no idea about this sale, and we'd actually like our helmet back."

The seller suggested in his eBay ad, "This would be a perfect gift for a family member of someone who was lost in the unfortunate events that occurred on this tragic day." He added, "This helmet is 100% AUTHENTIC, and I can provide as much proof as possible."

EBay officials pulled the ad Monday because it violated their "prohibited items and offensive materials" policy. "With respect to 9/11, we don't allow any items that could be considered part of the rubble," said eBay spokesman Hani Durzy. He said this was the second time eBay has pulled an ad for that helmet.

However, according to Firehouse.com forum members who contacted the seller, the helmet is still available for private sale.

The yellow helmet that was shown in the ad, with a blue band and the words "Rescue Squad," is not an FDNY helmet. The ad did not specifically claim the helmet belonged to an FDNY firefighter killed in the 9/11 attacks, but implied the connection by listing the helmet as, "Fire-Fighter Helmet from World Trade Center on 9/11."

FDNY spokesman Jim Long said he did not recognize the helmet pictured in the ad.

"Within the five boroughs of New York City, and the jurisdiction of the New York City Fire Department, no one wears a helmet like that," he said.

He suggested that if the helmet was really found near Ground Zero, it may have belonged to a fire buff or collector rather than a working firefighter. "Maybe if it was found at Ground Zero, maybe that's the case," he said.

Regardless of whether the helmet has a legitimate connection to FDNY or the World Trade Center attacks, Long disapproved of the attempt to profit from the item under those implications. "It's insensitive, and it's callous disregard for those lives that were lost and the families that lost their loved ones," he said.

The seller did not reply to Firehouse.com for comment, but did reply to Firehouse.com users who e-mailed him for more information about the helmet. According to one message, the seller found the helmet at Ground Zero in the wreckage on the north side of the first tower that was hit. He said he got permission from an officer to keep it as a memento.

After Firehouse.com's inquiry Monday, and before eBay removed the ad, the seller lowered his asking price to $2,500 and shortened the auction deadline by two days. There were no bids at the time the ad was removed.

The seller had also added a note to the listing that read, "This eBay auction will be featured in Firehouse magazine!! How about that for publicity!! Thanks guys!! This could quite possibly be the most controversial item sold on eBay."

Firehouse.com quickly requested the seller remove the statement, and received a profane e-mail. However, the 'publicity' comments were removed by the seller shortly before the entire auction was removed by eBay.

Firefighters on the Firehouse.com forums did consider the sale controversial. In addition to sharing their colorful comments, several firefighters sought the seller's contact information.

If the seller used his real name in e-mail communications about prior sales -- which appears to be the case -- he is a former member of the Purcellville Volunteer Rescue Squad in Virginia. Harrison said he doesn't know whether the former member volunteered at Ground Zero, but that he left the squad a few years ago and still has some of their equipment.

Harrison said it's an interesting coincidence that his rescue squad wears similar yellow helmets and is called Company 14, and that the yellow helmet for sale has the number 14 on it, although the sticker for the 1 has been removed.

"Even if [the helmet] was the real thing, selling it for a profit doesn't sit well with me," Harrison said.

This is not the first time someone has tried to list items or pieces of wreckage from Ground Zero on eBay, Durzy said.

He said there are about 40 million items for sale on eBay at any given time, and about 4 million new items are listed each day. EBay officials don't check each ad before it goes online, but they do police the ads and listen to community feedback. "9/11 items are high on our list of policies we don't want to see violated," Durzy said.

He added that eBay also discourages ads that imply something about an item in order to increase its value.

"The marketplace is remarkably self-regulating," he said. "In other words, items that are purposely vague about their origin or about what it might or might not be, tend not to draw a whole lot of bids anyway because buyers tend to be smarter than that."

This is the reason that so many people are jumping off of eBay and joining some of the smaller auction sites like ioffer.com, squeagle.com, and bidchaser.com

eBay has angered sellers across the U.S. by increasing a number of auction fees by a significant amount. Price hikes include a 40% increase in gallery charges, a 500% increase on "Buy it Now" fees, and a 52% increase on Store sales commissions.

The Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (PESA), which represents over 600 top sellers, has made its feelings known, saying that the partnership once seen between eBay and its users seems to have disappeared. PESA stated that the increased fees mean it is more difficult for sellers to make any kind of profit, as most work with very small margins as it is. In turn, their prices will have to be increased, meaning buyers will suffer from fewer bargain buys.

