Depending on your point of view, eBay is either the world’s greatest auction bazaar or the world’s greatest rummage sale. At any given time, about a half-million items are being auctioned on eBay. A recent 60 Minutes story about the online auction house revealed that over 100,000 people earn an income selling items on eBay. I’m not the kind of person who enjoys shopping, but I visit eBay three or four times a week because I enjoy looking at and occasionally purchasing folk art items. I have purchased about twenty folk art items on eBay in the past three years. Along the way, I became something of an expert on paño arte handkerchief drawings by prisoners in the American southwest, handknit sweaters made by the Salish Indians of British Columbia, sandpaper paintings from the nineteenth century, and West African barbershop art. I owe these peculiar fascinations to eBay. It’s been a lot of fun. The problem with eBay is that so many items are up for auction that finding what you’re interested in can be difficult. Unless you know how to look for items that interest you or where to find these items, you will soon get lost. This article explains how to search eBay and how to maintain a “My eBay” page where you can save searches and the names of sellers you like. You also get strategies for bidding and discover the mechanics of eBay how to place bids, research sellers, and close a sale.

Registering with eBay

To bid on items at eBay, you must register. Registering costs nothing. Besides being able to bid, registered members get to keep a “My eBay” page for tracking items they are watching or bidding on. Registering also entitles you to a Favorites page where you can save searches, save category names so you can go to categories quickly, and save the names of eBay sellers whose goods you like. To register, go to this address: www.ebay.com. Then click the Register link and fill in the form. You’ll be asked the usual stuff your name, address, and so on. Remember your password, because you will have to enter it whenever you sign in. For a User ID, don’t use your e-mail address. Doing so makes you susceptible to all kinds of junk mail. If you need to change names, passwords, or other personal information, go to the Preferences tab of the My eBay page (the next section in this article explains how to open this page). Occasionally, eBay members get e-mail solicitations that look as though they are from eBay asking for personal information such as addresses and credit card numbers. These solicitations are fraudulent. Registering is the only time eBay asks for personal information. Moreover, eBay does not keep its members’ credit card information on file. If you get an e-mail that supposedly comes from eBay and asks you to update your personal information, go to the eBay Security Center at http://pages.ebay.com/security center and report this false solicitation.

Signing In to Your My eBay Page

To sign in to eBay, go to www.ebay.com, click the My eBay link, enter your User ID and password, and click the Sign In button. You land in your My eBay page. Every registered member gets one of these pages. Starting here, you can do just about anything a body can do in eBay. To return to your My eBay page at any time, click the My eBay link at the top of the screen. The My eBay page offers these tabs for tracking your activity in eBay:

-  Bidding/Watching: A list of items you have placed a bid on, items you are watching, and items you have won. Watching an item means to bookmark it so you can click its name on the Bidding/Watching tab and revisit its Web page. For each item on this tab, eBay tells you its current price, how many bids have been made on it, and how much time remains before the auction closes (if it hasn’t already closed).

-  Selling: A list of items you are selling or have sold. Selling items on eBay isn’t covered in this article.

-  Favorites: Lists of saved searches, category names, and seller names. After you have carefully constructed a search (say, for Elvis 45s), you can save the search and instantly conduct it again by clicking its name on this page. You can also quickly go to item categories or see what your favorite sellers are offering.  -  Accounts: For sellers, so they can track monetary transactions.  -  Feedback: Starting here, you can rate people who have sold you items and see how sellers have rated you. eBay maintains buyer and seller ratings so that buyers can buy with confidence and sellers can sell with confidence.  -  Preferences: Go here to change your personal information your User ID name, password, and so on.  -  All: For people who like scrolling, this tab has what is on all the other tabs.

Searching for Items of Interest

What are you interested in? Stereo equipment? Antique cowboy clothes? Bank vaults? Everything except guns and body organs is auctioned on eBay. The question is: Where on eBay is it located? Unless the item you want to find has a very specific name say, a Canon S50 Powershot S-50 you will have trouble finding it. You can’t simply enter “camera” in the Search box, because that means wading through thousands of auctions before finding a camera you want. As an experiment, I just entered camera in the search box and got 45,314 auctions pertaining to cameras! You would need a lot of stamina and time to look into that many auctions. To help you find your diamond in the rough, the following pages explain how to search eBay. All searches begin on the My eBay page.

A straight search

As I just explained, a straight search is useful if the item you are looking for has a very specific name. For example, I entered the term Canon S50 Powershot S-50 in the Search text box, and I found 67 auctions rather than the 45,314 I got when I entered the term camera. eBay offers two ways to conduct a straight search:

-  Simple search: Enter the term in the Search text box on your My eBay page and click the Search button.

