This morning we wrote about Geoff Rosenbloom, the oldest Top Rated eBay PowerSeller in the UK (as far as we know). Geoff is a one off and no one can knock his eBay achievements, but it’s time to look to eBay’s future and that lies with millennials – the buyers and sellers of tomorrow.
That’s what eBay are doing with a pilot program which sees them team up with The University of Nottingham Students’ Union and Nottingham Trent Students’ Union to find smart, enterprising Nottingham students to take part in the first ever in the UK.
Research found that the average UK university student has more than £6,000 worth of sellable possessions and those in Nottingham had a staggering £6,700. Nationally, students said they owned 36 pieces of tech, 61 items of clothing and 35 household items. This means that UK students are sitting on £8.46 billion worth of sellable possessions and yet 65% of those surveyed said they would either bin their unwanted items or give them away.
eBay naturally wanted to do something about this so, to encourage students to sell on eBay, they’re offering a prize of £3,000 cash, a week’s work experience at eBay UK (Including accommodation and travel costs to London) plus an additional £500 to spend on eBay.
The rules are simple, Nottingham students need to , the competition runs from the 29th of February and the winner is the student who makes the most money. The closing date for new listings is the 30th March and items must be sold by the 9th of April to qualify. Motors and property don’t count, but anything else (within eBay rules) does!
Will Weightman, director of consumer selling at eBay told us “The eBay Cup will showcase to Nottingham students how easy it is make some extra cash on selling on eBay” adding that as eBay is home to 200,000 business sellers perhaps the eBay Cup will encourage the future generation of entrepreneurs.
Whilst this is a relatively small pilot open to students at just two Universities, both the Students Unions and UCAS Media are promoting the campaign. It’s long been known that someone that sells even just one item on eBay goes on to be a more prolific buyer than someone that’s never sold an item. Several thousands of students about to get (hopefully) high paid jobs who continue as eBay buyers would be a pretty good result.
A few new millennial entrepreneurs might even be able to give Geoff a run for his money.
