How To Get Free Stuff On Ebay

Hints and Tips for Using eBay

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We all know that eBay is popular, but do you know exactly how popular? There are currently 170 million active users across the world, of which 25 million regularly sell products on the site. Statistics show that an average of 86 million Americans use eBay each month. That puts the site third behind retail giants Wal-Mart (87 million) and Amazon (183 million unique visitors). eBay is an auction site that allows third party or private sellers to sell their goods. This means that eBay can't increase their market share by cutting prices or offering Black Friday-style deals to entice customers.

Tips for Buying from eBay

Although we all use the site, how much thought goes into buying something from eBay? For example, did you know that you can haggle on eBay? If you're checking out a buy-it-now listing, you can ask the seller whether they'll be willing to take less than their listing price. There's nothing wrong with asking as long as you're polite about it. Another tip that will save you money is to check on items using common misspellings. If an item is listed with a misspelling, it will get fewer views meaning it will get fewer bids so you might get a great deal. There are a few specialized search sites out there that will give you the most common misspellings so you don't need to be an English teacher to take advantage of this tip.

Tips for Selling on eBay

Selling on eBay is also something that should be done skillfully to maximize your profits. Work on building up your profile before you try and sell high priced items. You can do this as a buyer first which will build up your eBay history. Buy items for a few dollars and take time to give feedback and you'll build up a profile that gives buyers confidence in you. Other tips include starting bids low to attract bargain hunters and ending your auctions between 8:00 PM eastern time and 10:00 PM Pacific time as that's when visitor-ship peaks on eBay.

Fake eBay Messages

One of the biggest issues for user's security comes through fake E-mails that ask users to click a link and then log on. This sort of cyber-attack gives the hacker your personal details which they can use to gain access to your financial information on the official eBay site. If you're unsure whether an E-mail came from eBay, you should head to the My eBay section of the site and check for the message there, as all official E-mails are copied to the My Messages box on the site.

Fake eBay Site

As with the fake E-mails, you might also find yourself at a spoof website that looks very much like eBay but isn't the real deal. Clicking a link on an E-mail can lead you to a site that has "eBay" in the address but isn't eBay.com. If you find yourself on a site that doesn't have "ebay.com" immediately before the first forward slash (/), don't enter your eBay user ID and password. If you think you've made a mistake and given your details to a hacker, go into the official site and change your password.

Shopping Made Easy

Shopping with eBay is easy so you can get lazy and head there without considering other sites. It's not always the cheapest way of getting something either, especially if you're buying used items. Far too often users make the mistake of checking other similar eBay listings to determing which is best or cheapest without thinking about other similar sites like Facebook or the used marketplace on Amazon that could have the same item for less.

Which eBay Auction Is Best?

You can choose an auction-style or a fixed price listing, but which one is best? That really depends on the product you're selling. A rare collectible item should make more money when bidders compete with one another for it, but an auction-style listing will run for a set amount of time so there's no quick sale. If you know what you should get for an item, then a buy it now auction is probably the best choice. If you're not sure, you should start with a fixed price listing because it can be changed to an auction-style listing. You can change an auction listing to a buy it now listing once the auction's begun.