When conducting searches on eBay listings, you may find items in a purple box found at the top of the search listings. Usually these items are ignored as these items are usually more expensive than other items.

However in some high traffic areas, with the help of this featured option, your item gets the attention it deserves. Just ensure that the location you place this featured option is one where potential customers will see it.

Also ensure that you sell the product at a good rate, so that it covers the additional expenses you pay for a featured option listing. However avoid placing featured options in listings that have many featured options as this way your featured option tactic will not be beneficial to you.

Buying and Selling on ebay can save you money. It can also make you money if you learn to understand the concept.

Steps

1. Learn to do productive searches for items of interest.

2. Mark those items to watch on your My eBay.

3. Watch items of interest until the last 5-10 minutes of auction.

4. Go to auction page and prepare proxy bid. Be cheap. Don’t set proxy higher than you are willing to go. REMEMBER you will also pay shipping when you win the auction. Consider this as part of your total investment.

5. As late as you dare, click bid.

6. If you lose, try again on the next watched auction.

7. If you win, pay promptly.

8. Make sure you don’t enter the wrong amount

Tips

* Never overbid on an item there are a lot of - if there’s another item identically priced, bid only a little on the first, and push them both up at the same rate, until you are the winning bidder.

* If you aren’t available during the end of the auction, consider using a third-party bidder, such as eSnipe or PhantomBidder. These tools also allow you to bid at the last minute so you can avoid getting into bidding wars.

* Many auctions finish without any bids because the seller has made spelling mistakes in their auction eg Britanny Spears. These are potential bargains. Tools like Invisible-Auctions.com, Missing-Auctions.com or Typozay can help you find these auctions and save money.

* Bid during the summer or other holiday periods as many bidders are not in front of their computer so less competition.

* Look for auctions that are finishing early in morning or late at night.

* Bid odd values - eg $10.23 rather $10 - as most people bid in round numbers.

* If you are paying by PayPal - do a quick search in Google for Paypal codes. Often you can get sizable discounts on your final purchase cost or free postage.

* Watch out for postage. Many sellers compensate for low prices (and avoid fees!) by charging high postage.

* Look out for free or cheap listing days. There are usually a lot more auctions chasing the same amount of bidders in the week after these so great potential for bargains.

* REMEMBER: people will buy anything and every thing so if you think that something is outrageous chances aer tha tpoeple will want it somewhere.

Warnings

* Don’t spend more than you’ve got, muppet.

Though eBay is an online auction site, you have to provide great customer service to get better sales and feedback on eBay.

This is because when a buyer receives quality customer care from you, they give you positive feedback, and look forward to working with you in the future.

In other words, to make money on eBay, you have to cease thinking of it as an auction house, and think more of it as a business.

In a brick and mortar business, you would work at being helpful and respectful to your customers so that they will return to you in the future.

Just like you would do anything to ensure that your customer had an enjoyable shopping experience in your real life shop, you have to ensure that your eBay customer had a memorable experience with you.

On freezing the account of the seller, you have to contact eBay to get the name and address of the seller. If you don’t have the phone number, use the name and address to find it. With all this information, you will be able to do a quick background check on the seller to find out if the address he had provided eBay is matches his exact address.

This can be done using a reverse address check which is offered by Google for free. There are lots of sites on Google that do this for you. All you have to do is to enter the address given to you by eBay.

With this, you should find a phone number that is associated with the address. If you don’t find anything, you could go to Intelius and provide the information you had collected. Though this may cost $30, you will get the phone number and name of the person staying at the given address.

It is possible to use PayPal coupons, which are available at great discounts for your eBay transactions. Though you should receive your PayPal coupon on becoming a PayPal account holder, you can follow these tips if you don’t receive any coupons.

The first thing to do is to create a new eBay account, and not use it. Soon you will receive emails from eBay inviting you to bid for an item, where you can use a PayPal coupon if you win the item.

The second option to get PayPal coupons is to use Google to look for them. As these coupons are issued to all eBay members some time or the other, there are many websites that work only at sharing different types of electronic coupons.

If you find that you don’t have stuff to sell on eBay, you could become an eBay trading assistant to help people who don’t have the time to sell items on eBay.

As an eBay trading assistant, you have to be an experienced eBay seller with a good standing, where you register for someone else to sell their items.

As an eBay trading assistant, you have to collect items from potential ebuyers, take photos of the item and write descriptions of them to place on eBay listings, using your User ID.

You are in charge of all delivery and payments of the product and have to hand over the payment to the owner on selling the product.

You of course, have a to charge a small fee for your time and efforts and products that are not sold are either returned to the owner or can be donated to charity.

The fee you charge will be 10 – 20% of the final selling price, and your eBay or PayPal fees.

There are many people who have opened eBay stores on eBay for the many advantages it offers. The greatest advantage is the increased exposure it gives you. On opening an eBay store, you get an average of 25% increase in sales.

With an eBay store you also find an increase in the number of repeat customers to you store. This is because if you sell your products as an individual, other members may not remember you or your services.

However if you operate an eBay store, people remember your store name and may refer your eBay store to friends and family.

With an eBay store, you are also offered an automatic relisting of all your unsold items. Moreover, you get to list your items for one to four months at a time. This is much better than the 10 days offered to normal users.

And with an eBay store, you become more professional and people will believe you more as they consider you to be reliable and honest.

EBay charges seller fees for using eBay to sell your products. However if you don’t pay your seller fees, you may end up with your powerseller status getting affected. Moreover you may not become a powerseller again, even if you pay your outstanding balances.

With your not paying eBay seller fees, eBay will suspend your account. And when regular customers see that you have been suspended, they may not come back to your store.

Not paying your fees will lead to the phrase ‘not a registered member’ ending up next to your name, to indicate that you have been suspended.
Some buyers may not be aware that this is a temporary suspension, and may never come to your store or auctions again. So ensure that there is always money in your bank account or credit card to cover your eBay bill.

One of the major changes implemented in the policy of eBay site is that it is no more possible for sellers to leave negative or neutral feedback of their experiences on eBay. The reason eBay has done this is to avoid visitors deciding not to visit eBay again.

This is because eBay feels that by being extremely rude to buyers, not only are the buyers hurt, but all of eBay gets hurt. On feeling hurt, not only does the buyer not come back to eBay again, but he also advises his friends against visiting eBay too.

Moreover, by providing negative feedbacks, eBay is indirectly reducing the number of visitors to the site. This is running against the policy of eBay, which aims at bringing buyers back, and not chasing them away.

By: Joel Dresse

Finding great items to sell can be difficult for some people. After all, your auction site business depends on great items that you can purchase very inexpensively and sell for a profit. If you are having difficulty finding items online for your auction business, here are some easy tips.

One of the best ways to find a great idea is to check out the auction sites. Many people don’t realize that great ideas are on practically every page of Ebay. You can easily look at which products are selling, how much they sell for and the average price that they are sold at. Using Ebay is probably the easiest and quickest way to find great products that already have a thriving market.

You can also check out auction site forums. Here many people talk about great products that are hot. There are even auction analysis companies that analyze millions of pieces of data to come up with great items for their customers to sell.

There are many overseas manufacturers and distributors that would love to sell their items to you for a great price, which can be quickly converted into profit. Many of these overseas manufacturers are usually located on large marketplace websites which are easy to find. So if you are looking for great items to sell on auction sites, follow the above tips