eBay has long been seen as the ideal way to start your own business.  The auction site offers a variety of different ways to earn money.  Some sellers just sell part-time, while for others selling is a full-time business.  And some people sell off their own stuff, while others may hunt for things to resell or even list other people’s items on commission.  eBay stores may be small and run from a home office, or large enough to justify renting out retail or office space, such as with an eBay drop off store.

Now, however, it seems eBay may be on a downturn.  The company has come under fire a lot lately for the changes they’ve made.  Both sellers and buyers tend to feel they are not being protected very well under the eBay system.  To make matters worse, eBay recently announced that they will be transitioning everyone to online-only payments — meaning buyers will no longer be allowed to send checks, and sellers will no longer be allowed to accept them.

A lot of businesses, both on and offline, have stopped accepting checks, so this might not seem so bad if it weren’t for the fact that eBay happens to own the primary (almost the only) way of paying online: PayPal.  eBay has essentially made sure that they get to claim even more fees — i.e. the fees charged to sellers for receiving payments via PayPal.  So now eBay gets fees when a seller lists an item, fees when they sell it, and fees when they get paid for it!

All of these fees are quickly eating into the sellers’ slim profit margins.  As the article points out, eBay has ventured pretty far from what they used to be — an auction site populated by small sellers.  And at the rate they’re going, pretty soon eBay will no longer offer any reasonable self-employment opportunities at all!

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After reading through several web hosting reviews, you might be wondering what the story is behind linux hosting. That’s because this is something that is very popular right now. Many web host services are working hard to offer this kind of hosting to people who are fans of the linux operating system. If you’re not yet familiar with it, you might want to consider making the switch before you sign up with a new web host.

Here are some of the benefits of linux hosting as compared to windows hosting:

• Affordability. Although there are some inexpensive windows hosting options, linux is an open-source system which is designed to be affordable to everyone.
• Easier to use. For people who aren’t familiar with the technology implemented by their web host, the linux hosting system can be an easy way to start understanding what’s going on. The graphical interface that’s designed for this kind of hosting is user-friendly.
• Easy to upgrade. Windows is notoriously annoying to upgrade, requiring that systems be shut down and time be taken off other work to update the system. That’s not the case with linux hosting.

There are certainly good reasons to use windows hosting, especially if you’re already using a significant number of Microsoft products and software. But if you’re not committed to Microsoft, now might be a good time to consider a switch.

Technorati Tags: web hosting reviews, linux hosting, windows hosting