eBay title for memory card seller

Jamie Murray said feedback was an important element of the site

A trader who has developed a multimillion-pound business has been named the first eBay seller of the year.

Jamie Murray, 28, from St Athan, Vale of Glamorgan, beat 20m other "eBayers" to the auction site's title.

His trading of memory cards and electronic accessories gained the highest number of the site's satisfied customers over the past year.

Since 2004, he has had 125,050 feedback ratings from buyers.

Mr Murray has several thousand items for sale at one time.

He said: "It's fantastic - a bit of a shock really."

His company's turnover up to 2006 reached £2.6m, and he said the majority of that was probably through eBay.

It's very rare that you can go onto a website or walk into a shop and tell immediately how good that shop is Jamie Murray

"It started in October 2004. I sold my PS2 on eBay and I didn't actually send my memory card off with it," he said.

"I forgot so I had to sell that separately.

"It was only a tiny item, yet I managed to get £12 or £13 and it was only 50p to post.

"Then I decided leading up to Christmas it might be a good idea to buy the PS2 games console because it was going to be pretty big that year.

"So I bought second hand ones, split them down with the aim of the console covering the costs of the whole package and then the accessories that came with it would be my profit."

No real risk

He said eBay placed a lot of emphasis on feedback.

"It's a huge part, I think, of why it's so successful. It's very rare that you can go onto a website or walk into a shop and tell immediately how good that shop is."

Mr Murray said a percentage of people did not pay for the items they bought.

"But from the seller's point of view you just don't ship the item to them if they don't pay, so there's no real risk," he said.

Mr Murray also said the current round of Royal Mail strikes had had little impact on his business.

"A lot of people are aware [of the strikes] and don't expect their parcel within the next day or two. It really hasn't been a major problem.

"We were expecting it to impact our feedback on eBay but that really doesn't seem to have happened."