eBay Hacks | O'Reilly Media

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eBay is a community of buyers and sellers, not just a mere web site or piece of software. It's a complex social system of which you are an active member. Success on eBay depends not only on your ability to master the technical tasks of bidding and selling, but on your ability to communicate with other eBay members and your willingness to contribute to the community in a positive way.

Feedback is the basis of trust on eBay. Each eBay member has his or her own feedback profile, a public collection of comments left by other eBay members. Each individual feedback comment is tied to a transaction in which the particular member took part. Feedback comments are marked either positive, negative, or neutral, and are added accordingly in the summary that appears at the top of the page.

A member's feedback rating is the number representing the sum of all positive comments, minus the sum of all negative comments. (Note, however, that multiple comments left by a single user will never count more than one point.) This number, shown in parentheses after a member's user ID, is a useful tool in determining the trustworthiness and experience level of any given eBay member.

It's important to note that the feedback rating alone does not give you a sufficient picture of any member's personal history. Before you do business with any other member, make sure to click on the feedback rating to view the member's feedback profile as a whole.

Feedback is taken very seriously on eBay, and with good reason. For example, a seller who deals honestly and fairly with his or her customers will earn lots of positive feedback over the years. Conversely, dishonest or unreliable sellers and deadbeat bidders are likely to earn a higher percentage of negative feedback.

You can leave feedback for another member only if you are both involved in a transaction, namely a completed auction. The actual task of leaving feedback is quite simple; simply go to the completed auction page and click Leave Feedback. Choose a rating (positive, neutral, or negative) and type a "review" in the space provided. You'll then have 80 characters in which to explain what the other eBay member did right (or wrong).

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eBay is a community of buyers and sellers, not just a mere web site or piece of software. It's a complex social system of which you are an active member. Success on eBay depends not only on your ability to master the technical tasks of bidding and selling, but on your ability to communicate with other eBay members and your willingness to contribute to the community in a positive way.

Feedback is the basis of trust on eBay. Each eBay member has his or her own feedback profile, a public collection of comments left by other eBay members. Each individual feedback comment is tied to a transaction in which the particular member took part. Feedback comments are marked either positive, negative, or neutral, and are added accordingly in the summary that appears at the top of the page.

A member's feedback rating is the number representing the sum of all positive comments, minus the sum of all negative comments. (Note, however, that multiple comments left by a single user will never count more than one point.) This number, shown in parentheses after a member's user ID, is a useful tool in determining the trustworthiness and experience level of any given eBay member.

It's important to note that the feedback rating alone does not give you a sufficient picture of any member's personal history. Before you do business with any other member, make sure to click on the feedback rating to view the member's feedback profile as a whole.

Feedback is taken very seriously on eBay, and with good reason. For example, a seller who deals honestly and fairly with his or her customers will earn lots of positive feedback over the years. Conversely, dishonest or unreliable sellers and deadbeat bidders are likely to earn a higher percentage of negative feedback.

You can leave feedback for another member only if you are both involved in a transaction, namely a completed auction. The actual task of leaving feedback is quite simple; simply go to the completed auction page and click Leave Feedback. Choose a rating (positive, neutral, or negative) and type a "review" in the space provided. You'll then have 80 characters in which to explain what the other eBay member did right (or wrong).

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Use your browser's Find tool to quickly find complaints or other specific feedback comments in a member's feedback profile.

Feedback is shown in chronological order, with the most recent feedback comments at the top. When scrutinizing a member's feedback profile, it's sometimes helpful to locate specific complaints that other members have left. Unfortunately, feedback profiles can get extremely long, and eBay provides no way of sorting or searching through a member's comments. The simple workaround is to use your browser's built-in search feature.

Start by scrolling down to the bottom of the user's feedback profile page. At the end of the list, you'll see page numbers, allowing you to see older comments. Further down, where it asks "How many feedback comments do you want on each page?" you can specify a larger number, thereby reducing the total number of pages. Choose 200, the maximum, and click View Feedback to show the new, longer page.

Next, press Ctrl-F (or go to Edit → Find in this page) to activate your browser's search tool. To find negative feedback comments, type the word "complaint" in the search field and then click Find.

If the current page has a negative comment, your browser will locate it almost immediately. Click Find repeatedly to cycle through all the negative comments on the page.

In most browsers, you can leave the Find window open while you flip between pages in the feedback profile. Unfortunately, there's no way to show more than 200 feedback comments on a single page, which would obviously make the search even easier.

You can also search for neutral comments by looking for the word "neutral," and positive comments by looking for the word "praise."

