eBay: The Missing Manual | O'Reilly Media

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eBay isn't like traditional online stores, where you pile up purchases in a virtual shopping cart and then check out. On eBay, the main attraction is its auction format; would-be buyers compete with each other by bidding on an item until everyone's made his top offer, or until the always-ticking eBay clock brings down the final hammer.

This arrangement may sound about as relaxing as rush-hour traffic when you're late for your own wedding. But once you get used to it—which isn't hard—it's straightforward and amazingly fun.

In addition to auctions, eBay also has fixed-price sales, labeled Buy It Now. Section 1.4.3 tells you all about them.

Whether you want to buy, sell, or both, the best way to get started on eBay is to register and explore the site as a buyer. Learning how to buy smart helps you discover how to use eBay's search engine efficiently and familiarizes you with auction pages, where you can check out sellers' wares. Later, when you're ready to sell (Chapter 5), the skills you learn in this chapter will help you think like a buyer, attracting bidders to your auctions and getting top dollar for your merchandise.

This chapter shows you everything you need to get going on eBay:

How to register.
How to search eBay to find the stuff you want.
How to decipher auction pages to score the best deal.
How to tell the difference between the various types of eBay auctions.
How to shop smarter using your My eBay page.

To get started, simply type www.ebay.com into your Web browser's address box, and then hit Enter. eBay's home page appears, as shown in Figure 1-1. You can sign up, as described below, and start shopping in mere minutes.

Figure 1-1: This screenshot shows the version of eBay's home page that appears the first time you visit the site. It presents the three steps of most interest to new eBayers: how to find stuff, how to buy that stuff, and how to pay for it. Anyone can search the site. But before you can bid, buy, or pay, you have to register, as described in the following section.

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Because you can't bid if you're not registered, it's a good idea to register even before you explore the site. That way, the minute you find that pair of 1970s silver platform shoes or Holley four-barrel carburetor you've been searching for, you can place your bid. If the auction is about to end in a couple of minutes, you'll be glad you registered first.

To start the registration process, click the Register Now button you find on eBay's home page (Figure 1-1). As soon as you click it, the registration form shown in Figure 1-2 pops up.

Figure 1-2: eBay's registration form requests your name, address, date of birth—all the usual information. You have to fill in all the fields, except for a second phone number. Your email address is especially important, because that's the contact for most of the business you'll do on eBay. If you've got a question at any point, click the Live Help link to chat with an eBay staffer.

Do I have to register to look around eBay?

You don't have to register to browse categories or search current auctions. You can even watch (Section 1.5.1) up to 10 items as a guest—no registration required. (Watching means keeping track of a particular auction on a special page, so you can easily find it again among eBay's millions and millions of listings.)

To watch an item without registering, look in the upper-right part of any item page for the "Watch this item" link. Click the link to keep track of the auction. To find the item you're watching, click the navigation bar's My eBay button. This opens My eBay for Guests, a page where you can register, track up to 10 auctions, and sign up to receive an email alert when one of the auctions you're watching is about to end.

If you're window shopping and you find an item you want to buy, just click the "register" link, which appears at the top of nearly every page on the whole site. You can see the link in Figure 1-1, to the right of the eBay logo, on eBay's navigation bar.

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When you head for the mall, you might be in the mood to window-shop or you might be on a search-and-purchase mission for a specific item. Similarly, you have two options for finding things to buy on eBay: you can browse, or you can use eBay's search engine to home in on what you want with laser-guided precision.

To start shopping, click the Buy link at the top of any eBay page, as shown in Figure 1-6. That link takes you to the eBay Buy page shown in Figure 1-7. The Buy page is the home of eBay's search engine.

Figure 1-6: The eBay logo and these links appear at the top of nearly every page on eBay and are a great navigation aid. Wherever you wander on the site, Help is only a click away. To begin shopping, click the Buy link.

Figure 1-7: The eBay Buy page lets you search for specific items or browse using categories or themes. Browse Categories lists eBay's main categories and gives you a peek at some of the subcategories.

You don't have to start on the Buy page when you want to search current auctions. Use the Search box in the upper-right corner of all eBay pages. Where it says "Start new search," type in your keywords, then click the Search button—and you're off.

Whether you choose to browse or to search for a particular item, you'll wind up on a results page with a list of current auctions for your topic. To look at any item in more detail, click the item title to go to its auction page. The auction page is where you can read a description of the specific item, check out other bidders, and, if you want, place your own bid. You can read about the ins and outs of auction pages on Section 1.3.

