by Dave Peck

eBay Main Page

I have been active on eBay for about a year. I've sold about 60 items and I've purchased approximately 10 items. I have 49 positive ratings, 2 neutral ratings, and zero negative ratings. You'll read more about ratings.

eBay Help Center

If your new to eBay, I can tell you enough to get going and survive bidding. The eBay site has tons of documentation describing how to "buy", "sell", "rate", "complain", you name it. But it can be overwhelming for a new user. The first stop is to select Help on the main eBay page.

Your Reputation is important on eBay. You sink or swim based on your reputation. If many people trash you, regarding your honesty, responsiveness, timely shipment, payment, or condition of item sold, I imagine you'll find it tough to sell and buy items. As a buyer, if you don't follow through with the purchase, your reputation will suffer. And as auctions are binding contracts, if you misrepresent a sale or fail to follow through on a purchase, it is possible that you could experience some form of legal jeopardy. I'm no expert in this area.

Overview

• Register
• Sell- List item (or)
• Buy- Find item & submit bid
• Compete Transaction (buyer pays, seller ships item)
• Submit Feedback

Register
It's fairly easy. Select "Register Now" off the Main eBay page. Fill in all of the required info including name, address, user name, & password. No credit card numbers are required, but you will have to decide how you want to purchase items and receive payment for items sold.

Payment Methods
There are several ways to pay- personal check, Pay Pal, and credit cards. But as the person selling, most of us don't have a Visa or Master Card account that allows us to receive credit card payments like a retail vendor. Although I can't confirm this, I suspect that you will hinder yourself as a seller if you only accept personal checks. The issues are, the time it takes to mail a check, allow the check to clear, and bad checks. Some people don't want to wait two weeks while their check clears. They won't bid on your item. And if it turns out to be a bad check, you have lost a sale. There is no guarantee that the next time the item goes up for auction that it will do as well. Of course the flip side is that it could do better the second time around. But who needs the hassle?

This is where Pay Pal comes in. I've had good luck with Pay Pal Pay Pal is like an online bank. But they pay a low interest rate. And Pay Pal charges a nominal fee for buyer/seller transactions. Except they don't charge to add or remove money from your Pay Pal account. You send funds from your real bank to your Pay Pal account or in reverse. These funds are used to purchase items. People can send Visa/Master Card payments to your Pay Pal account. It provides the fastest and most convenient method for buyers to pay you. Especially for buyers who live outside the United States. Pay Pal provides a means for international buyers to easily convert their currency into U.S. Dollars.

I have heard of Pay Pal complaints such as a Pay Pal payment being made, but not making it to the seller. Then canceling the transaction or ending up sending two payments or some similar headache. But I have not experienced any difficulties with my Pay Pal account. I saw one occasion where a buyer ended up sending me two payments. I refunded one of those back to him- an easy process. But he was frustrated with Pay Pal

Complaints
eBay does have an official means to file a complaint. This has the potential of hurting the reputation of whoever the complaint is filed against. And there is Square Trade, an online means of settling disputes. I did not feel like paying to join Square Trade, so I have not become a certified Square Trade seller. But you can use Square Trade, even if you are not a member to attempt to complete the sale. My experience is that if someone refuses to buy, from a practical standpoint, you are out of luck. I'm referring to small dollar items. If something big $$ is sold, that might be a different story as eBay auctions are binding legal transactions.

Go here to contact Rules and Safety Support. This is where you can actually get someone from ebay to respond to your concerns.

Selling

• General Selling Philosophy
• Fraud Warning as Seller
• My Big Sell
• Mac in the Title (if applicable)
• Include a Picture
• Timing
• Item Description
• Using HTML
• Pricing
• Shipping
• Mechanics of Posting

General Selling Philosophy
Selling is the easiest of the two tasks. Before selling it's recommended that you familiarize yourself with all of the eBay categories (found on the main eBay page). Decide which category best suits your item. You can also search for identical items already listed on eBay by selecting "Search" from the main eBay Navbar. You may find your item (being sold by others) in several categories.