PESA believes that the increases will benefit eBay in the short term, but will affect the auction site badly over the long term. According to PESA, sellers would accept higher fees, but only if the extra money was injected back into the whole auction system to "improve the integrity of the marketplace."

MATTHEW'S OPINION
I don't see why eBay needs to put its prices up so much, other than to line its pockets further. The auction site has seen a lot of success--and profit to boot--so why make a sudden increase of such large amounts? The whole idea of eBay works because people can sell stuff they don't necessarily want and easily make some money from it. If all that money is taken up in fees, what's the point of doing it?

Long time sellers and those who do it as a full-time business will look on this news with dismay. Prices will probably have to rise and/or more auctions will have to be done to achieve the same level of income. Either way, eBay profits and is happy ... but what about in the longer term? Increased fees mean more people are likely to think it is not worth the effort, meaning fewer auctions; and fewer auctions mean there is less choice for buyers, so they will diminish as well.

Hopefully PESA will have some impact, and eBay will either rethink its charge hikes or at least offer some more incentives to counter them.

Team News-Item is sponsoring its inaugural Relay For Life Online Auction beginning in April and lasting until May 15. The auction will feature brand new items donated by area residents and businesses for the benefit of the American Cancer Society.

Items will be listed on the Internet site and the bidding will be conducted similar to eBay procedures. However, unlike eBay, winning bidders will not encounter any shipping and handling charges as all items may be picked up at The News-Item office. If a winning bidder is from out of the area, shipping can be arranged.

“We’ve got many items up for bid,” said Mary Ellen Candelora, co-chairman of The News-Item team. “We’ll be listing all of the items on the Web and also promote them in our newspaper with advertising. This is the first time we’re trying an auction, and feel it may be a big success considering the quality of the merchandise going up for bids.”

Candelora said that any area business or individual that would like to donate a new item for the auction should contact either her or co-chairman Kim Long at The News-Item office.

Some of the numerous items already donated for The News Item Relay For Life Team Online Auction include a whitewater rafting trip from whitewater Challengers in White Haven, $80 value; two tickets for the Bloomsburg Theater Ensemble, play passes, $42 value (two packages available); Family of Five Ticket Pack to Lake Tobias Animal Haven, Halifax, $22 value; six general admission tickets to the 2005 Reading Phillies, $72 value; two one-day regular admission tickets to Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom, $73.90 value (two packages available); four reserved seats to a Harrisburg Senators baseball game, $28 value (two packages available); framed Yuengling Beer pictures, two available, compliments of Durdach’s with a value of $75 each; original framed bald eagle watercolor painting by Joe Candelora, $150 value; Five M.T. Zyla prints, valued from $25 to $78; NASCAR die-cast race cars, brand new books of all varieties, quilts, and much more.

All of the items donated will be listed on The News-Item Web site at www.newsitem.com soon. These items will also be listed in The News Item and Citizen Standard newspapers.

Those without access to the Internet and who would like to place a bid, will be given information on how to place a bid.

“This is an exciting time for The Relay For Life,” said Kim Long. “This should be a lot of fun and also generate a good amount of money for a worthy cause.”

The bidding is a no-reserve auction, although a suggested opening bid is recommended. However, all items, regardless of bid, will be sold. There will be an opening bid on all items, and items will be posted on The News-Item Web site beginning in early April.

DURHAM, N.H. -- Two University of New Hampshire seniors want to pay off their college loans this summer, and they have found a very unusual way to do it. The pair hope to cash in on the publicity of recent bizarre auction items on eBay.Marc Hall and Josh Hutchins are hoping that bidders such as online casino Golden Palace plunk down $40,000 to rent them out for the summer. Golden Palace made news recently when it spent $28,000 on eBay to buy a grilled cheese sandwich that had what its seller maintained was a likeness of the Virgin Mary on it.

"The winner gets advertising from here to Florida and back," Hutchins said. "We will pass through major cities and major beaches like Miami Beach, Daytona, Myrtle Beach."

"We ran the numbers on our student loans and figured if we could raise $40,000, we could pay expenses and pay for our education," Hall said.

The students said the roundtrip journey will take about six to eight weeks. On every minute of the trip they plan to advertise the winning bidder on T-shirts and bike helmets and do whatever promotional gigs the bidder wants them to do.

