LESSON I
How to Sell Yourself
The first thing any career counselor or self-help guru will tell you is that the key to success in life is learning how to sell yourself. Some of the authors of the most noteworthy and notorious eBay auctions took that advice literally. From the man who put his own kidney up for sale to the woman who auctioned off her virginity, one of the most established strategies for attracting significant media attention to an auction is to try to sell something you were born with.
The auctions presented in this section highlight some of the more creative ways people have sought to market pieces of themselves. Is there a vital organ you are not using that someone else might find essential? Have you been looking for the opportunity to part with your precious virginity? Are you willing to part with your soul, or would you prefer simply to walk around town with an advertisement plastered to your forehead? Get creative! The auctions described on the following pages are meant to inspire, and you need not be limited by what has already been done.
A word of caution, though: eBay often frowns upon these types of sales. The company has established a set of regulations that prohibit selling many of your most valuable assets. You should also check the laws that are applicable to your particular situation, as several of the auctions depicted in this section are not only against eBay policy, but also illegal.
Still, even if your auction is against formal eBay policy, take heart. It may generate sufficient publicity so that should eBay take down your listing, you will be able to continue the auction outside of eBay's domain, as a couple of more ambitious sellers discussed in this lesson did. Remember, millions of items are listed for sale on eBay every week. If you hope to have success in this competitive arena, you need to be willing to do what the other guy is not.
YOUR AD GOES HERE: PART IAdvertisers are always looking for new and innovative places to market their products. While television, radio, and print ads are the most common, you can find advertisements almost anywhere you look. From the subway to the elevator to the golf course, companies seek out previously untapped venues where they can place an ad that will garner as much attention as possible. In early 2005, eBay helped one entrepreneurial young man open a previously untapped market: the human forehead.
Twenty-year-old college student Andrew Fischer from Omaha, Nebraska, offered the highest bidder in eBay auction number 5950507719 the opportunity to have their nonpermanent logo or brand name tattooed to his forehead for thirty days. According to the auction's description, this "Average Joe" would display the winning bidder's advertisement in all types of venues that the "Average Joe" frequented in his hometown of 600,000. Fischer's offer turned up in news stories published
far from his native Omaha. The auction received more than 300,000 hits and recorded a final sale price of $30,000.
In a seemingly unfortunate occurrence, the winning bidder never contacted the seller and Fischer was forced to resubmit the auction with controls put in place to limit who could bid. Attention the second time around was just as intense and, by the time the auction ended, 45 bids had pushed the final sale price to $37,375. The winner was Christian de Rivel, CEO of SnoreStop, an oral spray designed to help alleviate snoring.
De Rivel's money seems to have been well spent. The story was picked up by media outlets all over the world, and, according to de Rivel, sales through his Web site went up fivefold in the days after the auction ended. Numerous imitators cropped up, including both a man and a woman who offered to permanently tattoo the winning bidder's brand onto their foreheads. Unfortunately for these would-be advertisers, none enjoyed the same monetary success as Fischer.
YOUR AD GOES HERE: PART IIAmber Rainey was in the third trimester of her pregnancy when Andrew Fischer was receiving international news coverage for auctioning off his forehead. After seeing the astronomical price the auction commanded, she looked at her growing belly and realized she had far more advertising space there than Andrew Fischer had on his forehead. Thus auction 3869933040 was conceived.
Titled "Advertising Space Available ON MY PREGNANT BELLY!" Rainey's auction went live on January 25, 2005. According to the description of the auction, the seller's baby was due March 21, and, as she put it, "People can't help but look at a pregnant woman's bump." The mother-to-be said she would not advertise anything she deemed to be offensive or put anything on her belly that would harm her or her unborn child. But, other than that, she would allow potential buyers the artistic freedom to create the advertisement of their choosing.
