EBay Still Offers Plenty of Great Deals

Love them or hate them, eBay are rarely out of the news when it comes to dealing online. Whether you use Skype to make cheap phone calls, Paypal to send cash, Half.com to buy discount books or the classic auction website to find bargain priced items, you are dealing with eBay.

So what's all the noise been about lately? Well mostly it has been sellers complaining about feedback and fee changes. eBay have been deliberately making things much more buyer friendly lately and, sometimes understandably, a lot of sellers aren't happy. But as a buyer this is working to your advantage.

Like many people, you may be used to checking eBay whenever you are ready to make a purchase. But do you ever browse eBay using non-specific searches with a view to finding the hidden bargains that frequently occur?

Why would something sell too cheap on eBay and offer anyone, including you, the chance of a steal? In fact there are many reasons. Not all sellers are particularly good with their keyboards. Sometimes they place items in completely the wrong category, sometimes they list items to end at unsociable times, some mispell keywords in the item title and some even list in the wrong country!

More recently eBay itself has changed their default search algorithm to place many items further back in search results than people expect. A buyer that still thinks searches on eBay produce items in the old "ending soonest" order will miss an awful lot of listings now. This feature alone can greatly reduce the number of views an item gets, reduce the number of competitor bidders and produce more bargain deals to the savvy searcher. Not good news for the seller but great news to savvy buyers.

So, whatever the reason, there is usually a bargain to be found but, in order to find them, you need to search in a different kind of way. As we don't know what the item is that's been badly listed, we can't specify the type of thing we are looking for. Instead we need to focus on the type of listing, whether any bids have been made, switch back to "ending soonest" search order and specify a maximum price.

One search I often use seeks out any auction listings that end soonest with no bids and a maximum opening bid of just 99 cents. You will be surprised at some of the gems I've found doing this search! I've saved the search for readers to try in a new window HERE.

When I have the time I try to use that search at different times of the day to spot any bargains about to end. My aim is to snap up things going cheap that I can turn an instant profit on by relisting the item properly. This may mean the right category, correct spelling or simply because my feedback as a seller is good enough that my items aren't disadvantaged in the new "Best Match" search algorithm being used now.

So, no matter what you hear in the news, eBay is still very much alive and kicking when it comes to buyers finding great deals.

The author is a moderator at the Pheebay Auction News & Forums site.