"We would be doing the physical work, but whatever promotion they want us to do, we'd be more than willing do that," Hall said.

Hutchins and Hall will know their fate in two days when the auction ends Friday at 3 p.m. Bidders like Golden Palace have typically waited until the final minutes of such auctions.

UNH Students Hope To Auction Selves Off

David Nicholson wasn't happy when he thought he'd sold his purported Sept. 11 flag for $371,300.

Yesterday, when a second eBay auction of the banner closed with a single bid of $25,000, he was really irked.

If everything works out with the lone bidder--Nicholson said it's an investment firm in Loudoun County--he said he could deliver the flag as early as Monday.

But he's also vowing to start looking on Monday for a lawyer to file a lawsuit against the company he claims flew the flag from a construction crane at the Pentagon as terrorists attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

Nicholson originally listed the flag on eBay March 4, offering it along with a "letter of authenticity" signed by an employee of the Facchina Construction Co. of La Plata, Md. He said the flag had come to an auction house he owned in 2002 through an employee of Facchina, a man he was training in the auction business.

Seven days into the sale, though, Facchina contacted eBay and issued media statements saying the company didn't even have a crane at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, casting doubt on the flag's history.

A company spokesman said the employee who signed Nicholson's "letter of authenticity," on Facchina letterhead, did not have the authority for such a document.

As the Facchina denial was making news, Nicholson said, someone broke into his Orange County home, hit him on the head and tried to steal the letter. Deputies investigated but found no evidence to back up Nicholson's story, said sheriff C.G. Feldman. The letter, under glass and in a frame, was discovered in Nicholson's back yard.

The original eBay auction drew nationwide media attention. It closed on Monday with 208 bids--and also with controversy. Family members of those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks strongly objected to the sale of artifacts associated with such a horrific loss of life.

Then the auction winner, a 26-year-old Minnesota man, refused to pay the $371,300 he bid. In an e-mail to The Associated Press, he wrote: "Flag is a fake Im not accepting."

Nicholson, 44, who is being treated for an aggressive, life-threatening cancer, said that kind of trouble was the last thing he needed. He said he had planned to use proceeds from the sale of the flag to help with medical bills and family finances, and he'd promised to donate some of the proceeds for cancer research.

He listed the banner on eBay again, this time with an acknowledgment that Facchina had disavowed the "letter of authenticity." The listing said the seller would answer any questions potential buyers might have, and also offered to keep bidders' identities a secret.

Nicholson said he fielded several calls from interested bidders, but when the sale closed about 6 p.m. yesterday, only one party had actually bid. That was for the starting price of $25,000.

Nicholson said that buyer did not want to be identified by name.

"The only one that got hurt in this is my family," he said. "We didn't get to sell the flag [for enough money] to pay my hospital bills.You can bet I'll be looking for a good attorney Monday morning."

Copyright 2005 The Free Lance-Star Publishing Company.

In this growing niche, companies like ISold It, AuctionDrop, NuMarkets, QuikDrop, and Snappy Auctions are providing convenient locations where sellers can leave their wares and let the vendors handle the rest for a fee.

ISold It, which claims to be EBay's top seller in terms of dollar sales, will photograph the item, set up the auctions, communicate with bidders and the ultimate buyer, ship the merchandise, and pay the sellers by check.

The company has 60 drop-off facilities, which are all franchisees, in 22 states, and plans to expand by 430 more in the near future.

"We are a full-service operation," ISold It founder Elise Wetzel said. "When customers come into our stores, we can go online with them immediately and give them an appraisal. We take the hassle out of it."

Wetzel opened the company's original store in December 2003 in Pasadena, Calif., where the company is still based. The privately financed company works primarily with consumers, but plans to increase its presence with businesses to help with their liquidations.

Unlike ISold It's franchise setup, AuctionDrop uses more of a hub-and-spoke approach. Its consignment service is available in all 50 states through a relationship with United Parcel Service of America Inc. All of UPS's 3,800 stores in the U.S. are drop-off locations for AuctionDrop.

"You can go to a UPS store anywhere and they will pack the item and ship it to us," Andrea Roesch, spokeswoman for AuctionDrop, said.

AuctionDrop has a central processing facility in Fremont, Calif., where it has people who test electronics, as well as researchers, photographers, packers, and shippers.

