[sdiy] OT : Ebay

[danial stocks]

And if you see something you like and it says USA only at the top, but it 
isnt mentioned again in the sellers own text, ask them if they'll ship 
international.. it defaults to USA only if you havent made a selection, and 
I've found a vast number of 'USA only' sellers are willing to ship int'l if 
asked..
Cheers,
Dan
>
> > >And ebay now charges a premium if you make your auctions 10
> > >days... so he paid extra for no good reason.
> > > >
> >
> > yeh, 10 day auction is a bit of a time waster I feel.. the lengthy amt 
>of
> > time discourages early bids, early bids often encourage further bids, 
>and by
> > the time it comes close to close, often forgotten.. I'be noted at any 
>rate
> > that things go much better on 7 day..
> > Cheers,
> > Dan
>
>Indeed, even for very rare and most sought after items, the extra
>exposure time offered by a 10 days auction doesn't pay off, mostly
>because these days most ppl looking for a specific item have their
>Personal Shopper (or other software tools) configured to warn them
>via email as soon as a copy  is auctioned.
>Furthermore, for categories with more than a couple hundreds of
>items listed, I noticed that bidders tend to browse only the "new today"
>and "ending today" sections.
>
>After almost 2 years of selling at eBay, I actually reduced the length
>of my auctions from 7 to 5 days, and have the feeling that final prices
>go higher than before (may be because the thrill doesn't fade away...)
>
>If you buy, here are a couple of advices based on experience :
>
>- ALWAYS check seller's feedback profile before bidding : you can
>learn a lot from it. A well established (above 100, without any neutral
>nor negative comments) feedback means : bid with confidence. Simply
>because for the seller, taking the risk of trashing such high reputation
>isn't worth the $$$ he'll make by cheating 1 bidder on a specific item.
>
>- for items without a pic, ALWAYS ask the seller questions about it
>before bidding. The way your questions will be answered will tell you
>a lot about the amount of trust you can put in that seller...
>And I even dare to say that a seller with high feedback profile doesn't
>need to post any pic : an accurate description of the item condition is
>enough. Another reason is that so often, pics are just low quality
>scans of polaroids, and they don't tell much... In that case, a clean scan
>of a pic from a brochure might be more useful...
>
>
>And if you sell,
>
>- make at least 1 online payment method available in your auctions :
>it will really boost your sales, more than you can expect.
>
>- accept overseas bidders : so many times I found interesting lots of
>electronic parts on eBay, but sellers were shipping to USA only...
>
>JB
>
>
>

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