You may also wish to search a person's feedback profile for your own user ID to see if you've left feedback for that person. Likewise, you can use the same technique to search your own feedback profile for another member's user ID to see if that member has left feedback for you.

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Save time by storing prewritten feedback for future use.

It won't take you long to get tired of writing feedback comments for the various buyers and sellers with whom you trade. You always end up saying the same thing, so why bother typing it every time?

The solution is simple. Write two generic, all-purpose positive feedback comments, one for buyers and one for sellers, and place them in a plain-text file saved on your hard disk. Remember that each comment can be no longer than 80 characters, including any spaces and punctuation.

Then, when it comes time to leave feedback for someone, open the text file, highlight the appropriate comment, and press Ctrl-C to copy. Then, click the Feedback Review field, and press Ctrl-V to paste.

Naturally, you can store as many prefabricated feedback comments as you like (variety is the spice of life, after all). Just be careful not to place negative comments too close to positive ones, lest you select the wrong line in haste.

Go to My eBay → Feedback → Leave Feedback, and you'll see a list of all closed auctions for which you have not yet left feedback, as shown in Figure 1-2. Simply go down the list, pasting your prefabricated comments for any deserving transactions.

Figure 1-2: Leave feedback for dozens of auctions at a time without typing a single word

Make sure to choose the corresponding rating (positive, negative, or neutral) for each transaction, and then click Leave Feedback when you're done.

Users of Windows XP, Me, and 2000 can use their context menus for even quicker access to prefabricated feedback. Start by installing Creative Element Power Tools (www.creativelement.com/powertools) and enabling the "Copy file contents to the Clipboard" option.

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Protect your feedback profile — and your reputation — from the proverbial slings and arrows of disgruntled eBayers.

In most cases, negative feedback is unnecessary. And I'm sure that if you just received negative feedback, you'll agree in a heartbeat.

But the reason that negative feedback is unnecessary is that it's usually avoidable. Complaints are usually lodged for one of the following reasons:

A buyer's expectations weren't met. A buyer will leave negative feedback for a seller if the item doesn't arrive quickly, if the item isn't in as good condition as promised, or if the seller isn't responsive to emails.

All of these are avoidable: see [Hack #39] and [Hack #70] for tips to effectively prevent customers from being disappointed, both before and after the sale.

But it's important to note that sometimes there's only so much a seller can do to please a customer. For this reason, sellers must also do everything possible to convince their customers — especially inexperienced ones — to communicate any problems or concerns to the seller before they go ahead and leave feedback.

If you're the seller, probably the easiest way to do this is to include a note inside all your packages with your email address (and phone number, if applicable) and the assurance that, if the customer has a problem, you'll do everything you can to make the situation right. Sometimes the note alone is enough to make the customer happy.
Deadbeat bidder. A seller will leave negative feedback for a bidder who doesn't pay. If you're a bidder, you can avoid this by quite simply not bidding when you don't intend to follow through and purchase the item. Sellers can usually prevent deadbeat bidders from bidding on their auctions — or rather, prevent bidders from becoming deadbeats — by following the tips in [Hack #54].

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A little damage control will help save a bruised reputation.

The game isn't over when another eBay member leaves feedback for you; you have the opportunity to respond to any feedback comment in your profile. Although this feature is handy for thanking users for leaving you positive feedback, its real value is for damage control when someone leaves neutral or negative feedback for you.

Most people's instinct is to use this tool as a means of retaliation—to "get back" at the other user for leaving a nasty comment. But given the importance of feedback in the eBay community, your main goal should be to use it to lessen the impact of such comments on your own reputation.

For example, consider the following complaint lodged against you, a seller, by an unhappy bidder:

"Item arrived damaged; very expensive to repair. Lousy seller."

Obviously, this is the wrong response:

"Stupid buyer! What a jerk for complaining! Now you get nothing."

Think of the message this sends to other people, prospective future customers, who might scrutinize your feedback profile. It doesn't address the problem, and since your response shows up only in your own feedback profile, it only serves to hurt you. Instead, consider this reply:

"Please contact me with all problems, and I'll do my best to make it right."

This sends a subtle message to the buyer, should he ever choose to return and view your feedback, but more importantly, it makes it appear to other bidders that you are the reasonable one, and this particular customer is nothing more than a crackpot. It also reassures potential customers that you will address problems, and won't just leave your bidders twisting in the wind.

If you feel the bidder will be understanding and cooperative once you follow up with an email, you may wish to request to have the feedback removed, as described in [Hack #6]. Naturally, no bad feedback is the most desirable outcome.

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Know when to hold 'em, and know when to leave 'em.

"The trouble with the global village is all the global village idiots."

