eBay Tips and Tricks for Buying and Selling

eBay Buying Tips and Tricks

As an experienced buyer and seller on ebay, I will now provide proven methods that will help ebay newcomers find bargains and sell their items at decent prices.

BUYING

Bidding Tips

1. It’s always best to wait until auctions end to avoid a bidding war against newbies. A bidding war is where you place your maximum bid and then an angry newbie, or sometimes an ebay regular, will automatically bid against you. In situations where there would only be two of you interested in the particular item you would be “shooting yourself in the foot” by placing your bid too early.

2. Save your maximum bid until the last 5 – 10 seconds (but make sure you are logged in or you will miss the opportunity)

3. It is best to add an odd number to your maximum bid, for example if your maximum bid for an item was £25 but you were second to place this bid then you would lose. However if you bid £25.18 you would win by the 0.18 extra. This type of bidding is becoming more popular now on ebay but will still give you an advantage in a lot of auctions.

UPDATE: The best time to grab a bargain is when there is a popular TV Show being broadcast. Soaps viewers can mass up to tens of millions and while they are all enjoying that you could potentially grab a bargain with less competition.

Buy It Now Tips

Newbies are probably not aware on how great the navigational system of ebay is. You can find the cheapest possible buy it now price for your exact item just by selecting buy it now in the menu on the left, then cheapest price first in the menu at the top. Look through the cheapest ones for any that allow a best offer, with those type of buy it now auctions you can save a little extra by getting an offer price accepted.
Another great navigational feature is for when you are searching for heavy items that cannot be posted there is an option in the left menu to enter your post code and view items within a certain radius.

Important Update: Buying beware! Always pay by Paypal if possible as you will have a better chance of getting your money back if something goes wrong. I fell victim to an Ideal Engines Scam. I contacted them over the phone with a query. They assured me everything was legitimate and asked me to pay via bank transfer (which I foolishly did). By the end of the incident I had lost well over a thousand pounds. So I repeat, pay with Paypal if possible.

eBay Selling Tips and Tricks

SELLING

I am learning more and more about Internet marketing and have experience on selling items on ebay. Here follow my tips on how I get a decent price for my items.

First stage will be to check existing auctions for the same item. Pay close attention to the auctions that are doing well and the ones that are not then replicate what you believe are the good angles of sale. Such as the keyword – For example an auction for a “ps3 console” will not be doing as well as one for a “playstation 3 console”. (Update, keywords such as formentioned no longer make much difference and your item will show up for both keywords.)

Add a photo or photos of the actual item rather than a stock photo, it makes the auction more real and trustworthy. Some sellers also include a card with their ebay username next to the item in the photo.

Maintain a great feedback rating – More negatives, fewer bids – keep your customers happy!

Try and avoid letting your auction end on a Saturday because of the postage delay. People generally want their items quickly and if it’s a Saturday end date then postage will most likely be on the Monday and the very earliest they could receive their item would be Tuesday. That’s a wait of three full days and a possible forfeit of a 5 star rating for dispatch time.

If you have an expensive item and other auctions are selling at a price you would be happy with. Then don’t be afraid to start your auction at 0.99p. This is good for 2 reasons. 1. It will generate more interest by gathering extra bids at the lower prices. 2. You will pay a little less in listings fees and will still get the sale price you want.

Update: If using an auction then ensure it does not end during the broadcast of a popular TV show or sporting event as there will be fewer potential buyers!

Important Update: Always ship to the Paypal registered address and where possible via tracked mail.

That’s all for now folks. I MAY update this post on occasion and I may not but feel free to comment!

More tips on other subjects.