If you don't have a specific item in mind, you can browse through eBay's 30-plus main categories and seemingly infinite subcategories. eBay tweaks its categories frequently, letting you drill down to what you want with ever-more precision.

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An auction page (Figure 1-12) is the place where you can read a description of an item, see extra photos, find out a seller's feedback score, find out the nitty-gritty shipping points, and more. You can also place your bid on the auction page.

At the top of the page is the auction title, written by the seller, and the item number, assigned by eBay. Just below the title and item number are details about the auction, seller information, and usually a picture of the item up for grabs. Here's a breakdown of the information:

Current bid. Shows the current price of the item—in other words, the price you have to beat if you want to get in the game. In Figure 1-12, there are no bids yet, so the current bid is the same as the starting bid, the price (set by the seller) that the first bidder must meet to participate in the auction.
Place Bid button. Click this button to submit a bid—after you've got all the info you need to bid with confidence.
Time left. Shows how much time remains before the auction ends. Although the clock is always ticking, you need to hit the Reload or Refresh button on your browser to update the time left. The situation can change fast in an auction's final minutes, as more bids come in and the price rises, so you need to reload the auction page frequently when an auction is nearing its end.
Start time. Shows when the auction started, right down to the second the listing became active. Auctions end either three, five, seven, or ten days to the very second after they began.

eBay runs on Pacific time, and it lists all times in Pacific.

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eBay has several different kinds of auctions, each with different rules, so it's important to know which type you're dealing with before you bid. This section explains the different types of auctions on eBay and how to spot them.

Most eBay auctions are timed auctions. Not only do you have to outbid other bidders, you also have to beat the clock. With timed auctions, one second after an auction closes is no different from a whole year—both are too late. The ticking clock adds to the excitement, because in many auctions, the real action begins in the closing minutes, as bidders vie with each other to make their best bid as near as they can to the auction's close. This practice of last-moment bidding is called sniping; you can learn about sniping in detail on Section 3.3.1.2.

Most eBay auctions last from three to seven days, although they may be as short as one day or as long as ten. (The seller determines the length of the auction at listing time.) eBay sets the end of the auction, right down to the second, based on the time the auction begins.

You can see how much time is left on an auction on either a search results list (check the rightmost column) or near the top of an auction page (Time Left is near the top of every page).

eBay itself is in California, and all auctions run on Pacific Time. To see what the official time is according to eBay, click the eBay Official Time link at the bottom of any page.

Sometimes a seller wants to start with a low opening bid to get buyers' attention, but doesn't want to sell at a loss. To help sellers meet these dual desires, eBay lets them set a reserve price on any auction, a secret price that represents the minimum the seller will accept for the item. In other words, in a reserve auction, the seller doesn't have to sell the item if bidding doesn't reach the reserve price.

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Hours of searching and scrutinizing auction pages can send your head spinning like a special effect in The Exorcist. Once you've found two or three possibilities out of four gazillion auctions, how do you find them again? How do you remember which kewpie doll you bid on when there are 300 up for sale? And how do you know if you're still the high bidder or if someone's snatched the kewpie from your clutches?

To keep you organized, eBay creates a page for you and you alone (Figure 1-21). Your My eBay page shows you items you're bidding on, auctions where you've been outbid—and auctions you've won and have to pay for. And that's just for starters. You can reach My eBay by heading to the top of any page on the site, finding the navigation bar, and clicking the My eBay Button.

You must be signed in to eBay to see your personal My eBay page. But if you sign out, no problem: just click the My eBay link at the top of the eBay home page. Instead of the My eBay page, you see the Sign In screen. Type in your eBay ID and password, click Sign In Securely, and your My eBay page appears.

Figure 1-21: My eBay is your very own personal eBay data center. Your eBay ID appears at the top of the page. This view shows My Summary (you can change the view via the eBay Preferences link located under My Account). My Summary is handy because it shows you an at-a-glance overview of your recent eBay activity: auctions you're bidding on, merchandise you're selling, items you've put on your Watch list (Section 1.5.1). You can select the information you want to see (and the order you want to see it in) by zipping over to the upper-right corner of the page and clicking Customize Summary (the first few letters of which are visible in this screenshot).

Your My eBay page is an invaluable headquarters. It lets you keep track of the specific auctions you're interested in—whether you're bidding, selling, or just watching—and do other important stuff, too, like update your account information and save searches for when you're in the mood to power-shop. With all these goodies, My eBay provides a handy home base for exploring the site.