—Paul Ginsparg

The biggest flaw (and in some ways, the biggest strength) of eBay's feedback system is the risk of retaliation. You leave negative or neutral feedback for someone, and they will — without considering the circumstances or who's at fault — do the same for you. That is the fear, and that is the reason why many people simply let problems slide.

But the risk of retaliation also reminds people that they are responsible for their own words; if there were no consequences, people would leave negative feedback with abandon, and we'd have even more problems on our hands.

I won't deny that the risks sometimes outweigh the gains. Sometimes a bidder has a seemingly legitimate reason for not paying. Perhaps a seller is inexperienced, and while a particular transaction might not have gone very smoothly, it wasn't due to any malice by the seller. Do these people necessarily deserve blemishes on their records? Perhaps not, but they don't necessarily deserve praise, either. In other words, sometimes the best move is no move at all.

Often the fear of retaliation can work to your advantage. Say you're a seller, and someone has just purchased an item from you. The bidder pays in full, and you go ahead and reward the bidder with positive feedback. But when the bidder receives the item, he's not happy. Since you've already played your hand, the bidder then feels free to file negative feedback, or simply threatens to do so.

On the other hand, if you withhold feedback, the bidder will be much more likely to pursue a diplomatic solution to any problems that come up. Instead of leaving negative feedback, the bidder might politely request a refund, or, better yet, might even go away and not bother you at all.

For this reason, a wise seller will usually wait until the customer has left positive feedback, or at least wait for confirmation that the item has been received and the buyer is happy.

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Use SquareTrade's mediation services to retract feedback.

eBay doesn't kid around when it comes to feedback, and neither do most users. Although eBay is quite clear about stating that every member who leaves feedback is responsible for his or her own words and that, once posted, feedback cannot be retracted, there is indeed a way out.

In fact, there are several circumstances under which a feedback comment can be removed:

The feedback does not appear to be connected with eBay, the particular member for which it was left, or the particular transaction with which it is associated.
The feedback contains offensive language, personal identifying information, links to pictures or web sites, or false claims with regard to eBay policies or law-enforcement organizations.
The feedback was mistakenly left for the wrong user, and the person who left feedback corrects the error and then contacts eBay.
The feedback was left by someone with false contact information.
The feedback was used as a means of coercion or blackmail.
eBay receives a court order finding that the feedback is slanderous, libelous, defamatory, or otherwise illegal, or as a result of a settlement agreement.
eBay is notified by SquareTrade to remove the feedback, as explained in the next section. If the feedback comment doesn't meet any of the other criteria listed here, then going through SquareTrade is your best choice.

Go to http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/feedback-removal.html for all the legalese associated with eBay's feedback removal policy.

Any eBay member who wishes to have a feedback comment removed must do so with the cooperation of the person who originally left the feedback.

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Don't let an apparent lack of experience hurt your success on eBay.

"Bad credit? No credit? No problem!"

—Ernie's Used Cars

A low feedback rating can hurt a buyer or seller nearly as much as a feedback profile with an excessive amount of negative comments. Luckily, there are a few things new users can do to gain trust within the eBay community.

Many sellers, primarily those who have had a bad experience with a non-paying bidder, are understandably apprehensive about bidders with low or zero feedback. So, if you see an auction in which the seller has written a warning about such bidders, drop him a quick note by clicking "Ask seller a question," just to let him know you're serious.

If you're a seller, see [Hack #54] for effective ways of dealing with newbie buyers as well as bidders who don't pay.

It's harder to be a new seller on eBay than a new buyer; a seller with low or zero feedback will have a hard time selling anything. Trust, after all, takes on a bigger role when someone else's money is at stake.

The best thing to do (and, coincidentally, the most fun) is to buy a few things before you start selling. Not only is this an easy way to build up feedback, but it will give you some experience in what it's like to be a buyer, which will ultimately make you a better seller.

Note that eBay will also lift some restrictions when you've beefed up your feedback. For instance, once you reach a feedback rating of 10, you'll be able to use the Buy-It-Now feature in your auctions. For those who can't wait, eBay provides the ID Verify service, described in the next section.

When you finally do start selling, make sure to set your payment terms such that your customers will be able to pay safely. If you accept PayPal, as described in [Hack #29] and [Hack #67], you'll undoubtedly get more bids from buyers who otherwise wouldn't give you the time of day.

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Use other means to contact buyers and sellers, and avoid the most common cause of negative feedback.

Email is the life's blood of the eBay community. Sellers use it to send payment instructions to buyers, buyers use it to send questions to sellers, and eBay uses it for just about everything.