Look at how many of your items are currently listed on eBay, how many of them are "in-play", and what prices they are being bid up to. Since I'm partial to games, I've done a search on "Warcraft", a popular Real Time Strategy Game that is available on both Mac & Windows computers. A list of 683 items pops up. A long list, huh? It turns out that the game is dual platform, but there are other games which are not. So you would not want to bid on a Windows version of a game for your Mac. This also applies to other computer peripherals like printers. Make sure it is compatible with your Mac before bidding. This applies more to buying then selling, but hopefully gives you a hint at how to structure an auction if your selling a Mac product.

Over on the left side of this page will be a column that lists all the categories where your search produced results. Notice the categories in this graphic start with Consumer Electronics. A sub-category of Consumer Electronics is Video Games. You will also notice another major category- Computers & Office Products, of which sub-categories are Software, Apple Macintosh, & Input Peripherals.

There are many Warcraft Titles, but I want the game Warcraft III. If I click on the category Video Games, a new window opens revealing all the items found under my search that belong to this category. And on the left side of this window, I can also refine my search to look for Warcraft III or Warcraft 3 in Video Games. There is no telling how people will list this item or to what categories. But the best bet is Video Games. Under Video Games there are several Apple Categories.

Remember that Warcraft titles appeared in Computers & Office Products . There is a good chance that many people don't know what they are doing on eBay and list items in inappropriate categories.

Fraud Warning as Seller
It is specifically against eBay policy to list fradulent items. These are items that are represented as real but are reproductions. Nor can you list reproduction items that have copy-right protections. I'm thinking specifically of designer items, also known as "knockoffs", watches, purses, shoes, using designer names, such as Louis Vuitton.

My Big Sell
Last Summer, I had a Clamshell iBook to sell. I found a computer dealer online who was willing to pay $300 cash, if I purchased a new computer from them The quote they gave me was good for a couple of weeks. I would have to pay shipping to them, about $24.

I went to eBay and found a limited number of my model iBooks for auction. And they were being bid up into the mid $400s. So I knew I could put it up for a 7 day auction with a $299 start price and see what happens. Buyers typically pay shipping, so it was win-win for me. If it came into "play", at a minimum, I would save on my shipping costs.

My timing was right and I stumbled into a situation where this computer was covered by a 3 year extended Apple Care warranty which I had purchased. It still had 4 months left on the warranty. And the warranty was transferable to the new owner. So I could say this computer was still under warranty- a huge selling advantage in my opinion. Something to think about when you decide on purchasing an extended warranty.

You might ask, "What do I do if the computer is not under warranty?" You add a clause to your auction, with bold letter type, saying to the effect that while you verified the computer is in good working order before shipping, that it is being sold AS-IS with no warranty. But there could be a danger. Can you guess what it is? The danger is that if it arrives non-functional at the destination, the buyer might give you a negative rating.

Fortunately, for all ratings, the rated person as buyer or seller, can post a response. Where you could counter the negative rating by stating the auction specified sold as-is. But think about it. If you get enough of these kind of ratings- the item arrived inoperative, it may hurt your ability to sell used items on eBay. I don't have a solution for this. I've sold one HP printer as-is and it arrived ok. But if it hadn't and I got a negative rating out of it, I would think about selling items like this. If the item needs repair, auction it as such or for parts.

Mac in the Title
For computer items, make sure it says "Mac compatible". If your selling a Mac item, that also comes in a PC version, I think it's a savvy move to put (Mac) in the auctions title. So if someone does a search, they will be able to easily pick out your Mac version among all of the PC versions. And PC users will be warned off. If the item is both Mac and PC compatible, I place (Mac/Win) in the auction title.

Picture
People want to see a picture of what they are buying. In many cases it is not required to have a picture of the actual item. A good example of this is a game, where I take a picture of the manual or the jewel case artwork. With printers, I scan a picture of the item either from the box or the documentation that came with it.