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Most of the time, if you want to buy something on eBay, you can't purchase it outright. Instead, you have to bid for it at auction. Bidding means that you vie with other potential buyers to offer the most for an item. If this system sounds like it's designed to bleed money out of you, think again. Auctions can help you get screaming deals.

The exception to the bidding rule is Buy It Now auctions, described on Section 1.4.3.

On the other hand, if you're not savvy about bidding, you could wind up paying $40 for a $3 SpongeBob comic book. Or, worse, you could find yourself unable to purchase what you want at any price.

This chapter shows you how to bid on eBay auctions with confidence, giving you the lowdown on:

What feedback is, why it's important, and how to use it to tell if a seller is trust-worthy—before you bid.
How eBay's bidding process works.
How to place a bid.
How to pay for auctions you've won.
When and how to leave post-auction feedback.
How to avoid common buying problems.

When you're trying to figure out whether a deal really is as good as it looks, studying the auction page (Section 1.2.3.5) is a great place to start. But smart buyers dig deeper—and eBay's Feedback Forum lets you do just that. If the software that keeps auctions running 24/7 is eBay's heart, feedback is its soul.

After all, why are zillions of sellers, scattered all over the globe, willing to hand over their jet skis and their grandmother's fine china to someone they wouldn't know from Adam? And why are zillions of buyers comfortable forking over money based on a couple of 2 x 3" photos and a three-line description?

In a word, trust. And on eBay, that trust is established through

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When you're trying to figure out whether a deal really is as good as it looks, studying the auction page (Section 1.2.3.5) is a great place to start. But smart buyers dig deeper—and eBay's Feedback Forum lets you do just that. If the software that keeps auctions running 24/7 is eBay's heart, feedback is its soul.

After all, why are zillions of sellers, scattered all over the globe, willing to hand over their jet skis and their grandmother's fine china to someone they wouldn't know from Adam? And why are zillions of buyers comfortable forking over money based on a couple of 2 x 3" photos and a three-line description?

In a word, trust. And on eBay, that trust is established through feedback.

In the Feedback Forum, both buyer and seller take a minute after their transaction is complete to rate their level of satisfaction. Through ratings and comments, they tell the world how it was to deal with their trading partner: wonderful ("My black-light Kiss posters arrived fast and in perfect condition"), so-so ("Can't complain"), horrible ("The &^*(%@! bum never paid!"). Feedback paints a picture of an eBayer's moral character, affecting whether a buyer will buy from a seller and whether a seller will accept a prospective buyer's bid.

So spending a few minutes in the Feedback Forum to read and understand a seller's feedback can help you avoid getting ripped off. For example, a feedback score of 90, or a string of comments like, "The 'perfect' Cabbage Patch doll I paid for was missing both arms," suggests that you should reconsider doing business with a seller. (The box on Section 2.1.1 tells you how to interpret feedback scores.)

Here's how feedback works. After each auction, eBay asks the buyer and the seller to leave comments about how smoothly (or how horribly) the transaction went. Comments are positive, negative, or neutral and can be no longer than 80 characters. You can leave feedback only for actual, completed transactions, which helps keep feedback accurate. A seller's friends can't pad his feedback with phony compliments about items they never bought, and his competition can't shoot him down with bogus complaints.

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eBay's genius is in its bidding system, called proxy bidding. Proxy bidding is the automated bidding system that lets you participate in auctions even when you're away from your computer: you put in your maximum bid and eBay bids on your behalf, up to your high bid. Here's how it works.

As Figure 2-5 shows, when you place a bid on eBay, the Place a Bid page shows two bid amounts:

Current bid. This is the high price of the moment; you have to bid a little more than the current bid to join in the auction (eBay shows you the minimum acceptable bid right next to the box where you type in your bid amount).
Your maximum bid. The amount you type in here is the most that you'd be willing to pay to win the auction. Your maximum bid is a secret amount—hidden from everyone but you and eBay's computers. In fact, if the price in an auction doesn't go as high as your maximum bid, no one else will ever know how much you were willing to pay.

Figure 2-5: When making your bid, you must type in at least the amount listed to the right of the text box, but you can type in the maximum amount you're willing to pay. If you're unsure that you're bidding correctly, click "Learn about bidding" in the lower-left corner (not shown here) for a quick pop-up tutorial.