Unfortunately, there are times when your email never makes it to the other party, either bouncing back or disappearing into the ether. There are two common reasons why your email may never make it to its intended recipient:

The other member's registered email address is out of date. In this case, any emails sent to that address should be bounced back to you. (Note that any user can update their registered email address by going to My eBay → Preferences → Change my Email Address.)
The other member has an overly aggressive spam filter, which might simply delete all email from unknown addresses (including yours). This means you'll never know if your email made it to the recipient.

Any spam filter that deletes email without your approval is ultimately going to lead to a lot of trouble, and possibly some expense and negative feedback. Instead, use a spam filter like SpamPal (www.spampal.org) that simply marks suspicious email as spam, so that your email software (discussed in the Preface) can filter it accordingly. Refer to the documentation that comes with your spam filter and email program for details. Also, contact your ISP and make sure they aren't deleting any of your email.

Fortunately, there are a bunch of different tools you can use to send a message to another eBay member, useful for when standard email fails:

Contact an eBay Member form. Click any eBay member's user ID to send an email via eBay's mail server. This is useful if you suspect that another member's spam filter is deleting your mail, since it's likely to approve all email originating from

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Without the ability to search, eBay would be close to worthless. Think about it: at any given time, there are close to 20 million items for sale on eBay, and that number keeps growing. If you were only able to flip through them like pages in a magazine (a magazine a quarter of a mile thick, mind you), you'd never find anything.

Searching on eBay is an art, often requiring you to think a little creatively. Sometimes you have to get into the minds of other users to predict how they might describe the item you're looking for; other times you just have to be devious.

Now, basic searching on eBay is a piece of cake. Just type a word into eBay's search box and press Enter, or type more than one word to narrow your search. By default, all searches simply cover auction titles, but you can include auction descriptions as well by clicking the "Search titles and descriptions" checkbox.

The hacks in this chapter take it several steps further, covering the advanced search syntax, showing you how to carefully control the scope of your searches, and including several ways to find things that would otherwise elude you. After all, the best deals (and the best finds) are usually the items that most people don't see.

Simplify your searches by making them a little more complicated.

Why should exhaustive searches be so . . . exhausting? Whether you're performing a quick one-time search or repeating the same search every other day, you can dramatically improve the efficiency of your searches and the relevance of your search results with some simple modifications to your queries.

You could fine-tune your searches by going to Search → Advanced Search, but this can be cumbersome and is mostly unnecessary due to the advanced search syntax.

Simply precede a search term with a minus sign (-) to eliminate any search results containing that term. For example, the query:

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Without the ability to search, eBay would be close to worthless. Think about it: at any given time, there are close to 20 million items for sale on eBay, and that number keeps growing. If you were only able to flip through them like pages in a magazine (a magazine a quarter of a mile thick, mind you), you'd never find anything.

Searching on eBay is an art, often requiring you to think a little creatively. Sometimes you have to get into the minds of other users to predict how they might describe the item you're looking for; other times you just have to be devious.

Now, basic searching on eBay is a piece of cake. Just type a word into eBay's search box and press Enter, or type more than one word to narrow your search. By default, all searches simply cover auction titles, but you can include auction descriptions as well by clicking the "Search titles and descriptions" checkbox.

The hacks in this chapter take it several steps further, covering the advanced search syntax, showing you how to carefully control the scope of your searches, and including several ways to find things that would otherwise elude you. After all, the best deals (and the best finds) are usually the items that most people don't see.

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Simplify your searches by making them a little more complicated.

Why should exhaustive searches be so . . . exhausting? Whether you're performing a quick one-time search or repeating the same search every other day, you can dramatically improve the efficiency of your searches and the relevance of your search results with some simple modifications to your queries.

You could fine-tune your searches by going to Search → Advanced Search, but this can be cumbersome and is mostly unnecessary due to the advanced search syntax.

Simply precede a search term with a minus sign (-) to eliminate any search results containing that term. For example, the query:

sunglasses -men's

will show all auctions containing "sunglasses" but not "men's", which should, at least in theory, show you a list of women's sunglasses. (Note that there's no space between the minus sign and the term "men's".) This approach is typically more effective than something like "women's sunglasses" because it will also include any auctions for gender-neutral sunglasses.

Naturally, you can exclude multiple terms, like this:

sunglasses -men's -children's -ugly

The scope of the excluded terms is the same as the scope of the search; that is, if you're searching only titles, the exclusions will apply only to titles. For example, the above example may bring up some auctions with "ugly" in the description, even though it doesn't appear in the title. Only if you're searching both titles and descriptions will eBay look in both places for excluded terms.