"The processing facility is built on the idea of being very efficient," Roesch said. "The purpose is to have the highest quality as possible. It's hard to maintain that if you don't centralize it. We can do an enormous amount of volume, and the processing center allows us to be very efficient."

NuMarkets claims to be the pioneer in the EBay consignment selling business. The company started in August 2002, and currently has eight franchisees, mostly in the South, with plans to open four more. The Etowah, Tenn.-based, company launched an aggressive franchise sales program earlier this year and hopes to expand nationwide, spokeswoman Sherry Rogers said.

Under the NuMarkets system, the franchise receives the item, and then photographs, inventories, and warehouses it. A description of each item is written and sent NuMarkets, which reviews it for accuracy and then puts the item on EBay for auction.

The company handles all the order fulfillment, schedules the shipment, generates the shipping document, notifies the buyer of the shipment, keeps track of the item, reports the sales information, collects the payment for the franchise, and pays the franchise.

QuikDrop International, based in Carson City, Nev., got into the EBay drop-off business as an alternative to its web-hosting business Quik Internet, which has shrunk to 40,000 sites today from 112,000 at its peak.

"When we started talking to customers about why they were closing their sites," said Jack Reynolds, co-founder of QuikDrop, "they said they were having better luck selling their products on EBay."

The company opened its first EBay drop-off franchise in August 2003 and has since opened 40 locations in 13 states and four countries.

"Having our legs cut off in the web-hosting business, we had to look for another way to make money," Reynolds said. "We found that a lot of the companies didn't know how to sell on EBay. Ninety-two percent are buyers only, but 8 percent are sellers. We wanted to help the other 92 percent sell things. The whole logic is to provide EBay services very much the way a web developer would create web sites."

Snappy Auctions is another company where people can drop off their merchandise at its stores, but Snappy Auctions is careful about the strategies it uses to sell items.

"Over 90 percent of the stuff we put online actually sells, which is much higher than a lot of the other companies out there," chief executive Debbie Gordon said.

Items put up for sale through Snappy Auctions usually start with a bidding price of 99 cents.

"The lower the demand, the higher the starting bid," Gordon said. "We analyze it in real time. We're also able to analyze past sales on EBay."

The Nashville, Tenn.-based, company opened its first stores in October 2003. Snappy Auctions currently has 12 stores open, and 40 under contract. Gordon expects to have about 150 more by the end of the year.

Unlike its competitors, Snappy Auctions is also focusing on the back end of business-to-business deals.

"Our business-services division does business-service partnerships, liquidations, and estate auctions," Gordon said. "Snappy Auctions is focused on larger relationships and larger volumes on a local and national level. The next wave in this industry is going to be on the business side."

Snappy Auctions also works with estate attorneys to set up other auction alternatives and has some partnerships with charities.

While the EBay drop-off business seems to be expanding, at least one analyst is skeptical that any of these firms will be able to approach anything near the dominance of EBay itself.

"Successful or not, they're really destined to be small businesses," Martin Reynolds, analyst for market researcher Gartner Inc., said. "It's too easy for someone to undercut you, and it becomes hard to be competitive. If you wanted to, you could have your next-door neighbor sell something for you on EBay."

Nevertheless, the growing business of EBay drop-off centers is taking the burden of online auctioneering off the backs of small-time EBay sellers and giving them a convenient way to clear out their garages and make a little money.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A U.S. flag, whose owner said it flew over the Pentagon on 9-11, was for sale online again Wednesday despite questions about its authenticity.

David Nicholson said he got the flag from a construction worker, who told him it was flying from a crane outside the Pentagon when a hijacked jetliner slammed into the building.

Nicholson has kidney cancer and says he's selling the flag to pay his medical bills and provide for his family.

Bidders on the Internet auction site eBay offered as much as $371,300 for the flag earlier this week. But families of those killed in the al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington objected to the sale, and the winning bidder withdrew after lawyers for the construction company questioned whether the flag was ever at the Pentagon.

Nicholson put the flag back up for sale on Tuesday, but noted that Facchina Construction Co. has denied the "certificate of authenticity" that accompanies the banner. The starting price for the flag was posted at $25,000, but no bids were recorded Wednesday afternoon. Nicholson said bidders' identities would not be disclosed this time.