When you type in your maximum bid, eBay checks that amount against the minimum bid. If your bid is at or higher than the required minimum, eBay accepts the bid, and you become the high bidder by one bid increment, the minimum price increase for an acceptable bid. Depending on the current price, each new bid must be at least one bid increment higher—for example, if the current bid is $9.99, the bid increment is 50 cents, so the next acceptable bid would be $10.49.

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You've bid on a collection of rare Godzilla action figures or a musical cake plate and won your first auction. What happens now? When do you get your stuff? The first step, of course, is paying for it. And the sooner you pay, the sooner your prize will show up on your doorstep.

Most sellers expect payment within three to seven days of the auction's end—this should be spelled out on the auction page. Before you place a bid, always check the seller's terms to find out how long you have to pay.

When you've won an auction, eBay sends you an email to notify you of your triumph. This email gives you the seller's email address and provides a payment link. You can click the link to go to the checkout, or you can get there by logging in to eBay, going to your My eBay page's Items I've Won section, and clicking the Pay Now button.

If you were watching the item before you won the auction (Section 1.5.1), it appears in two places on your My eBay page: Items I'm Watching and Items I've Won.

If you're signed in, a Pay Now button also appears on the auction page, as shown in Figure 2-7. (To sign in, go to the top of the eBay home page and click the Sign In link).

Figure 2-7: This box appears on the auction page after you've won. Approved payment methods appear on the left; frequently asked questions are on the right. When you're ready to pay, click the Pay Now button. Alternatively, you can email the seller to arrange payment. The seller's email address is in the end-of-auction email eBay sends you.

Section 2.3.1.1: Paying with PayPal

Most (but not all) sellers accept payment through PayPal, a money transfer company owned by eBay. PayPal lets you transfer funds from your credit card or bank account directly to the seller.

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Shakespeare knew that "the course of true love never did run smooth"; sometimes, the course of commerce takes a bumpy road, too. Most eBay transactions begin and end without a hitch. But the eBay world isn't perfect. This section describes some common problems buyers face and what to do about them.

Sellers have the option of canceling bids or blocking bidders from their auctions. They don't have to give a reason. Some sellers are wary of new buyers with no feedback and will cancel bids from zero-feedback buyers if they see them. From a new buyer's point of view, this stinks. How can you earn feedback if you can't even bid?

You have a couple of options.

One option is to email the seller (use the "Ask seller a question" link on the auction page). Explain that you're new to eBay but you understand the rules and are serious about bidding. Emphasize that you know that a bid is a binding agreement and you intend to follow through if you win. This sort of communication will convince many sellers that you're sincere and will lead them to let you to bid on the auction.

Sellers can set their auctions to automatically block bids from buyers with a negative feedback score or who live in countries the seller doesn't ship to.

The other option is to build up your feedback rating by buying several inexpensive items quickly, paying up even more quickly, and leaving good feedback for the seller. (BIN auctions, on Section 1.4.3, are great for building up a history on eBay—a couple of clicks and you've bought the item, and you don't have to wait a week for an auction to end.) After a sale, you can politely request feedback from the seller with an email that says something like, "I received the rainbow-striped toe socks today and was very pleased. I've left you positive feedback and hope you'll do the same for me." As long as you pay promptly and focus on good communication, your feedback rating should increase.

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Spending money on eBay is a snap. What's tricky is learning how to do it wisely.

Two things stand between you and smart shopping: more listings than you can shake a mouse at, and scads of eager bargain hunters. To get an edge, you have to search better than the competition, and you have to bid smarter. This chapter shows you how.

Here's what it covers:

How to find the hidden bargains that other shoppers miss.
How to comparison-shop for the best deal.
How to avoid impulse buying (and the buyer's remorse that goes with it).
How to snipe (win an auction at the last minute).
How to boost your odds of winning Dutch auctions.
How to find deals off eBay's beaten path.

Smart searching involves more than typing a couple of words into a text box and clicking the Search button. Sure, a simple search gives you a list of results—but that's what every other shopper on eBay is getting, too. You're out to find the bargains others miss. Chapter 1 illustrated the basics of searching. This section turbocharges your searches.

eBay has so many items—more than 10 million auctions are running on any given day—that searching can quickly become difficult and frustrating. For example, a search that seems straightforward, like NASCAR, can bring up thousands of items you probably never even thought of: not just the tickets you were looking for, but pet bandanas, bracelet charms, cell phone casings, calendars, pillows, and tons more. You can refine your searches to pinpoint items by learning how to work the system.