Exclusions open up a little paradox in eBay's search tool. In most cases, expanding a title-only search to include titles and descriptions will increase the number of search results. But when you exclude a word, a title-and-description search may return fewer results than the same search performed only on titles. Although this is caused by nothing more than the increased likelihood of finding one of the excluded terms when you search descriptions, I'm still sometimes surprised by it.

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Choose when and how plurals and variations of your search terms are used in searches.

For the most part, eBay searches return only listings that match your search terms exactly. That is, if you search for "possum," you won't necessarily retrieve the same results that you would in a search for "opossum."

Historically, to perform a fuzzy search, you'd have to include all the variations of a word in the search box manually, like this:

(opossum,possum,apossoun)

or, to accommodate singular and plural variants, you'd have to type something like this:

(antenna,antennas,antennae)

The OR search commanded by the use of parentheses, as described in [Hack #9], takes care of this nicely. But it's not always necessary.

As part of eBay's new search engine (code-named "Voyager" and introduced in 2003), all eBay searches automatically include common plurals and known alternate misspellings of words. For instance, a search for "tire" will also yield results matching "tyre" as well as "tires" and "tyres," rendering the messy OR search unnecessary in this case.

Of course, the inclusion of these variations isn't always desirable. For instance, if you're looking for rooftop antennas for a Pennsylvania Railroad PA-1 locomotive, you wouldn't so much be interested in a book discussing the antennae of Pennsylvania cockroaches. To force eBay to search only for exact matches of words, enclose such terms in quotation marks, like this:

pennylvania "antennas"

which is practically equivalent to:

pennylvania antennas -antennae

Whether or not the quotes will be necessary, or whether you'll still need to manually include variations (using parentheses), will depend on the particular search you're trying to perform. eBay's fuzzy searches are based on a hand-selected dictionary of common variations and plurals, meaning that "tire" will match "tyre," but it's unlikely that eBay will go as far as to equate "potato" with "tater."

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Narrow your searches by confining them to certain categories, and filter categories while you browse.

eBay uses an extensive hierarchy of categories to group similar items together. This not only enables sellers to improve the exposure of their auctions, but it helps bidders find what they're looking for and even discover new items.

When you perform a standard search, no thought is given to the categories in which the items are sorted; toaster ovens are listed right alongside antique car parts. By the same token, when you browse a category, you're simply looking at a list of every item placed in that category by sellers, whether it's relevant or not.

Category listings and search results are essentially the same thing: subsets of the massive auction database that is eBay. This means that when you search or when you browse a category, you're really just changing your filtering criteria. Fortunately, you can combine the two quite easily. Think of it as either narrowing a search by confining it to a single category, or filtering a category listing with search terms.

See [Hack #12] for a more in-depth look at categories and how they relate to searches and auctions.

Click Browse at the top of any eBay page to view the top-level categories. Choose a category here, and then a subcategory from the assortment displayed on the next page. At three levels deep and beyond you'll see standard category views, including auction listings and a Basic Search field, as shown in Figure 2-1. (Note that you can also jump to a category listing from any auction by clicking the category link at the top of the page.)

Figure 2-1: Search results and category listings use the same interface, so it's easy to switch between them

Just type your query in the search box, leave the "only in . . . " option checked, and click Search. Any matching auctions found in the current category (or subcategories, if applicable) will then be shown.

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Tap into eBay's massive database right from your own address bar.

eBay is essentially a massive database. Every time you view an auction page, you're just looking at a single database record. Every time you search, you're performing a query. But even if you're not familiar with DB lingo, you can play with eBay's URLs to tweak what you see.

Many pages on eBay use a standard CGI (Common Gateway Interface) format, which is nothing more than a program name followed by a command and one or more parameters:


                  http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3128013703

Here, cgi.ebay.com is the name of the server, eBayISAPI.dll is the filename of the program, ViewItem is the command to execute, and item=3128013703 is a parameter. Any additional parameters are separated by ampersands (&).

In this case, 3128013703 is the auction number. Simply replace this with another valid auction number, press Enter, and you'll see the corresponding auction page. This is typically quicker and more convenient than using the Search page to open an auction by its number.

Some sellers reference other auctions by simply including the auction number in their descriptions, usually because they don't know how to make links (see [Hack #40]). To view the auction by its number, simply copy and paste the number into the URL, replacing the one that's there.

A typical search page URL looks something like this:


                  http://search.ebay.com/ws/search/SaleSearch?satitle=avocado+green

Here, I searched for "avocado green", which you can see in the parameter satitle=avocado+green. Most searches will probably have more parameters, some more self-descriptive than others.

The real value in tweaking the URL is the ability to add or change options otherwise unavailable or inconveniently located in the search interface. One of the most useful of these is the self-evident

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A simple JavaScript tool to quickly list auctions similar to the one you're looking at.

