EBay for Dummies (17 page)
Authors: Marsha Collier
Tags: #Electronic Commerce, #Computers, #General, #E-Commerce, #Internet auctions, #Auctions - Computer network resources, #Internet, #Business & Economics, #EBay (Firm)
Finding other sources of information
If you’re interested in collecting a particular item, you can get a lot of insider collecting information without digging too deep:
Go to other places on eBay.
eBay’s chat rooms and message boards (covered in detail in Chapter 17) are full of insider info. The eBay community is always willing to educate a newbie. Remember to take advice with caution, however, because sometimes the “competition” likes to keep the good nuggets of info for themselves.
Go to the library.
Books and magazines are great sources of info. At least one book or one magazine probably specializes in your chosen item. For example, if old furniture is your thing,
Antiquing For Dummies,
by Ron Zoglin and Deborah Shouse (Wiley Publishing, Inc.), can clue you in to what antiques collectors look for.
If you find an interesting specialty magazine at the library, try entering the title in your search engine of choice. You may just find that the magazine has also gone paperless and you can read it online.
Go to someone else in-the-know.
Friends, clubs, and organizations in your area can give you a lot of info. Ask your local antiques dealer about clubs you can join and see how much info you end up with.
Looking to Find an Item? Start Your eBay Search Engine
The best part about shopping on eBay is that, aside from collectibles, you can find just about everything from that esoteric lithium battery to new designer dresses (with matching shoes) to pneumatic jackhammers. New or used, it’s all here — if you can find it hiding in the (get this!) 6 million new daily listings. (According to eBay, 89 million listings are on the site worldwide at any given time. That’s a lot of gavels being banged!)
Finding the nuggets (deals) can be like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack. The search secrets in this chapter will put you head and shoulders above your competition for the deals.
eBay has lots of cool ways for you to search for items (sample ’em in Chapter 3). Although eBay allows you to search by item number, let’s be realistic here. Do you remember what I said a few paragraphs back about the number of active listings? I can’t remember my own phone number, let alone an item number (and I never write them down correctly). Look for those numbers to get longer and longer as eBay continues to grow in popularity. Four main options are the most useful for researching:
Search Title (or Search Title and Description)
Search Items by Seller
Search Items by Bidder
Search Items in eBay Stores
You can access the four search options by clicking the Advanced Search link to the right of the Search box at the top of any eBay page. Each search option can provide a different piece of information to help you find the right item from the right seller at the right price.
If you plan to repeat specific eBay searches, I recommend that you conduct searches often by saving them in your My eBay Saved Searches area (see Chapter 18 to find out how). And when you find a particularly juicy item or subcategory, bookmark it, or if it’s an item, click Watch This Item (a link on the auction page just under the price), or use your My eBay page. (See Chapter 18 for more on eBay’s personal shopper.)
Testing, testing . . . how long does a search take on eBay?
Having a massive search engine is a matter of necessity on eBay — millions of items are up for auction at any given time — and often, an easy, fast search makes all the difference between getting and not getting. After all, time is money, and eBay members tend to be movers and shakers who don’t like standing still.
So how long do searches really take on eBay? I put it to the test. In the Search window of the eBay home page, I typed
1933 World’s Fair Pennant
and let ’er rip.
The search engine went through about 89 million general items and World’s Fair items (860 of them in 1999, 1,200 items in 2003 and over 2,100 in 2006!) and gave me my one specific item in just 4 seconds. (Now, if the wizards at eBay could only figure out a way to find that sock that always escapes from clothes dryers, they’d really be on to something.)
By the way, in 1999 that slightly wrinkled felt pennant got four bids and sold for $17.50; in 2003, the aging pennant sold for $43.88 with eight bids. And today? In 2009, one just went for $14.99. Humph, must be the economy.
Using the Search page
When you click the Advanced Search link to the right of the Search box, the Search page appears. It’s the most basic of searches (with a few options) and the one you’ll be using the most. (To get the really advanced features, you must click the Advanced Search link at the very bottom of the page.)
When you use any of the Search options on eBay, the search engine looks for every listing (auction or fixed price) that has the words you’re looking for in the title or the description (if you specify so). The title (as you may expect) is just another word or group of words for what you call the item. For example, if you’re looking for an antique sterling iced tea spoon, just type
sterling iced tea spoon
into the search window (see Figure 5-1). If someone is selling a sterling iced-teaspoon and used exactly those words in his or her title or description, you’re in Fat City.
Figure 5-1:
Using Search to find sterling iced tea spoons.
Before you click the Search button, know you can narrow your search further. If you go to Advanced Search, you have the option of choosing how you want the search engine to interpret your search entry. You can have the search engine search the title and description for
All the words you type
Some of the words you type
The exact phrase in the order you’ve written it
When you’re familiar with the tricks listed later in this chapter, you’ll be able to get most of these fancy Search results in one of the many search boxes you see littered around the eBay site.
In addition to the following, you can find other useful criteria on the Advanced Search page (more on this further on):
What price range you want to see:
Type the price range you’re looking for, and eBay searches the specific range between that low and high price. If money is no object, leave this box blank.
Words to exclude:
If you want to find a sterling iced tea spoon, but you don’t want it to be plated silver, exclude the word
plated
from the drop-down menu.
From sellers:
You can exclude (or include) particular sellers. If you’d like, you can just search sellers from your Favorite Sellers list. (But why?)
The payment:
You may restrict your search to items that accept PayPal.
Within a category:
Use this option if you want to limit your search to a particular main (or
top-level
) category, for example, instead of searching all eBay categories. But why? eBay sellers are notorious for making listing mistakes and selecting wrong categories. Wait till you see your results, and then decide whether you want to narrow things.
The item location:
You can narrow your search to the United States only, North America, or worldwide. Depending on your item, this search criterion can help weed out the most esoteric items. If you’re looking for hefty items (like an elliptical exercise machine that will probably end up as a place to hang clothes) that would cost much too much to ship, you can specify how many miles from your zip code (or any zip) you will allow the search to extend.
The order in which you want your results to appear:
If you indicate
Time: Ending Soonest
, the search engine gives you the results so that auctions closing soon appear first on the list.
Best Match
is the eBay default, and I recommend you select a sort that better fits your needs.
Time: Newly Listed
lists all the newly listed auctions.
Price: Lowest First
and
Price:
Highest First
list them just that way.
Whether you want the search engine to check through item titles alone or check both item titles
and
item descriptions:
You will get more hits on your search if you select the Search Title and Description check box, but you may also get too many items that are out of your search range. See “Shortcuts for a quick eBay search,” later in this chapter, for some solid advice.