A digital camera is a good alternative. A picture of the actual item would be good for all auctions, but especially important for unique or collector items, household items like china, knickknacks, or something expensive like a car. In the case of a car, multiple pictures might be in order.

During the auction listing process, you will be able to browse your hard drive for the picture to be used for the auction. Your picture should be a .GIF or .JPG. These are two different graphic formats that utilize compression to make the image file smaller. You can identify a JPEG picture because it will have the .jpg suffix attached to the name. Examples: mypicture.jpg or mypicture.gif.

If the picture is scanned, there is a good possibility that the result will be a .TIF ( a different standard). Tiffs have larger file sizes. eBay will accept pictures file sizes of about 300k. This is why GIFs and JPEGs are better. You might need to use a shareware program like Graphic Converter to convert your .TIF into a .GIF or .JPG. I also use Graphic Converter to scale the picture down to no more than 3"x3". When saving JPEGs, I use a mid quality setting. This also reduces the pictures file size.

JPEG View, a free program might be able to convert Tiffs into JPEGs, but I've not found an OSX version to test.

Timing
I have no scientific proof what-so-ever, but in my opinion the day and time of day is important for listing an auction. This becomes clearer when you understand how buying works. Basically, to get the most action on an item, you want the most potential buyers bidding on it. Auctions can be designated 5 or 7 day. Unless a bid-and-forget type bidder, has over-bid (over paid) for an item, the auction is going to be won by someone actively working the auction (sitting by their computer).

You might disagree with me, but I tend to think the most people are available after dinner during the week, or even better, on the weekend. Especially games. If you see the method to my madness, game auctions should end after school is out.

Item Description
Make sure you describe the item, and it's condition. If it's computer related, is it Mac, Windows, or dual platform compatible? Does it have minimum system requirements?- post them.

There is a separate spot in the auction posting process to state the auction starting price and what kind of payments you will accept, but I feel the need to also state this in the item description. An example is posted at the end of the article.

Using HTML in Auction Posting
When it comes to posting an auction, you will have to describe the item. You can use plain text and type right into the text-entry box. But your description will have no formatting, no paragraphs or bold face, just one lump of text. You want some formatting.

If you are familiar with HTML (the computer code of the internet) or know how to use a HTML editor like GoLive or Dreamweaver, it can be a real plus to make up your add in HTML. This allows you add Formatting, such as paragraphs, bold type, insert links, and do other fancy things.

If this is too much trouble, when posting an auction, you will notice a link to the right of the item description text-entry box. A link that will take you to a help page that illustrates basic HTML formatting using HTML tags. These tags can be inserted directly into your text to make paragraphs and bold face appear. HTML tags tell a browser (like Netscape or Safari) how to display a particular section of type. This is a HTML tag to designate a paragraph: <p>. A paragraph starts with a <p> at the beginning of the paragraph and a </p> (slash p) at the end.

Pricing
This part of selling can be tricky. You must balance the absolute minimum price your willing to accept for the item against the possibility that you are pricing your item to high to get it into play. Once the item is in play, you are home free. It means someone has agreed to make you minimum payment. And if your lucky it could zoom in price. But none of that happens until it is in play. Then you have bidders that have made an emotional commitment to your item. Sometimes they pay more than they initially planned, because they realize someone is competing with them for this item. If they lose it, then they will just have to start over on another auction.

I can guarantee that if there are 100 Smooch Beanie Babies listed for $1, and 5 of those bears are in play for $3-5, that if you list your Smooch for $15, it's just not gonna happen, the sale that is. Unless you have something that sets your Smooch apart, it's just going to lay there. If there is something special about an item, it had better be highlighted in the auction and possibly in the title.

Don't discount the value of foreign buyers. My experience selling to foreigners has been good. Sometimes they will pay top dollar due to item rarity where they live. But with a possible language barrier, there could be problems. In the auction listing you designate to what locations you are willing to sell. I have sold Mac items to people in England, Germany, Israel, Norway, and others.