I'm always excited to discover something new while searching on eBay, but I've been around long enough to know that there's virtually no such thing as "one of a kind."

When you've found an item you're interested in, it's often helpful to look for other auctions for similar items, either to compare prices or perhaps to find something better. Typically, this requires opening a search box and typing the name of the item for which to search. Here's a quick hack that will eliminate these steps and list similar items with a single click.

Create a new button on your browser's Links bar (see Customizing the Links Bar for details) and type the following JavaScript code, all on one line, into the new link:

javascript:void(win=window.open(
       'http://search.ebay.com/ws/search/SaleSearch?satitle='+
       document.title.substring(document.title.indexOf(' - ')+3)))

Make sure to note the capitalization of the JavaScript code, such as the uppercase "O" in the indexOf keyword. Note also the spaces around the hyphen (' - '). You can name the new link anything you like, such as "Find Similar."

Then, open any auction page and click the new link, as shown in Figure 2-2. (Naturally, the hack won't work on a non-auction page.) A new window will appear with search results matching the title of the auction you were just looking at, which, in theory, should contain at least one auction. At this point, you can modify and repeat the search as needed.

Figure 2-2: View a list of similar auctions by clicking this custom button on your Links bar

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Easy ways to find items sold by a particular seller.

If for no other reason than to save money on shipping costs, you may find yourself wanting to purchase multiple items from a single seller. Although you can't specify a particular seller when typing into a basic search box, there are three other ways to do it.

Probably the first thing that occurred to you is to just use the "View seller's other items" link on the auction page. If so, give yourself a gold star. This is typically the easiest way to search by seller because you can see an up-to-date listing of all the seller's current auctions.

Although this is good for perusing, there's no easy way to search here. The only thing you can do is use your browser's "Find on this page" feature (Ctrl-F), but this isn't exactly a breeze when the seller has over 1,100 open auctions divided into 47 pages of auction listings.

See [Hack #12] for a way to increase the number of items shown per page, thereby reducing the number of pages.

The most effective and flexible way to search by seller is to go to Search → By Seller and then use the second, somewhat hidden box at the bottom of the page. If you use the first box at the top of the page, you'll get the same thing as "View seller's other items."

The Multiple Sellers search, shown in Figure 2-3, allows you to do an actual text search on the auctions from one or more specific sellers. Simply type your search in the Search Title box and include the seller's exact user ID in the Multiple Sellers box to conduct your search. You can specify up to 10 sellers by separating their user IDs with commas.

Figure 2-3: The Multiple Sellers search, hidden at the bottom of the Search → By Seller page, allows you to specify the seller in a standard keyword search

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Use different eBay localizations to look for things outside your home town.

When you search, you're not searching all of eBay; you're searching a subset of auctions made available to your localized version of eBay. Depending on where in the world you live, you may be using any one of the following sites:

Localization	eBay address
Australia	`www.ebay.com.au`
Austria	`www.ebay.at`
Belgium	`pages.ebay.be`
Canada	`www.ca.ebay.com`
France	`www.ebay.fr`
Germany	`www.ebay.de`
Ireland	`www.ebay.com/ie/`
Italy	`www.ebay.it`
Netherlands	`www.ebay.nl`

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Different ways to save your complex searches for repeated use.

Ruby's Law states that anything you search for on eBay you will likely search for again. Okay, there is no Ruby, and I just made up the part about the law, but it's still a valid point.

The Favorites tab of My eBay is designed to save lists of your favorite searches, favorite categories, and favorite sellers. These lists are on-site and can be accessed even if you're not at home, which can be quite convenient.

To add a new category, click the "Add/change categories" link on the right side of the box. You can save only four individual categories, which can be chosen on the next page. Categories can be removed from the list by marking the corresponding checkboxes and clicking Delete.

The My Favorite Sellers page works similarly to the My Favorite Categories page, except that you type or paste the seller names instead of clicking. Also, there is a delay in adding new sellers to this list; be prepared to wait about a minute before reloading the page to see a newly added seller. You can save up to 30 seller names or eBay Stores (see [Hack #72]) on this list.

Figure 2-5: The My Favorite Searches list allows you to save up to 15 searches

Probably the most useful of the lists is My Favorite Searches, shown in Figure 2-5, not only because you can save extremely specific and targeted search queries, but because you can save your search directly from the search page. Simply perform a search — any search, including advanced searches or searches on international eBay sites — and click "Add to My Favorite Searches" in the top-right of the search page.

Only your search query is saved, not your search results. Each time you click a favorite search, you'll see the most up-to-date search results. To save specific auctions, see [Hack #24].