The auction, ending on February 5 after a one-week stint on eBay, attracted national news coverage, more than 50,000 visits, 97 bids, and a final sale price of $4,050. The winning bidder was GoldenPalace.com, an online casino notorious for its outlandish eBay buys. The casino immediately saw its advertising dollars pay huge dividends when Rainey scored an appearance on NBC's
Today show. She has also been covered on the national CBS
Evening News as well as appeared on numerous local television stations and in print in newspapers, magazines, and on Internet sites around the world. Considering that an advertisement on either CBS's
Evening News or the
Today show would cost many times what GoldenPalace.com paid for space on Amber's belly, the arrangement seems to have paid off nicely.
THE HUMAN KIDNEY: WHO NEEDS TWO?Posted by a seller from Sunrise, Florida, the ad read simply:
"Fully functional kidney for sale. You can choose either kidney. Buyer pays all transplant and medical costs. Of course only one for sale, as I need the other one to live. Serious bids only."
What ensued was a flood of attention and debate from around the world.
The auction began with an opening bid of $25,000. By the time eBay intervened and pulled the auction, the asking price had reached $5.7 million. Steve Westley, eBay's vice president of marketing at the time, stated, "EBay has zero tolerance for illegal items on this site. We have a very clear policy against this."
Indeed, selling one's kidney or, for that matter, any body part is against federal law in the United States and punishable by up to five years in prison and/or a $50,000 fine. Since 1984, when the U.S. Congress passed the National Organ Transplant Act, organ donation has been set up as a gift program.
On September 2, 1999, immediately following the canceling of the proffered item by eBay, a second seller, this one from Bel Air, Maryland, added fuel to the fire by trying to circumvent federal law when he offered his own kidney for sale to benefit a charity, stating, "Will donate perfect healthy kidney for a reciprocal donation of 2.5 million dollars to a charity of my choice." This sale was summarily shut down by eBay.
While there is no way to know whether these sale or purchase offers were authentic, the idea of putting body parts up for sale generated a significant amount of ethical debate by academics, news organizations, and the general public. In the years since these two kidneys first attracted the media's spotlight, eBay has also stopped the auctions of livers, an entire cadaver, sperm, and human eggs. Selling sperm or eggs is not illegal, but it is against written eBay policy, making it unlikely that children will be born because of an eBay purchase anytime soon.
ARE YOU DAMNED ANYWAY?With the advent of eBay, the need to meet face-to-face with the devil in order to sell your soul has become a thing of the past. Over the years, several individuals have made high-profile attempts to sell their--or someone else's--soul on eBay. As early as 1999, news articles began making reference to souls for sale on eBay, but it was not until one attracted a $400 bid in 2001 that the media started paying significant attention to the implications of such arrangements.
In the 2001 case, the seller was a twenty-year-old Washington University student and the auction proceeded without coming to the attention of the people at eBay who regularly pull such sales. In the final hour of the auction, a buyer from Iowa stepped forward with the winning bid.
Unfortunately, the seller was never able to collect on the debt owed him, and when his sale was finally brought to the company's attention, he was suspended from doing business on eBay.
Since at least 2000 the company has had a standard response to such offers: "If the soul does not exist, eBay could not allow the auctioning of a soul, because there would be nothing to sell. However, if the soul does exist, then, in accordance with eBay's policy on human parts and remains, we would not allow the auctioning of human souls."
As one seller pointed out in 2003, however, this policy seems to discriminate based on religious beliefs. While the debate about what constitutes a human soul and who, if anyone, should be allowed to sell one may continue in theological courses everywhere, eBay at least does not seem likely to change its position. Among the auctions it has pulled were attempted sales of the soul of George W. Bush and that of a goldfish.
IF MOM AND DAD DON'T GET IT RIGHT THERE ARE OTHER OPTIONSMost people go by the name they were given at birth. Sometimes last names change as the result of marriage, and occasionally a nickname will attach itself to a person, but, for the most part, like it or not, people stick with the name they were given. Except for one enterprising woman from Knoxville, Tennessee. Item number 5568750040 went up for sale on March 25, 2005, offering the winner the right to legally change thirty-three-year-old Terri Ilagan's name for life.
The seller assu...