My biggest surprise was selling an 8 year old (original $99) joystick to an individual in Israel for $75. Plus he paid $30 shipping for it. It is really important that you talk about shipping outside the U.S. in your item description.

Shipping
It's up to you how much you want to talk about it. But the clearer you are the better, to avoid post sales problems. The USPS site and UPS site both have postage calculators to help you. I use two separate paragraphs in my auctions- one for shipping in the U.S. and one for foreign shipments, including Canada. When listing the auction, you can place a shipping price in the auction form if you know it, or you can simply say Buyer pays shipping.
But most people want to know how much shipping is. I place most of this info in the item description. For a game, where I know what the shipping will be, I do put a price in the auction form. Most games ship in the U.S. for $2.00 media rate or $4.60 Priority Mail, with $1.30 insurance (optional).
One other note- For something like a printer, I usually fudge up a couple of pounds on the weight. I'd rather have them send me too much money than too little. For a big ticket item, I do refund excess shipping that the buyer sends me. Don't be one of these people who tries to make a few extra dollars on shipping!

Mechanics of Posting an Auction
I'm not going to take you through posting an auction step by step. It's not that hard to fill in the info. Remember the points listed above.

• Select Sell on the main eBay page.
• Select Auction as the selling method and continue from there.
• An example of a auction posting is located at the end of this article.

Buying

• Search for Item to Bid On
• Don't Bid Until
• Don't Get Confused
• Prices Low for Newly Posted Items
• Reserve Pricing?
• Proxy Bidding
• Buying Strategy
  • Golden Rule
  • Bid-n-Forget
  • Go For Broke vs Two Step
  • Go For Broke
  • Two Step
• Tracking an Auction
• Fraud Warning as Buyer

Search for Item to Bid On
Check the categories and do searches as mentioned earlier in this article. When reading an auction focus on these points:

• Initial Price
• Sellers Reputation- If there are lots of complaints, beware.
• Item description
  • A comprehensive description?
  • Condition of item
  • Is this item what you really want? Verify Model number if it has one.
  • Computer Item- Mac Compatible?
• Does it have a Reserve Price?
• Shipping Costs- Are they specified? Is Insurance an Option?
• Location of item- Do you want to deal with someone who lives overseas?
• Accepted payment methods.

Don't Bid Until
Don't bid until all of your questions are answered. On the auction page, use the Ask the Seller a Question to email the seller with your questions. Ideally this happens early in the auction as it might take a day or two to get a response.

Don't Get Confused
Make sure you are bidding on what you think you're bidding on. Look at item picture and check for applicable model numbers or other means of identifying the item.

Prices are lowest for new Auctions
Remember the prices are always going to be lower on items just posted. They will be highest when the auction is about to end. If they are priced high at the beginning of the auction, maybe you don't want it.

Is it Reserve Priced?
Reserve pricing provides the means to list an item at a incredibly low price. The catch is, the seller does not have to really sell the item until the Reserve Price is met. You might get excited about the brand new X-Box ($199 retail) listed for $1. But I can almost guarantee that the Reserve Price won't be met until you are close to retail. I suspect the seller will not let it go much below the Reserve Price. The way I deal with Reserve-Priced auctions, is I bid on them up to what I consider is a good deal and if the Reserve Price is not met, I walk away from it. But you must be prepared to pay for what ever you bid on. While improbable, it's not impossible, that if you bid $100 for the new X-box, even if the Reserve Price is not met, the seller might let you have it. My understanding is that if the reserve price is not met that participants are not obligated to complete the transaction. But it's something to check on. Also see the fraud paragraph.

Proxy Bidding
Something you should be aware of. Proxy bidding is eBay's bidding convention. You can find it in the eBay Help Center. Let's say your eyeing a Beanie Baby that has a current bid value of $10. And you bid $11. Immediately you get a message back, that you have been outbid. How could that happen? Was someone sitting there kicking back a higher bid? No. Proxy bidding allows you to bid your maximum price with one bid.