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Use the WWW::Search::eBay Perl module to perform your searches for you.

A collector in search of a particular item or type of item may repeat the same search, often several times a week. A serious collector, knowing that items sometimes sell within hours of being listed (see [Hack #26]), may repeat a search several times a day for an item. But who has the time?

The Favorites tab of the My eBay page, which allows you to keep track of up to 100 favorite searches (see [Hack #16]), also has a feature to email you when new items matching your search criteria appear on the site. Just check the Preferences link next to the search caption, and then turn on the "Email me daily whenever there are new items" option.

Unfortunately, eBay's new-item notification feature will send you notifications no more than once a day, and in that time, any number of juicy auctions could've started and ended. So I created this hack to do my searches for me, and do them as often as I see fit.

By "scraping" eBay search results with the WWW::Search::eBay Perl module (developed by Martin Thurn), any Perl program can retrieve search results from eBay and manipulate them any way you want. You can download the module for free from search.cpan.org/perldoc?WWW::Search::eBay and install it on any computer that has Perl. See Installing Perl Modules for installation details.

(Adapted from Google Hacks by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest)

A few hacks in this book make use of add-on Perl modules, useful for turning dozens of lines of messy code into a couple of concise commands. If your Perl script resides on a server maintained by someone else (typically an ISP administrator), you'll have to request that they install the module before you can reference it in your scripts. But if you're the administrator, you'll have to install it yourself.

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Become an auction stalker and leech off someone else's searching skills.

Often the best deals on eBay are the auctions that most bidders don't find, usually as a result of sellers not knowing what they're selling or not taking the time to promote them properly. The better you become at searching, the more likely you are to find the auctions that are off most bidders' radar. Sometimes, it takes nothing more than dumb luck to stumble upon a great find; occasionally, it helps to rely on other users' dumb luck (and skill) as well.

As much as eBay is a single community of millions of users, it can also sometimes feel like a bunch of micro-communities, each centered around certain genres and auction categories. As you use eBay and become more familiar with the categories in which you're interested, you'll start to recognize individual buyers who, like you, frequently return to eBay in search of more antique pottery, model trains, Ford Model A restoration parts, first-edition Hemingways, or whatever else you might collect.

As soon as someone bids on an item, that bid becomes public record, even though the bid amount is kept private until the auction ends. All you have to do when you see that someone has bid on something in which you're interested is search for other auctions on which he has bid. Not only will you discover auctions for similar items, you'll discover new items that you may not have even known to look for.

To do this, just highlight the bidder's user ID, copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl-C), go to Search → By Bidder, and paste (Ctrl-V) into the Bidder's User ID field. Select No to exclude completed auctions, and click Search. You'll then be shown a list of all public auctions on which that user has bid, whether or not he is the high bidder.

It's typically in your best interest as a bidder to have as few people as possible see an auction on which you're bidding. Fewer interested bidders means fewer bids, which, in turn, means a lower price and a higher likelihood that you'll win the auction.

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Expand your browser with eBay's custom toolbar application.

The eBay Toolbar, shown in Figure 2-7, is a free add-on program that provides a handy search box, links to several key eBay pages, and two desktop "alert" features.

Figure 2-7: The eBay Toolbar provides several handy tools, primarily useful for bidders, such as two "alert" features not otherwise available to non-toolbar-equipped browsers

Provided you're running a recent version of Windows and using a new version of Internet Explorer or an old version of Netscape Navigator, you can download the eBay Toolbar at pages.ebay.com/ebay_toolbar. (Users of Mozilla, Netscape 6.x/7.x, Unix, or a Mac of any kind are out of luck.)

In addition to providing handy links to My eBay, the Search pages, the PayPal home page, and other hot spots, the eBay Toolbar also has some features you won't find elsewhere:

The Search textbox keeps a history of the last few searches you've typed (up to 25), which can be a quick and easy way to save past searches (see [Hack #16]). But you have to use it exclusively, as it doesn't link up with the My Favorite Searches list and it will not save any search typed in the site itself.
Bid Alerts notify you 10, 15, 30, 60, or 75 minutes before the end of an auction on which you've bid, which is useful if you wish to return to the auction to bid again and ensure a win. Included in the Bid Alerts menu is a handy list of all the open auctions on which you've placed at least one bid; click Refresh Bid List if it appears to be out of date. Click the little arrow next to the eBay logo and click eBay Toolbar Preferences to customize this feature.
Watch Alerts work just like Bid Alerts, but apply to items in the Items I'm Watching list (see [Hack #24]), which can be especially useful for sniping (see [Hack #21]).