Precision-tune your search by telling eBay's search engine exactly what you want. You can use symbols to make searching easier:

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Smart searching involves more than typing a couple of words into a text box and clicking the Search button. Sure, a simple search gives you a list of results—but that's what every other shopper on eBay is getting, too. You're out to find the bargains others miss. Chapter 1 illustrated the basics of searching. This section turbocharges your searches.

eBay has so many items—more than 10 million auctions are running on any given day—that searching can quickly become difficult and frustrating. For example, a search that seems straightforward, like NASCAR, can bring up thousands of items you probably never even thought of: not just the tickets you were looking for, but pet bandanas, bracelet charms, cell phone casings, calendars, pillows, and tons more. You can refine your searches to pinpoint items by learning how to work the system.

Precision-tune your search by telling eBay's search engine exactly what you want. You can use symbols to make searching easier:

Quotation marks. Put quotation marks around any two or more words to force them to appear as a phrase in the results. For example, typing in boots gets you around 65,000 or so results: cowboy boots, ski boots, rain boots, work boots—the list goes on and on. Type "ankle boots" and the search engine cuts to the chase, winnowing out 62,000 or so results you don't want, so you can focus on the auctions you do want.

Narrow your search even further by clicking the most appropriate link in the Matching Categories menu on the left-hand side of the page. Doing so restricts your results to auctions listed in that category.
Asterisk. The asterisk is an immensely useful wildcard character, which stands in for a letter or letters. It's great if you don't know the exact spelling of something. Search for

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On eBay, it's not uncommon to see the bidding rocket past what everyone knows is a reasonable price. People sometimes pay more at auction for the same item they could buy in the discount store across town. And sometimes the bids might reach, say, $22, even when the seller notes in the item description that she has similar items available for a fixed price of $17.99 in her eBay store. What's going on? It's simple: the excitement of a timed auction and the thrill of competitive bidding can make bidders lose their heads and pay more than they meant to.

Don't be part of the headless masses. If you do your research and keep calm, you'll avoid overpaying.

You don't have to jump into the bidding as soon as you discover eBay. To avoid getting yourself into trouble and becoming the winning bidder at $40,800 for a haunted toothpick, take a step back and click around the site while you collect yourself.

Do these basic things to cool out and get more info on an item. Use eBay's comparison-shop feature (Section 3.2.2). Put items on your Watch list to see where their final price lands and get a sense of the going rate. Visit a seller's eBay store (Section 7.3) to check whether the seller offers the same item for a fixed price—and how much. Read the discussion boards (Section 10.1.1) related to the things you want to buy.

If you're concerned that you're going to miss a deal on a unique, never-going-to-be-available-again, ghost-infested item, bear in mind that nearly everything turns up on eBay over and over, given time. To see whether something similar has sold recently on eBay, check the completed auctions, described below.

Next, avail yourself of other resources that can help you determine value:

Research closed auctions. Checking out what similar items have sold for in the past few weeks can give you a good idea of what your item is worth now. To research closed auctions, from almost any eBay page, click Advanced Search, type in your search term, then turn on the "Completed listings only" checkbox before you click the Search button.

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eBay newbies often complain that it's hard to win the auctions they bid on. Sometimes there's too much competition. Sometimes another bidder wins by just a couple of cents. Other times, a bidder thinks she's winning, then someone outbids her during the last minute of the auction, with no time left for a response. This section shows you the bidding strategies that will help you win more auctions.

After you've bid in a few auctions, or even if you're just looking around the site, you've probably noticed that some auctions have bids in odd amounts like $14.53 or $267.32. Bids like this are the work of bidders who've learned to use bid increments to their advantage. The bid increment is how much a bid must increase over the current price to register as a bid. For example, if the current price is $14.00 and you try to bid $14.01, eBay won't accept your bid, because it's not a full increment above the current price; you'd have to bid $14.50 or more.

Bid increments are determined by eBay and the current price of the item, as you can see in Table 3-1. As the price of the item passes certain threshold amounts, the bid increment increases.

Table 3-1: Bid Increments: As the Price Goes Up, So Does the Minimum Bid
Current Price	Bid Increment
$0.01–$0.99	$0.05
$1.00–$4.99	$0.25
$5.00–$24.99	$0.50
$25.00–$25.99

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By now, you can track down bargains like a bloodhound and snipe like a sharp shooter. You can get eBay's proxy bidding engine revving like a race car and shoulder your way into Dutch auctions. This section lets you in on a couple of other money-saving tricks.

eBay forbids sellers from including links to Web pages outside eBay in their auctions. Yet some of these sellers have their own Web stores, often with wider selection and sales worth checking out. How can you find these stores if sellers can't advertise them? By viewing something called an About Me page (Section 6.1).

