UTeM A6 3B

Half.com was such a popular merchant site that it couldn’t remain independent—it was purchased by eBay in 2000 with the intention of integrating it into eBay and then closing it down. However, it’s still so popular that eBay finally cancelled the October 2004 closing, and announced that it would keep it open indefinitely. eBay stated that Half.com was continuing to grow more than they expected, and that Half.com members provide eBay with almost half of its books, music, video, and games listings.

There’s a certain amount of Half.com/eBay integration. When you search at Half.com, you’ll see an On eBay tab, which shows you matching listings on eBay. Half.com isn’t promoted in the same way on eBay, though. (Perhaps this will change now that eBay has decided not to close Half.com.)



Half.com allows merchants and individuals to sign up and list products very quickly, and unlike eBay, doesn’t charge a listing fee; rather, they charge a fee based on the sales price, declining with sales volume.

However, here’s one real problem with Half.com: there’s no simple way to upload large numbers of products to the Half.com inventory. Once you’re established as a reliable merchant, you can increase the quantity for each product, but what you can’t do is list large numbers of different products quickly; each has to be typed in one by one!