Top Ebay Tips and Tricks When Bidding on an Item By Mark James At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Use the Proxy bid feature. Especially if you're new to ebay, because this is hardly a technique, it's more just common sense. Just enter the maximum price you would be willing to pay, and then leave ebay to bid for you. This way, you won't spend more money than you want to, anyone who tries to snipe the auction will fail, and you won't spend agonising minutes waiting to see whether someone will raise your bid. As long as you are the bidder with the highest maximum, you will win. This is without doubt the safest thing to do if you are new, or you really want to make sure the item isn't sniped at the last second.

Have you ever looked at the "Completed Listings" feature, and noticed that some people are getting items for next to nothing? These are usually re-sellers. They bid low prices on a lot of items, hoping to cast their net over a wide enough area in order for them to get at least one. This is because they can re - sell at a profit - but you can just get cheap items, using this method. As a ordinary buyer, you can just bid low on 1 or 2 products and bid on another once you are outbid. Look at completed listings for the item you want, check out the prices that it's going for. After that, think of a price, submit a proxy bid and forget about it.

Of course, most of you would have known that I would mention sniping. Sniping, if you don't know, is when someone bids at the very last second and snatches the auction. Snipers make the unsuccessful bidders feel cheated - and sometimes the seller, if the seller feels the price would have risen substantially if it wasn't for sniping. Sellers often remind buyers that Proxy bids are the best way to bid. But what if you want to be a sniper? Well, if you've made your judgement about snipers and you want to start sniping auctions then it's useful to know that a whole industry has grown up around this method - and there are many free sniping products. Whether you trust the third party program is up to you, but it's really the only way to snipe, because there’s always the chance you'll get out-bid by a proxy bidder, so don't spend a lot of time trying to snipe right on the last second.

But if sniping is successful, why do people bid early?

Well, if you proxy bid say 100 pounds at the start, and the product starts at 99p, then people will try to bid - only to be outbid by you straight away. The product could be worth 300, but people will give up. If they don't - you haven't lost any money.

Also, if a product has a poor description, then you can take a risk and bid early, therefore disabling the edit function. The seller can now only add information, and that looks messy. Other people could be put off, and you could score a cheap item.

Hopefully now you can go out and bid and win a few auctions - don't get your hopes up though.

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