If the word me appears next to the seller's ID and feedback rating on an auction page, click it. This takes you to the seller's About Me page. About Me pages are personal Web pages hosted by eBay. Any eBayer can create an About Me page to tell the rest of the eBay community about herself, her hobbies and interests, her family, what she collects or sells. Sellers can use their About Me pages to link to sites beyond eBay. If a seller has a Web store or a brick-and-mortar store, you might find it on their About Me page—expanding your shopping options.

eBay protects only transactions conducted through its site (see Section 2.4.4 for more on eBay's Buyer Protection Plan). If you buy offsite, you're on your own. Shop only in the offsite stores belonging to sellers you trust, after you've bought from them in an eBay auction or two.

Airlines have frequent-flyer miles. Hotels and credit cards have rewards programs for loyal customers. eBay has Anything Points. One point isn't worth much all by itself—just a penny or so—but as they add up, you can use your Anything Points toward purchases you make on eBay.

Section 3.4.2.1: Earning Anything Points

You can sign up for Anything Points by going to http://anythingpoints.ebay.com, shown in Figure 3-19, and then clicking Join Now. eBay prompts you for your password, then asks for the email address you use for your PayPal account.

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eBay has a recognition program for serious sellers—high-volume, highly rated businesspeople it calls PowerSellers. eBay has no official "PowerBuyers" program, but some shoppers deserve the name.

Power buyers are the ones who really know their way around eBay. They might be collectors snapping up treasures for their collections—coins, comics, Matchbox cars, Beanie Babies, Civil War–era autographs, you name it. Or they might be the big spenders who close big deals, buying houses, cars, and luxury items that most shoppers merely dream about. Power buyers know how to use buyers' tools to streamline their shopping, and they can spot a scam a mile away.

While the previous chapters covered bidding strategies, this chapter shares other secrets serious shoppers use to prevail on eBay, including:

Tools to help buyers research smarter.
Software to help collectors organize their collections.
Strategies for buying jewelry, cars, and real estate with confidence.
Tips for avoiding common scams.

When you're power shopping, you want the information for good buys right there at your fingertips, right now. Is $79.99 a good price for that cell phone, or could you get it for $50 if you waited a couple of weeks? Is that PowerSeller a slow shipper, or does he get a lot of returns? Serious shoppers power up their shopping with price-analysis tools to figure out the best price, and they use feedback filters to drill down straight to the feedback they need to see. And if, like many hardcore buyers, you're a collector who uses eBay to beef up your collection, there are tools to help you organize your collection.

On eBay, the marketplace sets the price of any given item, as bidders vie with each other until only one's left standing at the auction's end. But that marketplace changes daily. Supply and demand both shift as sellers try to jump on hot-item bandwagons and as shoppers spend more time at their computers (around the holidays) or less (summer weekends). A digital camera that sold for $225 one week might sell for $187 the next. To get a picture of eBay price trends, you could sift through completed auctions, record winning prices, and figure out the averages—but why go to all that effort when price-analysis tools will do it for you in a couple of seconds?

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When you're power shopping, you want the information for good buys right there at your fingertips, right now. Is $79.99 a good price for that cell phone, or could you get it for $50 if you waited a couple of weeks? Is that PowerSeller a slow shipper, or does he get a lot of returns? Serious shoppers power up their shopping with price-analysis tools to figure out the best price, and they use feedback filters to drill down straight to the feedback they need to see. And if, like many hardcore buyers, you're a collector who uses eBay to beef up your collection, there are tools to help you organize your collection.

On eBay, the marketplace sets the price of any given item, as bidders vie with each other until only one's left standing at the auction's end. But that marketplace changes daily. Supply and demand both shift as sellers try to jump on hot-item bandwagons and as shoppers spend more time at their computers (around the holidays) or less (summer weekends). A digital camera that sold for $225 one week might sell for $187 the next. To get a picture of eBay price trends, you could sift through completed auctions, record winning prices, and figure out the averages—but why go to all that effort when price-analysis tools will do it for you in a couple of seconds?

