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'Some Del Boy types try and sell web-addresses as ‘exclusive info/tools of great interest'. Yet often they're available free elsewhere. To my great distaste, links to this site are constantly sold to the highest bidder. In the past, people have sold bank charge reclaiming template letters and links to the Flightchecker, as well as other tools from the site.'
FYI, it's now against ebay rules to sell intangible info such as this. Items may no longer be emailled - they must be physically posted.
Whee! I got a Thanks from Martin!
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'Some Del Boy types try and sell web-addresses as ‘exclusive info/tools of great interest'. Yet often they're available free elsewhere. To my great distaste, links to this site are constantly sold to the highest bidder. In the past, people have sold bank charge reclaiming template letters and links to the Flightchecker, as well as other tools from the site.'
FYI, it's now against ebay rules to sell intangible info such as this. Items may no longer be emailled - they must be physically posted.
It is not against the rules to sell digital downloaded products on eBay. This change does not come in until the end of the month.
From 29th April, we’ll be banning all goods that can be digitally downloaded or transferred electronically from being listed in any format on eBay.co.uk and eBay.ie.
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Favourite search emails are only sent out once a day so if an item was listed with a "Buy It Now" a few minutes after your daily email was sent you won't see it till next day when it may have sold already. It also only gives you (I think) the top ten results for your search when the one you want might be the 11th one listed today.
However, if you use a news reader like Google Reader you can set up an RSS feeds from the radar button that appears at the bottom of every search results page. The feeds publish auction listing every 3 hours giving you up to a 21 hour head start on those waiting for their email to tell them the listing is up.
Also saves your bandwidth because GReader viewed in list mode will just download the auction title rather viewing the full email with header and thumbnails so you can quickly scan as many auction results as the feed sends you not just 'Top Ten'. Additionally 'heavy' search users aren't limited to just the 100 "Favourite searches" you can save in My Ebay, you can have as many as you like.
Combining GReader with RSS feeds AND Ebays advanced search commands like wildcards will let you cast your net as wide or as narrow as you like and get the results to you ASAP.
Last edited by collie_27; 02-04-2008 at 1:10 PM..
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Great eBay tips article guys, thanks for that! :-)
However, you failled to include 2 of my favourite tools - while you rightly suggested last minute bidding and suggested 2 tools, I prefer to use UK based services as I know exactly what I'm paying.
Great eBay tips article guys, thanks for that! :-)
However, you failled to include 2 of my favourite tools - while you rightly suggested last minute bidding and suggested 2 tools, I prefer to use UK based services as I know exactly what I'm paying.
Nice article -- PayPal information's wrong though (the max is not £150).
As to the new policy on flogging 'intangibles' -- I'll believe it when I see it (which may not happen as I don't use eBay any more.)
Reason for my lack of interest in the site is its self-serving mendacity. . . or perhaps all the listings that added on VAT after the sale, and which were supposed to be being banned by eBay from mid-February, are now, finally, being prohibited?
As to newbies reading eBay listings to suss out what is and what is not for sale: a lot of the scammers who used to be flogging everything from empty boxes to meaningless links and even photographs of an item have gone.
But one way to save a hell of a lot of time ploughing through a listing in the interest of self protection is still valid and simple:
once a listing's on screen, just hit Ctrl + F and the "find" box wll come up; enter search words such as photo, photograph, link, box (or whatever comes to mind) and if it's in the listing, even if carefully buried, it'll immediately be highlighted.
As to newbies reading eBay listings to suss out what is and what is not for sale: a lot of the scammers who used to be flogging everything from empty boxes to meaningless links and even photographs of an item have gone.
Thanks for all the suggestions - we will take a look and pop the good 'ens in the article
Martin Lewis, Money Saving Expert.
Please note, answers don't constitute financial advice, it is based on generalised journalistic research. Always ensure any decision is made with regards to your own individual circumstance.
The main aim of Freecycle is to stop things ending up in landfill sites that might be of use to someone else. As you mentioned, we do ask that before a new member request items they first offer at least one item. It is a community and we therefore expect people to put something into as well as take things out of it.
One small point re the number of emails you are likely to receive. It is easy to set up the account so you get a "digest" of the last days or the last 25 messages rather than a new email for every posting. You can also chose not to receive any emails at all, but instead just read through the message board online at your leisure.
In most groups the messages are moderated to stop unsuitable / unwanted messages getting published on the site. The moderators, like myself, are all volunteers.
Don't you think it's rather petty to try and save money this way?
I can think of a lot of other ways to make and save money rather than wasting time
trying to take advantage of folks who mis-spelled their listings on Ebay.
Would anyone from MSE or a moderator please explain why you removed the post I wrote about Goofbay ?
Thanks
Matt
Goofbay.com
Hi Matt,
To answer your q - I had a post removed too, it seems they are taking a tough line on not allowing any advertising or self-promotion on this thread. Fair enough, agree the thread should be a discussion, not a series of adverts. But on the hand, the post I had removed was simply recommending a product relevant to the article and pointing out some of its benefits. Was being completely up-front about it & could have got a relative or friend to do the same (and then presumably it would have been legitimate?)
