“After I closed, I looked around at some of the things I had hung onto and thought maybe it was time to get rid of some of these things,” she said.

When the mother of three had success dusting off items that cluttered her home, she introduced eBay to her three children, one of which has since finished and two of which have started college.

“College kids can introduce their parents to eBay and see what happens, although in my house, I introduced it to my kids first,” she said.

Ackerman became a certified eBay education specialist two years ago. The certification allows her to teach classes at the Capital Area District Library, 401 South Capitol Ave. in Lansing and Hannah Community Center, 819 Abbott Road, several times a year, where she shows students how to improve their item listings and successfully sell their stuff on the site.

“The site is a great tool for that one thing people need,” she said. “I’m interested in tuning pianos, for example. There’s no place around here, that I know, where you can find piano mutes, so I can just get them on eBay. There’s just a wealth of stuff out there if you have a specialized interest, which a lot of people do.”

Student sites

Since its debut 12 years ago, eBay has become an online juggernaut. More than 240 million Web users visited the site in August according to comScore, a global Internet information provider.

With eBay’s success, Web developers have launched copycat sites appealing to more specific audiences, including college students.

Ryan Shaltry, a former MSU student created allMSU.com in 1997. The Web site now includes 62,000 registered MSU students.

The Web site includes more than 2,500 classified ads, where students can buy and sell items from furniture, football tickets and cars.

Andrew Neo, a psychology senior, buys and sells two to three items a month on allMSU.com and has bought a car for every year he’s used the Web site. Buying the three cars has been much easier than going through a dealer, he said.

“The advantage of using allMSU is that it’s free and interaction is just among students,” Neo said. “allMSU.com is cheaper and direct between the buyer and the seller.”

The social networking site Facebook.com added a “Marketplace” application in May, which allows its 40 million users to list what they’re selling or are looking to buy from people in their networks, including textbooks, bus passes and iPods.

Ackerman said she could see more local sites similar to eBay having an appeal to online buyers and sellers because of the size of some items people are looking to sell.

“A lot of things are just so big that they’re hard to sell on eBay,” she said. “You can sell a piano, but it’s hard for the buyer because then they have to go and get it.”

Laying down the law online

With eBay.com and other Web sites making it easier for people to sell their stuff, auction sites have also presented an avenue for thieves to make money off of stolen items.

In 2006, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 32,000 complaints of fraud on Internet auction sites, including more than 760 complaints from Michigan consumers.

Nicole Simi, a detective in MSU police’s computer crimes investigation unit, said police can go through eBay’s law enforcement center to gain search warrants of eBay users.

Simi said MSU police officers have conducted investigations in which she and other detectives have used eBay to look for laptops, bikes, digital cameras and other items reported stolen.

“We don’t use it routinely because so many items are listed on the site,” she said. “But, depending on the investigation and the item, we know how to get information from (eBay).”

Despite some users’ abuse of the site, Ackerman said she enjoys using the site for more than just the money.

“For me it’s just a hobby and something I like teaching to other people,” she said. “It’s not a real revenue stream — it’s not putting the kids through college.”