For my example, lets say the Beanie Baby you want is listed for $10 and there are zero bids on it. So $10 is the starting price. If you're willing to pay $20 for the Beanie Baby, you bid $20, but the auction price will still show $10. What has changed, is that the item is now in-play, it has one bid, and you are the current winning bidder at $10. The second bidder sees this item and decides to place a bid for $11. As soon has the bid is placed, the price jumps to $12. And under this circumstance, you are still the current winning bidder. The second bidder gets a message telling him that he was outbid. That is because you initially bid $20, indicating you are willing to go to $20. The second bidder can place additional bids, the price will jump, and he will continue to get "out bid" messages until he bids $21. At this point, the second bidder becomes the current winning bidder. This can be used to your advantage.

Buying Strategy
I don't consider myself an expert. I developed (stumbled into) these secret bidding strategies after losing several auctions. I am happy with the results. You can use these methods only if you agree that if you ever come up against me bidding in an auction, you'll remember the good advice I gave and step aside. Yeah right. OK, here goes.

Unless you over bid (over pay) for an item, or there is minimal interest in the item, I can guarantee that you'll rarely win an auction by using the Bid-n-Forget method. You want to win auctions and get good deals too. Maybe, overpay if the item is a hard to find collectors item? Then who is to say what it's worth? Follow one of the strategies below to save a little money.

The best auctions to bid on are the ones where there is a large gap between the current price and your maximum bid price. After you read the methods, you'll understand why this is better.

Golden Rule of Bidding
In all cases, the Golden Rule of Bidding, if you can help it, is don't show any interest in an item until the very last minute. What good does it do to put the item in play and bid up it's price early? In my methods you wait until the last minute to start your assault. I give timing guidelines, but the closer you cut it, the better.

The Refresh Button Speaking of Timing....This may seem apparent, but how do you know when there is only a few minutes left in an auction? You want to be looking at the eBay page where the auction is listed. I would not use my own clock. The time the auction ends (Pacific time) and how much time is left is posted on the Auction Page. If you stare at this page long enough, you'll see that the time does not refresh, unless you hit the "Refresh" button on your browser. With about 5 minutes to go, you should be hitting the Refresh Button often until it's time to act.

I have a Cable Modem connection to the internet. This makes a difference in page refresh rates. If your using a 56k modem or slower, you should check out how fast your pages refresh. If it's an issue, just make sure your clock is right when you start bidding.

One other quirk, if you want to call it that. I keep two browser pages of the auction open, so if I get fowled up on one of them, I can quickly switch to the other.

Three Strategies

• Bid-N-Forget
• Go For Broke
• Two Step

Bid-N-Forget Example- On day 2 of an auction, you bid $200 for a new camera that retails for $400 and then wait to see the results after the auction is closed on day 7.

If you don't want to win many auctions use Bid-n-Forget. But due to real life commitments, sometimes it's unavoidable.

Go For Broke vs Two Step
I think it's better to talk about this before describing these methods. There are no hard rules for when to use one method over the other.

These methods are most effective when there is a large price gap between the current price and your maximum price. And when you are competing against an active bidder who is trying to win an auction by bidding it up dollar by dollar. If all competing buyers place their maximum bid with one minute to go, then the item goes to the highest bidder.

The Go For Broke method might be used if there is not a lot of desired items listed, you really want the item, and you've decided to pay up to your maximum price. The Two Step method is better if there are a lot of low cost auctions posted and your not convinced you need to pay the maximum price. At least not initially.

Go For Broke
With 30 sec-1 minute left in the auction, (start hitting the refresh button) you place your maximum bid. You either get it or you don't. If you get an "out bid" message, then it's not meant to be. Walk away. The advantage is not giving any active bidders a lot of time to react. If they try to inch-up the price, (remember how Proxy bidding works) they will run out of time, and you win.

Two Step Method
This method works best when there are many items listed (the item you want in other auctions) and your trying to get your best price against an active bidder. It's also simple, but has two steps. I'm repeating myself, but the ideal auctions are the ones with a large gap between the current price and your maximum price.

