San Diegan Craig Zimmer is an e-Bay enthusiast. And why shouldn’t he be? With a small office and warehouse space in Sorrento Valley, and a staff of just five, his electronics resale business is budgeted to do $6 million in sales this year.

MobilePC.com will ship as many as 1,000 products monthly to customers who find Zimmer’s assortment of used laptops, PDAs, mobile phones and accessories on either his corporate Web site or that vast online marketplace known as e-Bay. Since launching his company in 2001, Zimmer has picked up a few tricks for driving e-Bay traffic to his products. Smart merchandising is key: some consumers prefer to pay a fixed, no-haggle price, while others like the thrill of competition.

“Say I have a $1,500 laptop. I put it up on e-Bay at a penny, and over a three-day period the bid price is up to market value,” says Zimmer. “There’s a certain aspect of gaming. Some people enjoy the bidding process. It’s also a great kind of customer acquisition tool.”

Zimmer also is a fan of e-Bay’s keyword promotional tool, which steers word-searching consumers to his products with pay-per-click banner advertising.

Zimmer will share his insider insights at e-Bay’s annual users conference, eBay Live! 2005, to be held June 23 through June 25 in e-Bay Inc.’s hometown of San Jose. Zimmer, along with e-Bay’s director of seller development Todd Lutwak, will give two to three lectures on advanced selling strategies. Past lectures of this kind have drawn as many as 3,000 people, says Zimmer.

E-Bay spokeswoman Lauren Allen describes eBay Live! as a sort of “e-Bay 101,” where buyers and sellers from all over the globe can network and learn how to get the most out of the Internet-based community. The conference is expected to be particularly remarkable because e-Bay celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, she says.

Also attending this year’s e-Bay Live! are San Diegans Kathyleen Pham and Craig Beveridge, the duo behind e-baygenx, a surf apparel vendor. The business debuted last November, and achieved what e-Bay calls “PowerSeller status” by selling more than 100 items within 90 days. The e-Bay Live! first-timers will attend the various classes offered at the three-day event, says Allen.

The education offered at e-Bay Live! is invaluable in the ultra-competitive e-Bay business environment, Zimmer says. Negative consumer feedback posted on the site – whether it’s about a late shipment or a product that didn’t quite meet the seller’s claim — can result in a business’ speedy demise. “E-Bay is very Darwinist,” Zimmer says. “Only the strongest survive.”

— Jennifer McEntee