Sometimes the developers of tools can be well placed to give recommendations since they are familiar with the market. And on that note here's my list of recommendations (not including anything about my own website of course):
- For a sniping tool I've not found any better than Snip:
This is a Polish website which provides a good interface, excellent reliability (in the years I've been using it have only had a couple of missed shots) and some powerful features. E.g. "Shot Groups" (allowing muliple auctions but only win a up to a predefined set number) and "Conditional Sniping", which takes this a step further by allowing actions to be set that are dependent on whether an item is won. I think it's about 10p per shot but this is money well spent for such a reliable service and ease of use (the Firefox Extension lets you snipe at the click of a button).
- AuctionTrax provides a good range of tools including a Shill Bidding detector (or at least it used to have, couldn't see it on there today?) and a Negative Feedback finder (different to the one at toolhaus.org mentioned in the article and maybe not as useful but still worth a look):
- The eBay toolbar is quite a useful thing to have on your browser, if only for quickly linking to your My eBay page or performing an eBay search. The alerts it pops up for items ending soon can be quite useful too for those that aren't sniping:
- SpaceTime is a futuristic looking 3D search that really has the "wow-factor" and allows eBay searches as well as searches in Google, Amazon, Youtube etc:
- As for finding more of these tools, a great place to start is the eBay Solutions Directory, which lists all the apps that have been certified by eBay:
P.S. Just to make it clear to the mods, I haven't got any affiliation whatsoever with any of the tools mentioned, in fact they could really be seen as competitors!
Last edited by auctionsearchkit; 04-04-2008 at 3:41 PM..
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Don't you think it's rather petty to try and save money this way?
I can think of a lot of other ways to make and save money rather than wasting time
trying to take advantage of folks who mis-spelled their listings on Ebay.
how is it taking advantage? you search for the words they list under
ive even found them by accident myself by misstyping the search term
apologies for my typing
i only have one part working eye just now
Don't you think it's rather petty to try and save money this way?
I can think of a lot of other ways to make and save money rather than wasting time
trying to take advantage of folks who mis-spelled their listings on Ebay.
Listing accurately is the seller's responsibility. If they can't be bothered to spell-check then that's their loss.
I once bought, via an eBay action, what would have been an expensive item at a bargain price. The seller complained that they had failed to place a reserve pice. Tough!
I have had other bargains for sellers who clearly did not know about their item or its value. That is the glory of all auctions.
Don't you think it's rather petty to try and save money this way?
I can think of a lot of other ways to make and save money rather than wasting time
trying to take advantage of folks who mis-spelled their listings on Ebay.
NO not at all, some words can be mis-spelt very easily. I did it once while looking for PS2 games for my son and saved £35 on 3 items. Not bad for a 2 second mis-spell! These items were from ebay shops - you'd think they would get it right.
To be fair, I did email someone who had mis-spelt something and hadn't put a reserve on a very valuable collectors item. I knew that if a bid had been placed someone could 'freeze' the auction and consequently she wouldn't have made a fair amount unless she cancelled. She was VERY pleased. The item did then go on to sell for a good market price. I'm not that mean
£10 a day challenge so far: Apr-Mar 2008/9 £4336.17
Favourite search emails are only sent out once a day so if an item was listed with a "Buy It Now" a few minutes after your daily email was sent you won't see it till next day when it may have sold already. It also only gives you (I think) the top ten results for your search when the one you want might be the 11th one listed today.
However, if you use a news reader like Google Reader you can set up an RSS feeds from the radar button that appears at the bottom of every search results page. The feeds publish auction listing every 3 hours giving you up to a 21 hour head start on those waiting for their email to tell them the listing is up.
Also saves your bandwidth because GReader viewed in list mode will just download the auction title rather viewing the full email with header and thumbnails so you can quickly scan as many auction results as the feed sends you not just 'Top Ten'. Additionally 'heavy' search users aren't limited to just the 100 "Favourite searches" you can save in My Ebay, you can have as many as you like.
Combining GReader with RSS feeds AND Ebays advanced search commands like wildcards will let you cast your net as wide or as narrow as you like and get the results to you ASAP.
I certainly think using RSS for your favorite search terms or if you want to keep an eye on all size 9 ladies Nike trainers for example is a great way to do it.
There's a really good 7 step tutorial for using and setting up RSS feeds here, though this tutorial is more geared at using RSS feeds for affiliate purposes the tutorial is the same for buyers, with the exception of just removing the one step in regard to adding your affiliate id which should be left blank.
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Pls be nice to all MoneySavers. There's no such thing as a stupid question, and even if you disagree courtesy helps. Take care over copyright. Use excerpts and links rather than copying long text. This site asserts copyright on all comments posted on the board.
Pls be nice to all MoneySavers. There's no such thing as a stupid question, and even if you disagree courtesy helps.
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