Price-analysis tools scour completed auctions and scoop up the closing prices, then use that information to help you decide how much to spend now—or whether to wait until the price goes down. Here are a couple of good price-analysis tools:

Terapeak. The market research gurus at Terapeak (www.terapeak.com) offer a free, quick price analysis. Terapeak's search results give you the average eBay price for similar items that sold in the last week and show currently active listings. On Terapeak's home page, head to the Shop Smarter On eBay.com text box, type in the name of the item you're shopping for, select the appropriate eBay category, and then click the Find It button to get results like those shown in Figure 4-1. (Be patient. It can take several seconds for the results to appear.)

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The best way to begin buying on eBay is to purchase some low-priced items to build up positive feedback and learn how auctions work. After a while, though, you might be tempted by luxe-level offerings. Before you bid on big-ticket items, there are a few things you should know, like when to use escrow (Section 2.3.1.2) and how far eBay and PayPal's buyer protection programs will (or won't) cover you (Section 2.4.4). But there's more. This section shows you what you need to do before you bid, and it offers specialized strategies for the pricey stuff, like jewelry, cars, and real estate.

If you plan to bid $15,000 or more, you need to contact eBay in advance; eBay requires big-ticket bidders to have a valid credit card number on file or separate confirmation of your identity (explained below). If you haven't registered a credit card number with eBay, you can do so from your My eBay page. (Head to the navigation bar and click My eBay to pull up your My eBay page.) Click the Personal Information link, scroll down to Financial Information, and then click Change. After you've confirmed your password, you can type in information about your credit card.

If you submitted your credit card info a while ago, make sure the card hasn't expired since then. If it has, update your information.

If you'd rather not give eBay your credit card number, you can have your personal information verified for a $5 fee. When you do so, you get a nifty icon next to your eBay ID to show that you've been verified. From the navigation bar, select Services → ID Verify → Sign Up Now. Be prepared to give your date of birth, Social Security Number, and driver's license number (if you have one; if not, select No Driver's License from the drop-down list). When you click the Continue button, you authorize eBay to check your personal credit profile.

When eBay verifies your identity, you can't change your contact information (address and phone number) for 30 days. After 30 days, you can change this info—but if you do, you lose your verified status. You'll have to go through the verification process all over again if you want it back.

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Internet fraud is all over the news. And more than 60 percent of online fraud complaints are about online auctions. On the other hand, according to eBay, less than 1 percent of its auctions involve fraud.

Most eBay buyers and sellers are honest; the feedback system soon reveals those who aren't. But the scammers are there. eBay's size makes it easy to hide one fake auction, and the large number of newbies attracted to the site, eager to bid before learning their way around, means a constant supply of new people to con. This section shows you how to avoid becoming one of them.

eBay works hard to shut down scammers on the site. According to Matt Halprin of eBay's Trust & Safety Group, eBay NARU'd over a million accounts in 2004. Not all of those million accounts were scammers, of course; other violations (like moving and forgetting to change your contact info) can result in suspension from the site. And when you consider eBay's gargantuan size, it means more than 99 percent of eBayers do play fair.

eBay finds scammers when other eBayers report them. So if you see anything fishy going on, like one of the scams described in this section, go to Help → Security Center and let eBay know.

After five months of buying and examining products sold through eBay, Tiffany & Co. estimated that nearly three-quarters of all Tiffany items sold on eBay are fakes. Burberry contends that the number of sham Burberry items is closer to 90 percent. Whether you're looking for jewelry, handbags, watches, designer jeans, sunglasses—anything where the brand matters—be warned in advance that many of the "deals" you'll find on eBay really are too good to be true.

Cheap knockoffs of exclusive, high-priced designer goods have flooded the market worldwide in recent years. It's become such a problem that eBay has set up a special program for designers to report (and remove) auctions for fake goods; see the box on Section 4.3.2 for more about this program, called VeRO.

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Where else but eBay can you reach millions of customers, find buyers for everything from those old toys in your closet to brand-new diamond necklaces, and accept payment—all while relaxing in your bunny slippers? Selling stuff on eBay is so easy that regular people—that is, folks without prior retail experience—are doing everything from supplementing their income (and cleaning out their basements to boot) to starting full-fledged home-based businesses. Everybody, it seems, is making money selling on eBay.

There's gold in them thar auctions, all right. And with the tips and tricks you'll find in this chapter, you can join the rush. It includes the lowdown on:

Finding stuff to sell.
Registering as a seller.
Figuring out what it'll cost you.
Listing an item: the Sell Your Item form in glorious detail.
Deciding on the best time to end an auction.
Getting paid.
Packing and shipping properly to reduce dreaded returns.
Troubleshooting disputes and other problems.

