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AV ebaY a Parable and Song
 

Auction Voice

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ebaY a Parable and Some Songs

ebaY the Parable -
Once upon a time in a valley far away there was a man who made widgets. He sold them from his house and at local gatherings. Others made or traded buggy whips, shoes, etc. The hours were long, the work hard, and the profits uncertain. Then a man started a newspaper and a few subscribed to learn about the news of the area. All barely managed to put food on the table. Then the widget maker placed a tiny ad for his widgets in the newspaper. People wrote and bought widgets. The buggy whip maker placed an ad and people bought. The sellers' products were now available to a wider market than they could have reached with their old methods in a hundred lifetimes. Newspaper and advertised product sales both soared. The craftsmen and traders made a comfortable living and the newspaper owner became very, very rich. There was happiness in the valley. The newspaper owner became a holding company magnate and used some of his profits to buy a store in the city. It was an old store with a famous name and an excellent reputation, but it had fallen on hard times and competition from the many small sellers who advertised in the newspaper had pushed it to the edge. The magnate staffed the store with some of his apprentice printers. Of course, he transferred the less expert printers to the new store knowing that printing was so much higher an art than selling that even a second rate printer would make an excellent merchant. The newly minted shopkeepers, called merchandise transfer facilitators, were very certain of their superiority. The newspaper started running full-page color ads for the magnate's store and for the stores, taverns, and carriage factories of his newly acquired rich friends. The advertising rates were for the big merchants were not public knowledge, but the ad rates for the small sellers skyrocketed. Events at the large companies were given front-page coverage in the news section. A magazine section was added and ran features on the products to be found at the big stores. Notices about these features were placed among the small sellers' ads for similar goods. Business dropped off for the small sellers, and they could no longer afford to advertise. Newspaper subscriptions started to fall off. Many buyers were not interested in the goods offered by the larger merchants (things that they could have bought, had they wanted them, from the flyers that clogged their mailboxes and which the newspaper now very much resembled). They found that the second rate printers made third-rate shopkeepers, and they wanted the personal service that they had come to expect from the original sellers. Then one day the widget maker heard about a small newspaper with advertising rates that he could afford....
Contibuted by -Thomas S. Mullins
www.TomMullins.com
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To celebrate ebaY joining forces with Burger King -
Burger Bay Jingle - hold the pickles hold the lettuce, carping users don't upset us, all new changes serve to let us, have it our way - contributed by theomatic

ebaY Hillbilly- Come 'n listen to my story 'bout a man named Pierre A poor dot.commer, barely kept his family fed And then one day, he was playin with his pez And he thought what the heck, I can sell these on the web .... World Wide Web that is, WWW, dot.com paradise. Well, the first thing you know, old Pierre's a billionaire Kin folk said, Pierre, move away from there Said, Californy ain't the place you oughta be So he loaded up the plane and he moved to gay Paree ....... France, that is, swimmin' pools, but no movie stars. Well, now it's time to say goodbye to Pierre and all his kin They would like to thank you folks for kindly droppin' in You're all invited back again to this locality To have a heapin' helpin' of their c-o-m-m-u-n-i-t-y ....... Billionarity, that is, set a spell, pay us some more fees. Y'all come back now, hear?
Contributed by red_deer