Article > Beginners Guide
The use of online auctions is extremely popular at the moment. They enable you to buy almost anything, as sites like eBay have many millions of items up for sale. They also allow you to sell items quickly and easily, whether you want to sell a few things you've had cluttering up a cupboard or want to take it more seriously and try to make an income by selling goods on eBay. Below we give some tips to get you started.
Register Now
We recommend that you begin by registering with eBay . This is very quick to do and is free. We also recommend you do this now and don't leave it until you're ready to trade, as for the first 30 days you are marked as a new user to other eBay members and that will make them less willing to trade with you, so joining now will mean you lose the new member status faster. You can find instructions here.
Take Your Time
Spend some time getting to know the auction site and how it works. Watch a few auctions in progress and see how the bidding progresses. Note how often items come up for auction, so you are not tempted to overbid for items that you could bid on in a later auction for less.
Read The Feedback
Sites like eBay allow people to record feedback on the people they've traded with. This is useful as you can see what sellers have a good reputation and avoid those that have a bad one.
Often you will find some sellers that regularly auction items that you are interested in. Get to know them by reading all their feedback and watch their auctions to get a feel for how much you would have to bid in the future to win.
Don't Over Bid
When you come to buy for the first time don't allow yourself to get carried away and bid more than the item's really worth. This is easy to do, but set yourself a limit. While you can get bargains on eBay, many people have often paid more than it would've cost them to buy the item new!
Escrow
When you are buying an item that's expensive or that you want to be able to evaluate before handing over the money, you could consider using an escrow service.
An escrow service acts as a neutral third party in a transaction, collecting payment for the merchandise from the buyer until the seller sends the item to the buyer. Once the buyer accepts the merchandise, the escrow service forwards the payment to the seller.
There are 5 easy steps to an escrow transaction:
Both buyer and seller sign up at the escrow site and register the transaction that is being escrowed.
Once all details of the transaction have been confirmed by both buyer and seller, the buyer pays the escrow site the amount agreed with the seller, plus the escrow fee.
The escrow site will notify the seller that it has received the money and directs the seller to ship the goods to the buyer.
The Buyer receives, inspects and approves the goods and notifies the escrow site that all is OK.
The escrow site forwards the funds to the seller.
Auction Sniping
During the final moments of a popular auction you may find that lots of bids come in. This is called sniping and is a tactic experienced users employ to try to win the auction for the lowest price. By bidding at the last minute they don't give competitors time to place a counter bid, and so can avoid a protracted bidding war that might occur if they placed their bid earlier.
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RegisterNow...
Search the auction using the search box at the top left. Below are some of the popular recent searches:
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