Nicholson says the flag came in a box of construction material he got in 2002 from a man named Pete Elliot, an employee of Facchina Construction Co.. Elliot wrote a letter of authenticity on company letterhead that states the flag "was flying on our crane at the Pentagon on 9-11-01."

But Maryland-based Facchina says it didn't have a crane at the Pentagon that day, and that Elliot was reprimanded for signing the statement.

"Either it was there or it wasn't, and I would like to know the truth," Nicholson said.

Efforts to contact Elliot for his comment on the matter were unsuccessful.

Todd Schimmel, a private investor from Minnesota, said he dropped his $371,300 bid for the flag when he learned that the company disavowed the statement of authenticity Nicholson advertised with the document.

In an e-mail to CNN, the man called the flag a "fake" and declared, "I will have no part in this."

"I was going to buy the flag for an investment," he wrote. "It stands for the strength the United States has, and how no one can take that away." But he said he changed his mind after he received e-mails directing him to a statement from Facchina Construction.

Nicholson said the company put pressure on the employee to deny the flag's authenticity after families of the 9/11 victims complained. He said he and his family have left their home temporarily because they were concerned about staying in the same house with an item potentially worth nearly $400,000.

He told CNN that when he briefly returned to his home last week, he was attacked by someone who beat him nearly unconscious.

Orange County Sheriff C.G. Feldman said his deputies are investigating his claim, but have found no evidence to support it so far.

An American flag that was draped over the damaged side of the building during reconstruction work is now in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

Members of 9/11 Families for America, a group of victims' relatives, say they object to the sale of artifacts from the attacks even if they are genuine. Craig Sincock, whose wife Cheryle died at the Pentagon, said he is furious that his wife's name -- which is part of a display accompanying Nicholson's flag -- is being used "in order to gain money."

"So many of us are just now starting to crawl out from under that grief," Sincock said. "And every time something like this hits, we take another step backwards."

But Nicholson told CNN that families should understand.

"I say that until they are in my shoes, they can't -- they don't know how I feel," he said.

Copyright © 2005, The Associated Press

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

YAKIMA, Wash. -- The right man finally signed Garth Brooks' name on Toby Bradley's guitar.

Last year, Bradley spent $1,200 online for a guitar purportedly signed by the country singer. Bradley, 34, a long-haul trucker and ardent Brooks fan, put the guitar up for auction on eBay in January, hoping to raise $50,000 for Asian tsunami victims.

But Brooks' attorney saw the guitar on eBay and asked Bradley to cancel the auction before anyone bid. Bradley sent the instrument to the lawyer to verify the signature, which turned out to be fake.

Brooks made things right, though, by signing the guitar and sending it back. It arrived at Bradley's Moxee home Wednesday afternoon.

Bradley, on the road and expected to arrive home Saturday, learned the news from his wife.

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"I appreciate that they made it authentic," Bradley said in a telephone interview from California with the Yakima-Herald. "It's a neat thing to have. But I'm still a little disappointed."

Since January, Bradley said he's talked with many people associated with the country star, including his manager, attorney, publicist, assistant, but hasn't spoken directly to Brooks.

"I know we live in different worlds," Bradley said. "But once they found out that I wasn't the one who forged the signature, to me, this shouldn't have been a legal matter for him. Where I come from, you deal man to man, not through a bunch of other people, and that's what I wish he did."

Bradley said he was told Brooks was making a donation of about $2 million to help tsunami victims in the names of Bradley and his wife.

Brooks' publicist Nancy Seltzer said Brooks does not publicly disclose his charitable contributions.

Events of the past two months haven't changed his opinion of the country star, Bradley said.

"I still think he's the greatest entertainer of all time," he said.

San Jose, CA, March 10, 2005 - eBay, the World's Online Marketplace today announced that Beth Axelrod has been named senior vice president of human resources. 

Reporting to eBay COO Maynard Webb, Axelrod will be responsible for all areas of the company's global human resources including recruiting, training, compensation, benefits and the continuing evolution of the company's unique corporate culture.

March 8 2005: The 2005 Cure Kids Great Adventure Race has attracted strong support from key partner Accor, which has entered three teams in the one day corporate multi-sport race, being staged in the Waitakere Ranges on April 8.

The adventure race is a novel fundraiser to enable Cure Kids to carry out further research into children’s life threatening illnesses. The event was held for the first time last year and raised $286,000 for the charity.

