Winning quality items on eBay is never easy, but with the following search engine and bidding tips, you can certainly gain an edge.1) Buy it now: If an item is available in an auction format, I will never buy from "Buy it now" simply because the price from the auction is almost always lower than the “Buy it now”. But I do check out the “Buy it now” price for a new item, in order to get an sense of the maximum and reasonable price of that item. Another place I go to would be the homepage of retail store (ie: Bestbuy or Future Shop for electronics)
2) Number of bids: I normally would set it greater or equal to 1, meaning the search results will ONLY display auction items already been bidded on. What this essentially does is to filter in only the desirable items other people have spent time to research/evaluate and have finalized with a positive action (ie: placing a bid). But of course, the catch is, this item has already drawn interest (and possibly a lot of bidding action) by others. One way to keep the bidding action down is by specifying the upper range, for example number of bids: ranging from 1-5.
3) Best offer: Items with a “Best offer” option may take a deep cut of their listed price. I have once offered 75% of the listed price for a nice trench coat and the seller agreed. Remember to make some outrageous offers initially, you never know how low the seller is willing to accept. And you won't get penalty for an unacceptable price offer, so keep trying.
4) Location: This is also a crucial area. If you don't utilize this, you may end up wasting a lot of time browsing through items that won't deliver to your country/location. I generally start with "Located in (my country)", if lucky, I may find an item in my country and the shipping cost will be in my favor. If not, I can specify "available to (my country)".
5) Sorting: With the search results, I generally do two types of sorting. 1) Sort by "highest price and shipping cost" to pick out my desired items, and 2) sort by "ending soonest" to get a sense of time frame. Another note on shipping cost is that if you want to make money by re-selling an item, the true value of the item must be greater than i) the price you actually pay PLUS ii) the shipping cost PLUS iii) eBay charges PLUS iv) time/labor you spend. Simply logic, but often overlooked.
6) Typo search: Sometimes the listing description may be misspelled with typos, this is a treasure chest hiding in a sunk ship. This happens in once every blue moon, and don't expect extremely valuable items to fall into this category. But if you do feel lucky try this TYPOGENIE.
7) eBay sniper: Last but not least, eBay sniper is a must have. What is it? It's an external (not within eBay page) program that allows users to bid on a desired item without physically being in front of the computer monitor and doing the clicking. In a nut shell, you specify the highest bid you are willing to place on that item, but you won't be bidding right away, the program will bid for you right before the auction ends to minimize the action (thus, minimize the cost).
For example, you have found a 1980's Swiss watch with 8 bids at $100 with 2 more days before it ends, in your mind, you know it's worth $250 and this is what you are willing to spend. You set up your eBay sniper program, and hypothetically, the item is about to end with 19 bids at $175, the program will bid slightly higher than the current bid (ie: $176), and you will be the rightful and happy owner. However, if the highest bid has pushed to $270 or beyond, you will lose the auction since it's higher than your specified cap ($250).
With eBay sniper, you no longer need to stay up till 3am to make sure you are not outbidded, nor you will ever need to refresh the eBay page every 10 min. The FREE eBay sniper of my favorite is called BAYGENIE.
Tips on selling on eBay can be found on this SITE.
Disclaimer: This blog is not affiliated with the BayGenie in any way.
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