With 2 minutes left in the auction, place a bid half way between the current price and your maximum price. Then watch the auction page. If your listed as the winning bidder, wonderful!

But you must hit the "Refresh" button on your browser every couple of seconds to make sure the info reflected on the auction page is accurate and you are still the winning bidder. If your competition is active, you may see an immediate reaction if they place their maximum bid. If a bidder is trying to incrementally "up" the bid, it might take a while for you to lose the winning bid. But your hoping the other people run out of time.

For example, lets say a recently released video game which sells new for $50 is listed with a start price of $14.99. You've decided your maximum price is $29. So you place a bid for $20 with 2 minutes left. Your hoping your competition is trying to eek out the lowest winning bid. So it takes time to place a bid for $16, get the out-bid message, bid for $17, get the out-bid message, so forth and so on.

If you don't want to bid your top dollar, wait and see what happens. Maybe you'll get it for your mid-price bid. If you see the price jump up past your mid price bid, then place your max bid. Hopefully you have not run out of time. If your competition is trying to step the price up (to get the lowest price), they will run out of time and you'll win.

If you decide you really want this item, (up to your max price), even if you are still listed as the current winning bidder, with 1 minute left, bid your maximum price.

It's really cool when the winning bid goes to the other bidder, you place your maximum price, and time runs out before your competition can react. That is why you wait till the last minute to start.

You can see that the larger the price difference between an items actual price and your maximum price is a good thing. Now if competing bidders all place their maximum price, the item goes to the highest bidder. If your competing against someone who is raising the bar dollar by dollar, they will run out of time. And you'll win.

Example Item Description

This is an example of an Epson Stylus Photo 855 printer I sold a while back. I placed it at $25 and it sold for about $35. Because it was a printer, I had more verbiage than I would when selling a game. Take a look at an actual closed auction (for a different printer I sold.) Be advised this auction will no longer be visible in about 90 days.

Item Description Starts Here:

Fraud Warning as a Buyer It is specifically against eBay policy to list fradulent items. These are items that are represented as real but are reproductions. Nor can you list reproduction items that have copy right protections. I'm thinking specifically of designer items, also known as "knockoffs", watches, purses, shoes, using designer names, such as Louis Vuitton.

Having said that, realize that eBay has a real problem with fradulent designer items (purses, watches, shoes, clothing, etc). The largest area of internet fraud is internet auctions such as ebay. Although ebay is working on controlling fraud more than most. Go to any of the designer clothing and assessory categories with real suspicion. Don't believe it when sellers use terms like "original" or "authentic". I know this through personal experience. Yes, I know everyone likes knockoffs. But what is really aggravating is when sellers try to pass off knockoffs as originals and have their item priced accordingly. Don't go on eBay to buy a Louis Vuitton purse and expect it to be real, unless the seller is willing to allow escrow on the item. Escrow allows the money to be held until you verify that the item is real.

Ask questions before bidding. Point blank ask "Is this item authentic?" Even then, don't believe it unless the seller is willing to accept escrow for an expensive item. Check the sellers reputation. I've had good experience buying original software that comes on a CD at ebay. This is not the same as a designer item because as a rule it is easier to verify an item is original versus a copy. Also it has been suggested that using a credit card to pay for auctions is better than cash from PayPal. This is becuase credit cards are required to deal with fraud and it may be easier to get your money back than by using PayPal which is a cash payment. PayPal will accept credit card purchases.

Wrap Up
That's about all I want to talk about. There's a lot more to learn at eBay. The best way is to jump in and get your feet wet. But there should be enough here to get you started.

eBay Links

• A recent auction Note- this link will stop working after 90 days.
• eBay: Non Paying Buyer
• Pay Pal
• Pay Pal Participating Countries
• eBay: File a Complaint
• Square Trade
• Prohibited, Questionable & Infringing Items
• Rules and Safety Support

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