The advantages and disadvantages of buying on ebay

The Case For. Whatever you want to buy, whether it’s large or small, cheap or expensive, everyday or just plain weird, the chances are you can find it on eBay. It’s the largest auction site in the world, and when it comes to the variety of what’s on sale, size is vital. When was the last time you heard of someone getting a great deal on a weird and wonderful item at uBid or Yahoo Auctions? People who’ve got used to eBay don’t often stop to think how amazing it is – an online marketplace where you can buy things from all over the world, without leaving your home. You can get things that you would never think anyone would bother to sell, and you can get them cheaply. The powerful search engine means that you can find things you’ll like without even knowing exactly what you’re looking for. Not only that, but you can send money quickly and electronically to almost all of these sellers, without worrying about currency conversion or exchange rates or anything else. If you’re looking for rarities or bargains, eBay is an ideal place to buy. The Case Against. However much you might dream of a truly international marketplace, international postage costs will always bring you back down to reality with a thud. Do you have any idea how much it costs to send even the smallest thing to the other side of the world? Then there’s the fact that eBay is packed with fraudsters and scammers, preying on the innocent users who’ve heard that eBay is a great place to buy stuff but don’t know the risks. People can lose thousands of dollars, and eBay do nothing. Is that fair? It is hard to even leave negative feedback for the very worst sellers, for fear that they will retaliate and leave a black mark against your own account. eBay is unfair to buyers when other buyers don’t play fair, and unfair to sellers who end up selling things for a very low price, only to have eBay’s fees take away the last part of their profit margin. The Verdict. Those are the arguments for and against. So is eBay good, or bad? I’ll leave it up to you to decide. For me, though, the answer is this: as long as you’re aware of the downsides, and you know how to protect yourself from scammers and fraudsters and how to get ahead of the competition, eBay is one of the best places in the world to shop. Having followed us this far, of course, you now know all these things, which means that for you, eBay is a great place! Now that you know so much about eBay, in fact, why not use it to do your holiday shopping? Millions of smart shoppers from around the world already flock to eBay every holiday season to save on their presents and other holiday stuff – the next email will show you how to become one of those people.

How to become an ebay sniper

If you bid for a few things on eBay, the chances are that sooner or later you’ll end up getting your bid beaten at the very last second by a ‘sniper’. This can be a frustrating experience, and while in theory sniping is against the rules and you can report it to eBay, in practice they never do anything about it. The bad news is that there’s only one way to beat the sniper – and that’s to become the sniper. The good news, though, is that once you understand sniping you can use it to win auctions at a far lower price than you would otherwise. Manual Sniping. Manual sniping isn’t that hard, if you have a lot of time to spare and a reasonably fast Internet connection. Write down when each auction that are bidding on ends, and then make sure that you’re sitting there in front of the page for that vital last minute. You can then outbid the current winning bidder, or defend your own winning bid. The only tip you really need to remember for manual sniping is to make sure that you set your maximum bid quite high – otherwise you might be automatically outbid, and the auction will have ended before you can bid again. Also, it’s not worth your time to compete against someone who is using an automated sniping service – if it’s any good, then they will always manage to outbid you. In the sniping arms race, you need to find a sniper of your own. Automatic Sniping. If you type ‘ebay sniping’ into your favourite search engine, you’ll come up with plenty of online services that will snipe on your behalf for a small fee. They usually let you have a free trial, so give it a go. If you don’t want to pay each time for an online service, then you might be better off getting a piece of software like iSnipeIt ( isnipeit) or SnipeRight ( sniperight). You can pay for these once and use them for as long as you want. Once you’ve installed the software on your computer, you tell it which auctions you want sniped and the maximum amount you’re willing to pay. The software will then place the bid with only a few seconds left. The only disadvantage is that you need to be able to leave your computer on nearly all the time, or you might miss the end of some auctions. A Sniping Alternative. If this all sounds a bit too much like playing dirty for you, then is another, more low-tech way to get around sniping. You can just email the seller and say that you were sniped at the last minute but would really like the item. If they have another to sell, the chances are they’ll agree to sell it to you for the price the auction closed at. Of course, there’s more to eBay than just bidding – the site offers a whole set of tools to help you manage your auctions. In the next email, we’ll take a look at these tools.

Should you run auctions on other sites besides ebay

eBay doesn’t have very many competitors, and the ones that there are remain small by comparison – that’s part of what makes eBay so powerful for niche items. If you’re selling more common things, though, you might like to list auctions on other sites besides eBay, to increase your potential customer base and avoid some of the occupational hazards of relying on eBay for all your business. But which ones are worth bothering with? Yahoo! Auctions. Yahoo Auctions wins in one big way: selling there is free. There are no listing fees or final value fees. What’s more, Yahoo is still one of the biggest sites around, and gets plenty of traffic to its auction site. The site benefits from Yahoo’s experience in providing good, categorised searching, and the site is easy to use all round. The rub, though, is that dodgy buyers and sellers are even more rampant on Yahoo than they are on eBay, and that’s saying something. Sellers on Yahoo Auctions can expect to run into far more non-paying buyers than they would on eBay. Also, the site is plastered with text ads, which get in the way, and the design in general leaves a lot to be desired – but then, so does eBay’s. uBid. uBid’s model is to offer more security for less flexibility. They pre-screen everything: sellers must be registered businesses and buyers must pre-register a credit card. It takes some of the ‘Wild West’ feeling out of selling – but it also takes away most of the fun. On eBay, you have complete control over what you’re doing, while selling on uBid feels like you’re just a faceless supplier for a big company. Searching for anything vaguely non-mainstream will come back with no results, to the point that it will quickly get frustrating for your buyers. If you’re just selling common consumer goods for the money, though, then by all means do it at uBid. Amazon Auctions. Amazon Auctions is an underused auction site. The design is quite bad, and searches don’t turn up many results. The payment system is the same one people use to buy things from Amazon itself, though, which seems more secure that PayPal. You might be more interested in becoming an Amazon Marketplace seller, which means that you can list your items on their main pages for people to see when they click the ‘Used & New from…’ link. This can be a good way to make a few sales, as you can simply keep your inventory updated at your Buy it Now prices and someone will occasionally buy something. You don’t even have to write a description or upload any pictures. This is probably a better thing to be using than Amazon Auctions. To sum up, registering your items at a few other auction sites could get you a few extra sales – but compared to eBay, they’re all very unimpressive, and have nowhere near as many users. If you’re trying to think of ways to expand your business, then there might be a shock in store for you with what I’m going to tell you next. Did you know that your eBay income is taxable? But stay calm – the next email will explain everything.