If you're new to eBay, take some time to explore the site and buy a few things (Chapters 1 and 2) before you jump into selling. This feeling-out process helps you in two important ways:

Buying helps you build the feedback rating you need in order to sell. When you start out on eBay, your feedback rating (Section 2.1) is zip, zilch, zero. And that's how it should be, because feedback ratings describe transactions—and you, as a brand-new eBayer, haven't yet participated in any transactions.

The problem is, few experienced eBayers will buy from a seller with no feedback. So, to start building a feedback rating that encourages buyers to do business with you, you have to begin by buying a few items yourself. (They can be inexpensive trinkets.)

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If you're new to eBay, take some time to explore the site and buy a few things (Chapters 1 and 2) before you jump into selling. This feeling-out process helps you in two important ways:

Buying helps you build the feedback rating you need in order to sell. When you start out on eBay, your feedback rating (Section 2.1) is zip, zilch, zero. And that's how it should be, because feedback ratings describe transactions—and you, as a brand-new eBayer, haven't yet participated in any transactions.

The problem is, few experienced eBayers will buy from a seller with no feedback. So, to start building a feedback rating that encourages buyers to do business with you, you have to begin by buying a few items yourself. (They can be inexpensive trinkets.)
Buying helps you conduct necessary research. How do you know how to price your stuff and present it—how to describe it so people want to buy it, what kinds of pictures to include with your item description, and so on—if you haven't spent some time checking out other auctions? The answer is, you don't.

If you're considering selling furniture, for example, check out a bunch of furniture auctions. Make a note of what sells and what doesn't, and see if you can figure out why. Is the price too high? The description hard to understand? The auction too short for bidders to find it before it ends? Which auctions make you want to open your wallet? Which ones make you want to run the other way? Make copious notes, and save them: you'll need them when you decide to list your own items (Section 5.4).

When you have an item to sell, check out similar auctions that have ended recently. They can teach you the value of your stuff and give you clues on how to sell it for the highest price.

From the top of any eBay page, click the Advanced Search link and then type in keywords related to the item you want to sell. (For example, you might type in "Miles Davis records".) Then turn on "Completed listings only" before you click the Search button. Your results show auctions that ended in the last 30 days. Use the "Sort by" drop-down list to sort the results by end date if you want to see the most recent auctions; sort by price (highest first) if you want to look for pricing trends.

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Start by selling what you already have—stuff you don't have any use for anymore, but that someone else might treasure. That rocking horse your 20-year-old daughter loved when she was a toddler, say, or the 78 RPM records gathering dust in your garage. (Can you say vintage?) Holiday gifts of the I-had-no-idea-they-made-china-this-ugly variety are also a good place to start.

If you were going to organize a garage sale or list a few things in the classifieds, what would you sell? Use these things to break into selling on eBay.

After you've completed a couple of auctions and know how things work from the seller's side, you can always ramp up your listings. Chapter 7 gives you ideas for where you can find more stuff to sell. But take it slow: if you try to sell more than you can handle when you're still learning, you'll end up with unhappy buyers—and the negative feedback that goes with them.

Also, be aware that there are some things you can't sell on eBay. Some of these aren't surprising, such as guns, human body parts (yuck), drug paraphernalia, pirated CDs or DVDs, and lock-picking devices. Others, however, might surprise you. For example, you can't sell a nonworking antique musket; eBay prohibits the sale of any kind of firearm, although you could sell the individual parts. You also can't sell anything that bears the insignia of the KKK, the SS, or the Nazis, including some authentic World War II memorabilia. Pets, gift cards worth more than $500, television shows you recorded, wine (unless you're an approved, licensed wine seller), and designer knockoffs are all taboo.

Before you start selling, take a minute to check out eBay's list of prohibited items: at the bottom of almost any page, click the Policies link and then click "Prohibited and restricted items."

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The only free things in life are true love and homegrown tomatoes. Everything else—and that includes selling stuff on eBay—costs.

Exactly how much eBay charges to let you sell on their site depends on the choices you make when you list your item (Section 5.4) and the final price your item goes for when the auction ends. Altogether, eBay charges three different categories of sellers' fees:

Insertion fee. The insertion fee is the minimum you pay to list an item, and it ranges from a quarter to just under five dollars, based on the starting price you choose for your item, according to the fee schedule in Table 5-1.

Table 5-1: eBay Insertion Fees
Your Item's Starting Price

Table of Contents

Section 2.3.1.1: Paying with PayPal

Section 3.4.2.1: Earning Anything Points