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Pros: Ease of Use of selling, Everything laid out for buyers/sellers
Cons: Annoying password feature
The bottom line: Its the #1 online marketplace Period, due to its ease of use and wide array of products that can be bought and sold
I have to admit I really didnt know much bout Ebay 2 years ago but have since learned.
In laymans terms if you dont know much about Ebay , ebay aka http://www.ebay.com is a website for selling and buying virtually anything you can imagine over the internet from such things as socks, shoes all the way up to $200,000 cars and more. Some of my friends started using this service to sell their various wares around and get some useful cash in their pocket, which was my initial point of interest.

I started playing around with the website and true to any net addiction, next thing I had my very own Ebay account (HURRAH , HURRAH!) although I didnt buy anything off ebay, I was good to go. Fast forward a couple of months ahead, and I start selling stuff on ebay that I have laying around the house and now Im a happy man. From this expericence and continuing buying and selling (in my case selling) theres several things Ebay has going for it over any other online marketplace/auction site on the web.

Benefits
SECURITY
Well obviously any website will have good security if your dealing with real money, but ebays security just seems a little ahead of the others and it nearly requires a password for everything you do (which is both a good thing and bad thing) but in the overall spectrum works in its advantage to give people peace of mind over their personal finincial info such as cc number , etc.

PAGE LAYOUT
Ebay has to have one of the best websites visually in terms of its simplicity and overall design layout. It is very easy for any novice to get around ebay with minimal learning and can be mastered so YES EVEN you can become a Ebayer all your own.

MULTIPLE ways of PAYMENT (Both buying and selling)
Other sites give you only 1-2 options, but ebay gives you many depending on the sellers. You can often have the option of payment by paypal.com, money orders, cash , checks and many other useful terms of payment that give this online marketplace an advantage over the rest of the auction/trading marketplace.

PRODUCTS OFFERED
Some sites offer just a certain genre of items to be sold and bought, but not ebay. Ebay covers nearly anything you can imagine can be bought and sold over the internet (well barring the illegal stuff such as drugs etc) and gives it much flexability as such.

FEEDBACK RATINGS
This is bascially a history of the sellers and buyers feedback. If you wanna perhaps get more ppl to buy from you, be prompt in you dealings and courtous and you will get feedback in which you can use to build up an established history of great ebay business. There are 3 forms of feedback(Positive, Negative, and Neutral) Negative feedback is often given for buyers not paying or sellers not giving item or given bad product. So words of wisdom to futer ebayers, be professional in your ebay dealings and the fruit of your labors will be good feedback ratings and a establish feedback history.

Overall conclusion, In my opinion, this is as the title suggests, the Past, Present and Future of online buying and selling and if you want the best website for buying and or selling your products whatever they may be, you wont go wrong with Ebay.