-  Basic or Advanced search: Click the Search link on your My eBay page. From here, you can fill in a form and conduct a Basic Search or an Advanced Search (by clicking the Advanced Search tab). These forms offer many criteria for narrowing down a search and finding what you want. If you want to get more search results, select the Search Titles and Descriptions check box. This tells eBay to look for your search terms in item descriptions as well as titles.

Browsing eBay categories

eBay auctions are classified by category, subcategory, sub-subcategory, and so on. In the browsing search method, you locate a category or subcategory that describes items you are interested in, you get a list of items in the category or subcategory, and you then click items one at a time to look them over. The browsing technique requires a fair amount of free time. For every gem you discover, you have to look at about 300 pieces of dross. Oh well, browsing can be fun. Follow these steps to browse different eBay categories:

1. On your My eBay page, click the Browse link. You see the Categories page.

2. Scroll down to see the complete category and subcategory list.

3. Click on a category or subcategory and start browsing different items. Want to see detailed category lists with the names of many subsubcategories? Click the Category Overview link in the Categories window

Browsing to and searching a single category

A browse/search permits you to search exclusively in a single eBay category or subcategory. Under this searching method, you browse to the category you are interested in, and then you conduct a search exclusively in that category. In my experience, this is the most efficient way to search eBay.

Saving searches, categories, and sellers/stores

After you hang around eBay a while, you will find yourself, depending on your interests, revisiting the same categories, conducting the same searches, and looking at wares offered by the same handful of sellers. Rather than construct the same searches or browse around for the same categories over and over, you can put these searches and categories on the Favorites tab of your My eBay page. Then all you have to do to conduct a search or visit a category is click its name on the Favorites tab. Putting the name of a seller or eBay store on the Favorites tab is a great way to see a sellers’ items. I have identified four sellers on eBay who consistently offer items I am interested in. I can see these items merely by clicking a name on the Favorites tab of my My eBay page. Starting on the Favorites tab of your My eBay page, follow these instructions to be able to quickly visit categories, conduct searches, and see what is being offered by different sellers:

-  Searches: On the My Favorite Searches part of the page, click the Add New Search link. You see the Basic Search form. Describe the search and click the Search button. If the search results are to your liking, click the Add to My Favorites Searches link to enter the search on your My eBay page.

-  Categories: On the My Favorite Categories part of the page, click the Add/Change Categories link. Then click the names of categories and subcategories till you come to a category you like to visit often. Click the Submit button at the bottom of the page.

-  Sellers/Stores: On every auction page is a link called View Seller’s Other Items. By clicking this link, you can see a list of other items that the seller is offering. When you find a seller who consistently offers items you find interesting, jot down his or her User ID. Then, starting on the Favorites tab of your My eBay page, click the Add New Seller/Store link. Enter the seller’s User ID in the Seller’s User ID or Store Name text box and click the Save Favorite button. You can rearrange the Favorites page by clicking the Move Table Up or Move Table Down button to the right of the My Favorite headings. For example, to move My Favorite Categories to the top of the Favorites page, start clicking the Move Table Up button on the right side of the My Favorite Categories heading.

A Few Rules to Live By

Observe these rules as you bid on eBay items:

-  Avoid impulse bidding. Yes, the beanbag chair is being offered at a good price, but do you really need a beanbag chair?

-  Investigate the price. Just because an item is being auctioned at eBay doesn’t mean that it’s a good buy. Remember: Many people who auction at eBay are merely reselling items that they purchased at a discount. Sometimes you can purchase these items straight from the manufacturer yourself and buy them cheaply. After all, all kinds of stuff is for sale on the Internet.

-  Know what the shipping and handling charges are. Some sellers who auction items cheaply make up the lost revenue by charging exorbitant fees for shipping and handling.

-  Contact the seller if you have any questions. eBay makes it easy to contact a seller. On the item’s eBay page, click the Ask Seller a Question link. A message form appears so you can send an e-mail to the seller. The reply will be sent to the e-mail address you gave eBay when you registered.

-  Investigate the seller. On the item’s eBay page, you can click the Read Feedback Reviews link to see a summary of the seller’s transactions and ratings. Scroll down the page to see what buyers have said about the seller.

-  Ask yourself how difficult the item is to assemble, if it needs assembling. Not everyone can interpret the complicated directions that come with items you have to put together yourself. Not everyone can wield a screwdriver. Because purchases are delivered by mail, they need assembling more often than other purchases. If you’re not good at assembling things, make sure that the items you buy are already assembled.