Hi,

this guide is not designed for experienced eBayers or Powersellers although I suspect a lot of more experienced users will read it out of curiosity (and pick fault with what I'm advising).

I am in NO WAY claiming to be an eBay expert or guru or someone who has made a million quid on eBay.  On the other hand, when I wrote this guide (February 2008) our feedback was just about to hit 16,000 with 99.9% positive, so we have some experience to draw on.

If you sell on eBay then you'll probably do what I often do... I look at competitors selling the same product as me, I check their feedback and I look at some of the transactions they've had selling the same stuff as me.  Then I think "why the hell did this customer go to my competitor?" when my item was less expensive, or P&P was cheaper etc etc.

It's one of life-on-eBay's great mysteries... people will often choose who to buy goods from on impulse with often very little reason.  Sometimes they grab the first listing for that item that they see.. sometimes they won't go beyond the first page of results.  For regular sellers it can be frustrating but also fascinating, as we try and work out why people are buying from our competitors.

We've spent months monitoring our transactions and have whittled down our opinions (and, yes, they are just "opinions" - not scientific theories) to this . . . if you are looking for a specific product on eBay then adopt a standard formula for your search.

Use this as an example: let's say you are looking to buy a . . .   PASTA MAKER

1. Keep your initial search as wide as possible. Do NOT switch off any search options until you are sure you are getting far too many results.

2. Keep your initial search simple: PASTA MAKER.  Sound ridiculously simple?  You'd be amazed how many people miss the very best deals by simply being far too specific from the outset.  Always remember that professional sellers may have hundreds of stock items and that the search terms they use to llist them may be far less specific and detailed as you would use as a buyer.  Put simply - they may not know as much about pasta makers as you do, so their listing may be fairly simplistic.  Don't say MANUAL or CHROME or METAL or ITALIAN or use a brand name etc just yet... there's always time for these later if you get too many results to handle first time around.

3. The most important tip of all... on the left hand side of your eBay result page you'll have the option to include eBay Shops. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS say YES to this.  If you omit eBay Shops then you are excluding 90% of eBay's main sellers... Powersellers with large stock inventories and buying power to offer some of the very best deals.

It is a verifiable fact that today on eBay we are selling wedding cake tops in our eBay Shop which are up to £5 less than exactly the same cake tops in the 3-10 day listings and yet we sell hardly any of them... over 90% of our customers search in the 3-10 day listings only and, quite simply, are missing a better price for exactly the same item.  Shocked?  Think we're being unethical?  Not at all... at one point in time we had a competitor squeezing the prices lower so we listed a batch in our eBay Shop at £14.95 to beat that competitor.  Excatly the same design appears several times in the 3-10 day listings at £17.95 - £19.95 and we sell dozens of them every month.  This proves that buyers are excluding our eBay Shop from their searches... something that is costing them up to £5 a time!

4a. Again, on the left had side of the eBay results page you'll see the various results grouped in their categories with the number of items shown in brackets... eg on 5th February 2008 the results for PASTA MAKER were: Kitchen (45) Food & Drink (1) Restaurant & Catering (1) Kitchenalia (1) Household (1).  This is the next trap . . . a lot of eBayers will click on the category with the most results ("Kitchen")... why?  All you've done is remove 4 potential items... are 4 items really going to take you so much time to look at that they're worth ignoring?  Of course not and there's another, more subtle, reason to keep them... if someone has listed the very Imperia Stainless Steel Pasta Maker you're longing for, but has listed it under "Household" instead of "Kitchen", then everyone else is doing what you're doing and ignoring their listing.  What does this mean?  Simple - the bid price is likely to be much lower on this item as fewer people are watching/bidding.  This is where your bargain is likely to be!

To be honest the only time these category results help is if you're looking for something like a specific PS3 game and the same game is available for PS2, X-Box, Nintendo DS, Wii etc etc etc and so your results may be full of games which are not of any use for your PS3. This is when to split the results down by category.

4b. If you do decide to search in one sub-category, always remember that as you refine your search more and more, you're still only stuck in that one category.  As you enter more refined searches always remember to click to search in "All Categories" to widen your search again.  It's a very easy thing to overlook and before you know it you'll be down to only a couple of results when, in truth, there could be dozens more (and better priced) on eBay which you are simply missing.

5. If you are overloaded with results for your initial serach then slowly and carefully refine the search but ALWAYS include eBay Shops... I can't say this too often... we buy all our Jiffy bags, packaging tape, franking machine labels, printer cartridges etc from eBay and every single one comes from an eBay Shop because we scour eBay for the very best prices. Almost without a single exception, we find better prices in eBay Shops than in the 3-10 day listings.

The "inside" story is this... eBay make far more money from people listing items in the 3-10 day listing area where a large proprtion may not sell and, so, are re-listed.  That means a continual round of lising and re-listing from which eBay earn a fortune.  Items listed in eBay Shops, however, could be there for 3 months or more before needing re-listed.  As a result, eBay Shop results do not get much exposure... eBay are happy to have them almost hidden away.  As a buyer, you need to know to look!

There it is... not rocket science but our own experience as eBay Powersellers has proved that most buyers do NOT follow these very simple rules to get the best results.

If there is one rule to remember above all others it has to be this: ALWAYS include eBay Shop results as an option whenever you search for anything.

Thanks for reading through all this... I hope it may come in useful oe day and even save you some money!

Thanks  :o)