“With 35 teams competing this year, representing 20 companies, we expect the tally to go considerably higher,” says Cure Kids Business Development Director Mandy Mee.

Accor has entered teams from Mercure Hotel Auckland, Novotel Ellerslie Auckland and Novotel Tainui Hamilton. Each team will have staff as support crew and each hotel is involved in fundraising activities for Cure Kids as part of the event.

“The support from Accor is quite outstanding,” says Ms Mee. “To enter three teams is a real commitment and a reflection of the on going assistance the company provides for Cure Kids at all levels.”

As part of its involvement as a sponsor of the race, Accor has provided some quality auction items for the Grays on-line auction, which is running in tandem with the event.

The auction which is located on the web is being promoted in association with Cure Kids ambassador and rugby personality Jonah Lomu. The auction will be held from March 9-11.

Accor is offering one of the main auction items – a three night stay at the exclusive Fijian Vomo Island Resort, managed by Sofitel and valued at $7000. The package includes accommodation, airfares and meals.

Other donations include accommodation packages at Accor properties in Melbourne and Brisbane, and a combined package with BMW for the lease of an X5 and luxury Mercure Grand Hotel accommodation at New Zealand hotels.

The Novotel Ellerslie’s award winning executive chef Philip Neverman is being auctioned and the highest bidder will have a private menu developed by him.

“These auction items are very exciting,” says Ms Mee. “To be able to bid for a holiday on one of Fiji’s private luxury islands is fantastic. Accor’s generosity in providing such attractive auction packages will undoubtedly help make the on-line auction a success.”

Accor has been a key partner with Cure Kids since May 2002. The company has donated $350,000 to the charity to date.

“Not only has Accor raised significant funds for Cure Kids but they also provide so much more in the way of free accommodation, venues, and prizes,” says Ms Mee. “They run the very popular PJ parties for sick children at a number of their hotels and last year they held the Cycle to Cure Kids from Wellington to Auckland which was a huge fundraiser.”

Accor’s general manager for New Zealand and Fiji Thomas Van Vliet says they are very proud to support the Cure Kids Great Adventure Race and the on-line auction.

“Every cent raised will go directly to Cure kids so anyone who bids in the auction can be confident they are not only doing something great for themselves but also something great for sick children in New Zealand.”

eBay is calling the phish-friendly problem a “software bug” which can be used to create a genuine eBay link which in turn redirects and takes the user to the phisher’s site - which looks exactly like a legitimate eBay page - where they can steal eBay account information, credit card information, and all sorts of other personal information.

While eBay’s users, and consumers in general, have become more careful about clicking on links which show up uninvited in email, this particular phishing bug is insidious because the link in the phishing email is a genuine eBay link, and the user is never aware that they have gone through the genuine eBay link to the phisher’s look-alike site.

WASHINGTON - An Internet bank is the latest entrant in the brave new world of auction-based initial public offerings.

San Diego-based BofI Holding Inc., holding company for Bank of Internet USA, is expected to sell 2.25 million shares of stock at a range of $9 to $13 a share in coming weeks. But unlike a traditional IPO, in which underwriters set the final share price by privately gauging investor interest, BofI is planning to follow in Google Inc.'s footsteps and run an auction for its stock through investment bank WR Hambrecht & Co.'s auction process.

After Google's closely watched debut last summer, all eyes have been fixed on investment-research company Morningstar Inc., which is expected to do an auction IPO in coming months. But BofI Holding's deal has slipped onto the IPO calendar ahead of Morningstar.

Auction IPOs are touted as a fairer way to distribute shares to a broader segment of the marketplace, and are supposed to generate the maximum amount of capital for issuers while charging lower underwriting fees than traditional IPOs. But the auction market has been slow to take off, with some investors grumbling that Google's process was cumbersome and didn't accomplish broad distribution or maximum capital.

BofI's auction certainly won't be anywhere near as closely watched as Google's or Morningstar's, although all three have strong Internet presences. The federal savings bank, launched in 2000, operates primarily through the Internet with one "bricks and mortar" location in San Diego. It focuses on retail banking and loans, and has 24 employees.

BofI's performance since its inception has been good. It doubled its total assets over the last two years, and grew its total deposits by 76 percent during the same time. Net income rose 18 percent last year.

Most of the money raised by the bank is aimed at adding more capital to its coffers so it can continue to grow its business, including through more lending activities.

