EBay for Dummies (27 page)
Authors: Marsha Collier
Tags: #Electronic Commerce, #Computers, #General, #E-Commerce, #Internet auctions, #Auctions - Computer network resources, #Internet, #Business & Economics, #EBay (Firm)
Strategies to Help You Outsmart the Competition
Your 2 cents do matter — at least on eBay. Here’s why: Many eBay members tend to round off their bids to the nearest dollar figure. Some choose nice, familiar coin increments such as 25, 50, or 75 cents. But the most successful eBay bidders have found that adding 2 or 3 cents to a routine bid can mean the difference between winning and losing. So I recommend that you make your bids in oddish figures (such as $15.02 or $45.57) as an inexpensive way to edge out your competition. If you have a proxy bid in, say for $22.57, and a sniper jumps in at the last second and places a bid for $22.50 — you still win! The highest bid placed always wins. For the first time ever, your 2 cents (or in this case 7 cents) may actually pay off!
That’s just one of the many strategies to get you ahead of the rest of the bidding pack without paying more than you should.
Note:
The strategies in this section are for bidders who are tracking an item over the course of a week or so, so be sure you have time to track the item and plan your next moves. Also, get a few auctions under your belt before you throw yourself into the middle of a bidding war.
Here’s a list of do’s and don’ts that can help you win your item. Of course, some of these tips
are
eBay-endorsed, but I had to get you to notice what I have to say somehow:
Don’t bid early and high.
Bidding early
and
high shows that you have a clear interest in the item. It also shows that you’re a rookie, apt to make mistakes. If you bid early and high, you may give away just how much you want the item.
Of course, a higher bid does mean more bucks for the seller and a healthy cut for the middleman. So it’s no big mystery that many sellers recommend it. In fact, when you sell an item, you may want to encourage it too.
If you must bid early and can’t follow the auction action (you mean you have a life?), use software or an online sniping service. Then feel free to place your highest possible bid! You can find out more about that in Chapter 20.
Do wait and watch your auction.
If you’re interested in an item and you have the time to watch it from beginning to end, I say that the best strategy is to wait. Mark the auction to Watch This Item on your My eBay page and remember to check it daily. But if you don’t have the time, go ahead — put in your maximum bid early and cross your fingers.
Don’t freak out if you find yourself in a bidding war.
Don’t keel over if, at the split second you’re convinced that you’re the high bidder with your $45.02, someone beats you out at $45.50.
You can increase your maximum bid to $46.02, but if your bidding foe also has a maximum of $46.02, the tie goes to the person who put in the highest bid first. Bid as high as you’re willing to go, but bid at the very end of the auction.
Do check the item’s bidding history.
If you find yourself in a bidding war and want an item badly enough, check the bidding history and identify your fiercest competitor; then refer to the previous section “Get to Know the Other Bidders” for a pre-auction briefing.
To get a pretty exact picture of your opponent’s bidding habits, make special note of the times of day when he or she has bid on other auctions. You can adjust your bidding times accordingly.
Do remember that most deals go through without a problem.
The overwhelming majority of deals on eBay are closed with no trouble, which means that if the auction you’re bidding in is typical and you come in second place, you’ve lost. Or maybe not . . .
Pirates of the Caribbean . . . or Carribean?
Just before the movie
Pirates of the Caribbean
premiered; Disneyland gave out exclusive movie posters to its visitors. My then college student daughter, savvy eBayer that she is, snagged several copies to sell on the site. She listed them (one at a time) when the movie opened and couldn’t get more than the starting bid of $9.99 for each of them.
When we searched eBay for
pirates poster,
we found that the very same posters listed with a misspelled title, “Pirates of the Carribean,” were selling for as high as $30 each. After selling out her initial stock, my daughter found another seller who had ten for sale — in one auction — with the proper spelling. She bought those as well (for $5.00 each) and sold them with misspelled titles on the site for between $15 and $27!
The moral of this story is always to search alternate spellings of your item; you might possibly eke out a gem without any competition.
If the winning bidder backs out of the auction or the seller has more than one of the item, the seller
could
(but isn’t obligated to) come to another bidder and offer to sell the item at the second bidder’s price through eBay’s Second Chance option. (See Chapter 13 for more details on this feature.)
Time Is Money: Auction Strategy by the Clock
You can use different bidding strategies depending on how much time is left in an auction. By paying attention to the clock, you can learn about your competition, beat them out, and end up paying less for your item.
Most auctions on eBay run for a week; the auction item page always lists how much time is left. However, sellers can run auctions for as short as one day or as long as ten days. So synchronize your computer clock with eBay’s master time and become the most precise eBay bidder around. Figure 7-4 shows eBay’s Official Time page (which you can find at the very bottom of almost every eBay page).
To synchronize your clock, make sure that you’re logged on to the Internet and can easily access the eBay Web site. Then follow these steps:
Figure 7-4:
eBay’s Official Time page.
1. Go into your computer’s Control Panel and double-click the icon that represents your system’s date and time functions.
2. On the eBay Web site, click the Site Map link, which is above the navigation bar on the top of every eBay page.
3. Click the eBay Official Time link.
This link is located at the bottom of the Browse column on the left side of the page.
4. Check your computer’s time against eBay’s current time.
5. Click the minutes in your computer’s clock and then click the Reload button (sometimes it’s called Refresh) on your browser.
Clicking Reload ensures that you see the latest, correct time from eBay.
6. Type the minutes displayed on the eBay Official Time page as soon as the newly reloaded page appears.
7. Repeat Steps 5 and 6 to synchronize your computer’s seconds display with eBay’s.
This process takes a little practice, but it can mean the difference between winning and losing an auction.
You don’t need to worry about the hour display unless you don’t mind your system clock displaying Pacific Time.
Most bidding on eBay goes on during East Coast work time and early evening hours, which gives you a leg up if you live out West. Night-owl bidders will find that after 10 p.m. Pacific Time (about 1:00 a.m. Eastern Time), lots of bargains are to be had. And believe it or not, lots of auctions end in the wee hours of the morning. Monday holidays are also great for bargains, as are Thanksgiving and the day after. While everyone is in the living room digesting and arguing about what to watch on TV (or getting up at 5:00 a.m. to buy the big discount deal at Wal-Mart), fire up eBay and be thankful for the great bargains you can win.