A good eBay transaction usually comes with an even better story. Andrew Goodrich, who sells old vinyl records on the site, likes to tell about how he found "Funky DJ.," a single by a group called Fried Chicken, on a 7-inch record at Buddy Stewart's Rock Shop up on North Acadian.

That was years ago.

Goodrich plunked down two quarters to pay for the record, a handful of which were produced by Stone Records in Baton Rouge in 1976.

A little over a month ago, Goodrich sold it on eBay "to a guy in Japan," user name "dj blendar (sic)," for $199.

In Zachary, Vernon Kirby sells antiques on eBay and has a couch in his office he bought on the online auction site for $720 from a lady who didn't have room for it. He's now getting ready to re-list it on eBay in the neighborhood of $8,000.

Turns out the sofa was carved by furniture designer John Jelliff, whose work is coveted by collectors.

Score.

Talk to eBay sellers long enough and their voices eventually drop to a whisper as they tell you about the time--or times--they hit pay dirt on the online auction site.

EBay has made it easy for ordinary Joes--or Jolenes--to start their own online retail businesses.

Of all the Internet companies to rise during late '90s, San Jose-based eBay has emerged the darling.

Last quarter, eBay's revenues went up by 91 percent from a year ago, to $509 million. Last year, revenues totaled $1.21 billion.

Much of that income is generated by fees the site charges to those who want to unload anything from cars to carpets on the site.

"It's by and far the most dominant online retailer," says Bruce Weinberg, associate professor of marketing and e-commerce at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass.

"In the first quarter of 2003, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that $11.9 billion worth of goods were sold online. In the first quarter of 2003, the total dollar amount spent on eBay was $5 billion."

EBay charges sellers a few dollars for each transaction. The rest of the sale goes straight into the seller's pocket, which might be the reason eBay has gotten huge while its Silicon Valley neighbors have struggled.

Locals online

Around Baton Rouge, there are plenty who have built or grown their businesses through eBay.

Kirby was laid off from his job as a software sales manager late last year and took the opportunity to start selling antique furniture on eBay. He's sold around 50 pieces at an average price of $1,000 each since January.

Goodrich was painting houses for a living until he started selling old records on eBay in March. To date, he's sold about 500 records at an average of $30 a pop.

At the nonprofit Corporate Recycling Council, which collects old computers and electronic equipment from businesses and donates them to schools, executive director Amy Erwin has made eBay a means of turning leftover computer equipment into a source of revenue, selling 80-100 items a day for an average price of $22.

Business Report caught up with each one of them to hear their stories and find out what it takes to build a small business around the wonderful world of eBay.

Old meets new

As a software account executive for Baton Rouge International Inc. (BRI), Vernon Kirby harbored dreams of working for himself.

His bosses at BRI wanted him to work in Atlanta or Florida, but Kirby, a lifelong resident of Zachary, didn't want to move.

"There's not a whole lot of software business in Baton Rouge," he says. "Finally, they asked me to train my replacement."

Last September, Kirby took his nest egg and invested it in antique furniture to sell on eBay.

"It started out as an experiment," he says.

While Kirby won't say exactly how much he spent to build up an inventory of antiques to sell on eBay, he advises anyone looking to get into selling antiques online to invest about $20,000 to $30,000.

"I started out with quite a bit more than that," he says.

Dressed in a bright yellow Hawaiian shirt, Kirby leans back in a chair in his home office in Zachary. Sunlight strikes the pond out front, then hits the pine wood floors of Kirby's comfortable home.

Kirby's setup is fairly simple--right now, he doesn't even have high-speed Internet access. He works off of equipment that he purchased for home use before he launched his business.

Low overhead is one aspect that often makes it possible for people to experiment with eBay.

Kirby's biggest challenge is where to keep the millions of dollars worth of antiques--plucked from local auctions and from eBay itself--he plans to sell.

"I'm busting out at the seams," he says.

Kirby has a 2,400-square-foot warehouse on his property. Carved tables, old desks and bedroom sets are crowded into it as if it's a room at Charles Foster Kane's Xanadu.

What won't fit in the warehouse ends up in Kirby's house, where inventory becomes decor until it finds a home.

"One outbuilding is allowable under current (Zachary zoning) restrictions," he says.

When his neighbor down the road put his house up for sale, Kirby jumped on it.

Kirby plans to finance the cost of the second property by leasing storage space there to AC Delivers Inc., a Maine shipping company he uses regularly to deliver antiques to customers around the country.

AC Delivers will use the space as a regional pickup point and pay Kirby $850 a month, enough to pay the mortgage note on it.

Selling to the world

Kirby has honed his niche. That's key to making money on eBay, he says.

Kirby focuses on American antiques, for the most part. He's partial to Egyptian Revival antiques, crafted in the '20s, following the buzz around Tutankhamen's unsealed tomb. The "style is recognizable by the Egyptian heads carved on each piece.

"I sell what I like," he says. "If I don't like it, I don't buy it."

If you sell what you love, Kirby says, it's easier to write descriptions that promote the piece.

Research helps, too. Kirby has wormed his way through plenty of books about American antiques.

Kirby buys some of his antiques locally but says he's had more luck buying things off of eBay and then reselling them. People often clean house and sell antiques cheap.

"They inherited it," he says. "They don't want it. It's in the way or they're tired of paying storage for it."

Sometimes Kirby unearths broken treasures. He loves that because his hobby just happens to be furniture restoration.

He can turn a hefty profit by adding a leg to a busted chair, for instance.

Kirby says eBay is the best way to get into the antiques retail business.

The shops in Denham Springs where vendors rent booths charge $10 to $12 a square foot, plus 15 percent of vendor profits, he says. And the customers? You only get whoever comes through the door.

On eBay, he says, "I have a global customer base. I've shipped things to Tokyo. I've shipped things to Hong Kong. I've shipped things to Russia."

Buyers usually pay shipping--a bit costly with fine furniture--in Kirby's auctions. Moving a sofa to California, for instance, costs around $350.

Kirby tries to move inventory within two or three months. He's found that if an object has a great story to go along with it, it will sell better. He recently picked up a bundle of furniture that once belonged to a sea captain in New Orleans.

Kirby says he's working a lot more hours than he did in the corporate world, and it will be next year before he shows a profit. But the feeling of running his own business makes it worthwhile. EBay made it all possible.

"It's a wonderful platform for sales," he says. "It's the best."

Trash to treasure

Amy Erwin winds through a sea of pale plastic in an old warehouse built from slave-made bricks adjacent to Argosy Casino downtown.

Computer monitors tower overhead. Boxes of telephones and mice--the electronic kind--have been shoved aside to make a path. There's more coming.

The government is already clamping down on what kinds of computer equipment companies can put in landfills.

In 2004, Erwin says, the Environmental Protection Agency will start penalizing companies that don't trash their electronic goods responsibly, and many companies will be scrambling for a place to send their old equipment.

"Monitors are the big monkeys," says Erwin, executive director of the Corporate Recycling Council (CACRC), because they contain mercury, lead and other elements that pollute ground water.

In 1995, CACRC was formed to siphon digital castoffs and send them to schools and prisons. After Erwin receives the donated computers, she wipes out the data or, if the donor prefers, destroys the hard drive.

Erwin sends most of what she gets from companies to public schools around the state. Even broken computers can be sent to classes where students learn how to fix motherboards and hard drives.

For every bit of equipment that the schools are happy to get, though, there are several they can't use.

Old Motorola phones, for instance. Or mammoth projectors that would make the kids laugh. Dot matrix printers are more trouble than most schools want to fool with.