eBay is known to a lot of people as a lesser version of Amazon. Although Amazon may be a bigger business. eBay is an absolute gold mine if you know how to traverse it properly. The main difference in the buying experience with Amazon and eBay is eBay offer auctions and Amazon groups all similar products into one listing. On eBay, if there is two or more identical products, each product will have its own page and content. The content on these various pages will give you insight as to how involved the seller is. It easy to tell if the seller is running a business or if they’re just trying to get rid of things in their home. A seasoned ebay seller usually has product pages that have some type of uniformity to them coupled with some branding. Someone who is selling products from their home usually are only selling a couple of things at a time and there is little to no continuity between their listings. The key to getting the most out of eBay is using their search feature. I will discuss how to master the Auctions and the Buy it Now listings.
How to master Auctions:
eBay auctions can be for used or new items so keep that in mind when searching and always read descriptions. With auctions, what you want to do is find the item you want and then think of the highest price you will be willing to spend on that item and write it down. Next, you want to look at how long the auction will last and set a reminder on your phone and computer for 10 minutes before the auction ends. You are prepping for a technique called sniping. An eBay sniper is someone who bids and wins an auction in the last few seconds that it is available. When the auction has 5 or so seconds left, enter the maximum price you are willing to pay and wait for the outcome. You are likely not going to be paying your highest price because eBay will only charge you a few dollars above someone else’s highest bid. So let’s say you are willing to pay $100 for a mini-fridge on eBay with 10 seconds left in the auction. If the second highest bid for the fridge is $20 then you will end up paying somewhere around $25 even though you entered $100. If the second highest bid was $99.99, then you will pay $100 and not a penny more unless there is a shipping charge.
How to master Buy It Now:
There are hidden treasures on eBay but you have to know how to sort through the junk. Let’s say you want to buy the cheapest, used Xbox One that still works. You would type in “Xbox One” and hit search. Then on the left hand sidebar, under condition, you will tick the used category. Where it says price, I usually leave the first box empty and in the second box I put the highest price I am willing to pay. Under Format, click Buy It Now. Then, at the top, where it says Sort, You want to choose “Price + Shipping: lowest first”
The first few listings are almost always garbage, unrelated, or broken items, etc. What you want to do is keep scrolling until you find the item you want for the price that fits. Then click on that item and read the description to make sure it is exactly what you’re looking for.
Final Tips
Find Gems: You can use the site called http://www.fatfingers.co.uk/. This website will enter all misspellings of the item you want in hopes that you will come across your ideal product that no one else can find because the seller had a spelling issue in the title. Using all these tips in conjunction with others should yield you nice results.
Sort Results: Let’s say you’re looking for Windex on eBay but when you type it in you get several different types of Windex and you don’t want to sort through all of the product variations. If you don’t want Windex multi-surface or Windex Outdoor, what you should do is include the terms you don’t want with a minus sign in front of them, like this: “Windex –multisurface –outdoor” This will ensure that all products with the words multi-surface or outdoor are not included in your listing.