But like many retail-focused banks, its main profit driver is net interest income, which could be negatively affected by changing interest rates. And while Internet banking without the added expense of branches seemed like a revolutionary idea a decade ago, now most well-known traditional banks also offer Internet banking - and have more brand recognition among consumers.

And then, of course, there are the risks associated with the auction process itself. Google ended up cutting its price after the auction closed and saw an 18 percent first-day gain over the offer price, a pop that wasn't supposed to happen after an auction. BofI is no Google, and the bank warns prospective investors that, if they are after short-term gains, they shouldn't bid in the auction.

INDIANAPOLIS - A federal grand jury indicted an Indianapolis man on charges he auctioned vintage muscle cars that he did not own on eBay and then had partners rob would-be buyers at gunpoint when they came to pick up the vehicles.

Dewan A. Horne, 24, spent Wednesday night in the Marion County Jail, where he was being held for U.S. marshals. The alleged accomplices were still at large, U.S. Attorney Susan Brooks said in a news release Wednesday.

The indictment alleges that Horne would direct out-of-state buyers to a garage on the east side of Indianapolis, where two masked gunmen would rob them. The robberies occurred in December and January.

In one of the robberies, a father and son from Georgia and South Carolina were forced at gunpoint to lie down while Horne and his partners took more than $9,000 in cash and equipment from their truck before leaving in Horne's car, the indictment said.

Two different buyers left after they became suspicious when Horne tried to take them behind a garage, and another left when the car Horne displayed was different from the one auctioned, the indictment said.

Horne is charged with robbery and conspiracy under the Hobbs Act, which prohibits interference with interstate commerce by threats or violence, and for his partners' alleged use of firearms during the crimes.

He could face prison time and a fine if convicted, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark S. Massa.

The indictment followed a joint investigation by the FBI and Indianapolis police.

ORANGE COUNTY, Va. -- Orange County resident David Nicholson said he previously turned down an offer of $100,000 for a flag pulled from the wreckage of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the Pentagon.

Now, the 44-year-old former auctioneer has an aggressive form of kidney cancer and said he'll sell the flag on eBay to help pay medical bills. The 10-day online auction starts Friday.

The flag arrived in May 2002 at Nicholson's Orange County auction house, tucked among several boxes full of debris from a Pentagon site under construction when the attacks occurred. Nicholson preserved the 5-foot-by-8-foot flag in a specially built wood-and-Plexiglas frame.

Nicholson has health insurance, but he and his wife and children have no steady income and are struggling to pay bills. Nicholson said he plans to start the bidding at $25,000.

Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press.

Local developer Rob Bussell will be writing a check for thousands of dollars. But he saved money and had fun in his first adventure on an eBay Internet auction.

In fast and furious action in the final minutes of the auction this week, the vice president for real estate developer Marina Limited Partnership bought the back page of advertising space on a phone directory to be published for the Geist area this spring.

With just seconds before the end of the 10-day auction ending Tuesday evening, Bussell bid $3,351, beating other bidders by less than 4 seconds as time expired.

"Actually, I look at this as saving money," he said. "We were going to pay $5,000 for another page inside."

Millions of items are bought and sold on eBay. Though the idea of an auction for ad space isn't as quirky as the recent eBay auction of a grilled-cheese sandwich that resembled the Virgin Mary, online sales of ad space in unusual places is catching on.

"We couldn't decide how much to charge, so we figured an auction would be the most fair way to establish the market price," said Tom Britt. He had figured on a couple thousand dollars but hoped for higher bids.

He's a Geist resident with a history in desktop publishing, who produces the monthly newsletters for neighborhoods and subdivisions around the reservoir.

Britt decided to launch a printed version called the Geist Directory with the names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and family information of the estimated 5,000 homeowners in the lake region. It will contain maps, a golf course directory and other features. Residents were asked to fill out a form with as much of their personal information as they care to disclose to their neighbors. "This is a phone book on steroids," he quipped.

Sale of other ad space pays the printing cost of about 5,000 copies of the book. But Britt said a successful auction of the back page could allow printing of more copies for thousands of future Geist homebuyers.

Bussell had never been involved in an online auction before, so he went to eBay trading assistant shop Simple e-Auctions in Castleton for help.

Shop owner John Sebring said "We had Rob and two other bidders on the phones and helped them place their bids. It was a lot of fun, very exciting and in real time."

Indianapolis Star - USA