eBay is the best source for auctions on the net. However, it can be a buyers best friend or worst enemy, depending on how it is used. Many sellers use dirty business tactics on eBay to sell their items at high prices. Therefore, when buying, you must take into account many factors before placing a bid.
This guide will teach you what to look for when searching for items on eBay, and will provide you with the tools you need to get an item for the least amount of money.
Before Searching for an item on eBay, ask yourself these questions: 1. How much am I willing to spend for this item? Check various reputable sites (amazon, newegg, etc.) to see what the item is worth. 2. Do I want to buy the item new or can it be used? If you don’t mind buying the item used, set another price limit on how much you are willing to buy the item - if it is used. 3. How urgent do I need this item? If you don’t need the item as soon as possible, you will have more time to search for better prices. The downside of this is that this might cause you to miss out on a good deal, because “a better one might come up soon”. Once you’ve answered these questions, use the following tips to help you with buying on eBay: Searching For The Item 1. Check for Typos Sometimes sellers misspell the name of the items that they are selling. Therefore, people searching for this item will not find it at all. Use a site like Auctionbloopers to automatically generate a search which will list the various typos for your item. 2. Look at the average cost which the item sells for on eBay When you search for the item, sort by “Time: ending soonest”. Track some of the ending prices which the item ended at and see how they compare to your spending limit. You may want to tweak your limit a bit here. 3. Note the ending time and date If an item ends really late at night, chances are that it won’t sell as well as an item that ends during the day when most people are browsing the web. Finding The Item 1. Read the title and description VERY CAREFULLY. As mentioned before, eBay contains some very dirty business tactics. Sometimes the title and description will word things in a way that will make you think that you are receiving exactly what you want; while, in fact, you are only getting the manual for your item. Engadget covered how someone paid $900 for three Playstations, thinking it was a new Playstation 3. 2. Look at the shipping cost. Many sellers use an annoying tactic of setting the item at a really low price, but making shipping costs very high. Be aware of the shipping cost at all times. 3. Check the users feedback Look at the feedback percentage of the seller, and the feedback score. If it is lower than 90% or so, be weary. Make sure you read the comments that other users left for the seller. 4. Read only the users negative feedback Use Toolhaus to read only the negative feedback that a user has. If you have firefox with greasemonkey, get this script. Bidding On The Item 1. Sniping If you found an auction worthy of bidding, keep this in mind: it’s the best to bid at the last seconds of the auction. This is known as sniping. The reason this works is that people like to defend their bids. So if a person bids a certain amount 5 hours before the auction ends, and you overbid him 4 hours before, he has 4 hours to decide whether he wants to continue bidding or not. Many people continue bidding. However, if you snipe, and bid a few seconds before the end of the auction, he will have no time to rethink whether he wants to follow through with another bid. How To Snipe: To snipe automatically, you can use gixen for free. It is a web based sniping tool. If you prefer using a software sniping tool, you can use baygenie.
Once you get an average estimate, set a limit on how much you are willing to spend for this item.
However, it is important to note that although many auctions for the same item tend to sell for a similar price, people get lucky frequently. Don’t stop searching for your item just because the item seems to sell for a a high price. Check for a few days, you never know what you may find.
If the Shipping costs says “Check item description and payment instructions or contact seller for details”, then do exactly that. It takes less than a minute to ask the seller a question, and most sellers reply very quickly.
People tend to become excited when they see an iPod being sold for cheap, but don’t realize that the shipping cost can increase the price significantly. 
You can snipe manually or automatically using a program or web site. If you want to snipe manually, you might want to consider getting this greasemonkey script. It puts a countdown clock next to the “end time”, like the screen shot shows.
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