More than 68,000 people make a living by selling on auction site eBay, according to research by ACNielsen that also shows the UK leads Europe in the number of eBay entrepreneurs.

The survey states that over 68,000 people in the UK use the eBay community to generate at least one-quarter of their total earnings. When compared to the total number of “e-traders” throughout the European Union, roughly 170,000, this figure accounts for around 40 per cent of people who rely on eBay sales as their primary or secondary source of income. Germany ranks second with around 64,000 and France way back in third with only 15,000.

‘The survey reveals businesses in the eBay community are growing,’ commented EBay President and CEO Meg Whitman, adding that the ‘thriving marketplace of buyers and sellers actively encourages and facilitates SME entrepreneurship’.

‘EBay gives our large community of SMEs access to a global market which allows them to grow their businesses beyond what many of them thought possible,’ said Philipp Justus, senior vice president and general manager of eBay Europe.

These findings seem to indicate eBay’s positive impact on the SME workforce with 29 per cent of these businesses each employing an average of 9.4 employees and stating that they will hire more staff in the next two years.