Forget bricks and mortar - for some, it's just a clicks-to-riches story. In an increasingly connected marketplace, more and more of today's entrepreneurs are giving the traditional rags-to-riches tale a technological makeover.

Enabled by eBay, the online auction site that has become a global trading platform where just about anyone can buy or sell just about anything, more and more Canadians are turning to cyberspace as their way out of the daily rat race.

Figures from August 2005 show that eBay sites had a 47-per-cent reach in Canada, based on comScore Media Metrix data - a source of Internet audience measurement for advertising agencies, publishers, marketers and financial analysts. Further, officials at eBay Canada, a wholly owned subsidiary of San Jose, Calif.-based eBay Inc., say that one out of two Canadians who were online in August 2005 visited eBay.

"There are now 33 eBay sites around the world," says Alexandra Brown, director of communications for eBay Canada. "It's the front door, the portal to the global marketplace. If you're a Canadian and you want to sell or buy on eBay, you register on eBay Canada and then you can sell your goods all over the world."

Larry MacDougal, Business Edge
Suzanne Ebelher says the average Canadian has $1,500 worth of saleable goods at home.

While eBay Inc. doesn't release business numbers by country, it did make information public this past summer showing that the number of individuals earning a full- or part-time living by selling on eBay jumped from 430,000 to 724,000, according to American survey data from data-tracking firm AC Nielsen. Additional survey findings include:

* 1.5 million individuals say that they supplement their income by selling on eBay;

* 58 per cent of people surveyed say that they've dreamed of starting their own business and becoming their own boss;

* 66 per cent of respondents feel that starting a business would increase their income.

Nearly 750,000 people rely on eBay sales for their income.

In Canada, eBay entrepreneurs are taking some varied approaches in the clicks to riches saga.

Imagine This Sold, based in Woodbridge, just outside Toronto, bills itself as an eBay drop-off store. The new chain, which hit the ground with four outlets earlier this year and has major expansion plans in the works, handles eBay auctions and logistics for customers from beginning to end. It does this for a sliding-scale commission rate that averages about 25 per cent and is capped at 32 per cent.

"It's the first Canadian franchise of its kind," says Suzanne Ebelher, area developer for Western Canada for Imagine This Sold. "Our goal is to open 60 to 80 in Western Canada over the next five years. We're looking at Vancouver, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina and Winnipeg initially."

The stores provides a one-stop service to appraise, write ad copy, professionally photograph, post (on eBay), ship and arrange payment for quality pre-owned goods, meaning that all the seller has to do is bring the material in and collect the money once the material is sold. In other words, says Ebelher, a seller does not have to worry about putting time and effort into the sale as Imagine This Sold handles it all.

Ebelher notes: "The average Canadian is sitting on $1,500 of stuff sitting in their house that they can sell on eBay."

But Imagine This Sold, with stores in Barrie, Calgary, Dartmouth and Toronto, is not just geared to walk-in traffic. Businesses are also a growing portion of Imagine This Sold's client base. Ebelher says that in Calgary, retailers represent about 20 per cent of the material they post on eBay.

"They're all quite excited. Most of them are local entrepreneurs that have started their own retail outlets or have manufactured products themselves and they're looking for an additional marketplace," says Ebelher. "They're using us as their distributor."

Imagine This Sold was created after its founder, Peter Wohl, tried to sell some stuff on eBay and found out that there were a lot of complexities that had to be dealt with, says Patrick Batty, the company's vice-president of franchising and retail services. "He (Wohl) felt there was a viable service that could be offered and wanted to market that service, and no one was doing that in Canada," says Batty, who adds that they will also be expanding into the United States with possibly as many as 50 stores in two years.

Meanwhile, Edmonton's Larry Yakiwczukk has taken the more established route, expanding a small home-based operation into a business that now employs two full-time staff members.

"Right now I'm pulling a full-time living on it even though I'm working on it part time," says Yakiwczukk, the man behind Buckaru Auctions.

"It's pretty much a no-brainer. Anybody could do this," he says. "I started off on the kitchen table with a laptop and a few things in the garage, and it expanded."

That expansion includes two Edmonton warehouses where he has everything from silk flowers to office equipment.

"Without eBay I wouldn't be doing any online sales at all. I'd just be concentrating on real estate or stocks. The nice thing about it is you can do as well as you want to do. If you work at it as a hobby it will pay you like a hobby. If you work at it as a business it will pay as a business," says Yakiwczukk.

To get an idea of the money that can be made, Yakiwczukk points to the following examples.

"I routinely purchase items for pennies on the dollar. I recently purchased a page-turning device that is used by the disabled. I bought this item at auction for under $10; it recently sold for over $400 US. Also in the past I have bought old stock vacuum tubes for $50 for a case of 50. These tubes then sold for an average of $55 US each. Granted a 40- or 50-1 profit margin is not the norm, but it does happen quite frequently. I routinely get profit margins of 10-1 and would estimate that my norm is about 3-1 for average-priced items."

The secret to his eBay success, adds Yakiwczukk, is to realize that being on eBay is not being in a sales business.

"It is a shipping business. Sellers must be very accurate in determining their shipping costs. A small error on the shipping end of the business can easily wipe out all your profit from the sale of an item. That is why I know my exact shipping costs even before we list an item for sale."

(Laura Severs can be reached at laura@businessedge.ca)