eBay Bidding Tips
EBay is an online auction website that allows you to bid on and buy almost any item you can think of from the convenience of your home. EBay has become popular because you can often buy brand-new items much cheaper than in regular stores and you can often find used items not offered elsewhere. However, eBay may prove tough if you're a new bidder and are not aware of some nuances that can prevent you from successful bidding.
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How Does Bidding Work?
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Whenever you bid on an eBay auction item, you need to enter the top amount you are willing to pay, which will be accepted as long as it's more than the starting price. However, once you make your bid, the posted price for an item will go up only by a predetermined fraction of the initial price. This is done for one simple reason: The auction developers do not want the price of the item to go over what might be its regular retail price.
For example, if an item started with a $10 minimum bid and you made a bid of $15, the posted price will go up by only 50 cents to $10.50. Anyone else bidding on the item will see that the current bid is $10.50 but will have to exceed your maximum bid of $15 to actually win the auction.
However, nobody knows what your maximum bid is except you. Therefore, there is a higher chance that someone will post a bid less than your $15 bid right away and will give up before reaching the limit set by you. EBay will automatically raise your bid by predetermined increments (50 cents for amounts from $5 to $24.99) until your bid limit is reached, thus foiling other bidders until they exceed $15.
Early Bidding
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The items posted by sellers on eBay have a starting bid and an expiration time, which could be as short as one day. There's no point in bidding long before the expiration date since early bidding drives the price up. It's very easy to start bidding in competition with another bidder (who, by the way, might be a friend of the seller and may be there just to push the price up) and win an item for an excessive price that does not make sense. It's much more cost-effective to wait until the last hour of an auction and then check to see if the current price is worth it to you.
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Do Your Research
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Before you bid on eBay, do your research elsewhere: Find out what the item you are looking for is worth, what accessories or equipment it comes with, and how much the shipping costs usually are. Once you have all of this information, you can be sure that you are bidding on something that you actually want. You also need to thoroughly research the auctioned item on eBay itself to make sure that there is no fine print that tells you, for example, that you are buying a TV stand instead of an HDTV even though the item's picture shows a HDTV. If you are buying from overseas, make sure you contact the seller via email to find out the full cost prior to getting into the auction.
Research the Seller
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Online auctions open a great many opportunities for scammers. Check out the seller's feedback ratings before you bid to make sure there are no complaints posted by other buyers. Also, if the picture is not clear or seems as if it's copied from elsewhere on the Internet, contact the seller for more pictures. Legitimate sellers are willing to spend a few minutes to send you another picture if it means you might buy the item.
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