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The term "auction" evokes a vivid image in most people's minds: a fast-talking auctioneer at a podium, dozens of seated participants, and an assistant parading numbered collectibles across the stage, one by one, as the participants place their bids. The auctioneer quotes an opening price, and participants signal their interest by raising their hands, at which point the bid price is raised by some arbitrary amount. Bidding for each item continues until the current bid price exceeds the amount all but one of the participants is willing to pay.

eBay's bidding system works a little differently. For one, auctions are timed, and close at a predetermined date and time, regardless of the bid price or whether or not everyone has finished bidding.

Secondly, eBay uses something called "Proxy Bidding," a system that somewhat compensates for the fact that the auctions are timed. Instead of placing individual bids on an item, you simply specify a single "maximum bid," and eBay does the rest. Imagine sending someone else to an auction for you, giving them a certain amount of money to bid on a single item. That person, the proxy, would place traditional bids until he wins the auction or runs out of money.

Finally, eBay offers "fixed-price" listings, allowing buyers and sellers to skip the bidding process and complete the deal with a single purchase, as though eBay were just another online store. Furthermore, the "Buy-It-Now" feature allows sellers to turn their auctions into a hybrid of sorts, permitting either ordinary bidding or a single purchase. (See [Hack #26] for more information.) Factoid: About 24% of all listings on eBay end with a Buy-It-Now or fixed-price purchase.

The best way to understand proxy bidding is to see it in action.

A seller starts an auction for an antique pocket watch, and sets an opening bid of $25.00. The duration of the auction is five days; since the auction started at 3:52 P.M. on a Thursday, it is scheduled to end at 3:52 P.M. the following Tuesday. Here's how bidding might proceed:

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The term "auction" evokes a vivid image in most people's minds: a fast-talking auctioneer at a podium, dozens of seated participants, and an assistant parading numbered collectibles across the stage, one by one, as the participants place their bids. The auctioneer quotes an opening price, and participants signal their interest by raising their hands, at which point the bid price is raised by some arbitrary amount. Bidding for each item continues until the current bid price exceeds the amount all but one of the participants is willing to pay.

eBay's bidding system works a little differently. For one, auctions are timed, and close at a predetermined date and time, regardless of the bid price or whether or not everyone has finished bidding.

Secondly, eBay uses something called "Proxy Bidding," a system that somewhat compensates for the fact that the auctions are timed. Instead of placing individual bids on an item, you simply specify a single "maximum bid," and eBay does the rest. Imagine sending someone else to an auction for you, giving them a certain amount of money to bid on a single item. That person, the proxy, would place traditional bids until he wins the auction or runs out of money.

Finally, eBay offers "fixed-price" listings, allowing buyers and sellers to skip the bidding process and complete the deal with a single purchase, as though eBay were just another online store. Furthermore, the "Buy-It-Now" feature allows sellers to turn their auctions into a hybrid of sorts, permitting either ordinary bidding or a single purchase. (See [Hack #26] for more information.) Factoid: About 24% of all listings on eBay end with a Buy-It-Now or fixed-price purchase.

The best way to understand proxy bidding is to see it in action.

A seller starts an auction for an antique pocket watch, and sets an opening bid of $25.00. The duration of the auction is five days; since the auction started at 3:52 P.M. on a Thursday, it is scheduled to end at 3:52 P.M. the following Tuesday. Here's how bidding might proceed:

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A little research can save you a big headache.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not really after you. And just because you take steps to protect yourself doesn't mean that there aren't sellers ready to sell you a lot of hot air. Fortunately, eBay provides a lot of tools to help you discern the good sellers from the bad.

Naturally, feedback (see Chapter 1) should be your first recourse, not only when you suspect a seller of being dishonest, but any time you bid on an item sold by an unknown eBay member. But there are limitations to the feedback system. For one, it relies on the intelligence of past buyers, something you can never count on. It also takes a few weeks for feedback (negative or otherwise) to make its way back to a seller, so a new user — or an old user new to selling — may be able to sell under the guise of a trustworthy seller for up to a month before his reputation catches up to him.

You've heard it before, and it undoubtedly runs through your head when you're looking at certain auctions: if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Now, there are certainly more exceptions to this rule on eBay than at most other places, mostly due to sellers who don't know what they're selling or don't do a good job of constructing the auction. (In fact, I've gotten some great deals — even to the point of effectively getting stuff for free — simply by being more knowledgeable than the seller.) Nonetheless, don't let your desire for a deal cloud your better judgment.

The photo can be a dead giveaway, both to a dishonest seller and to an inexperienced seller who simply doesn't know any better. If the photo appears to be intentionally blurry, doctored, or simply doesn't match the item described in the auction (or other photos of the same item), it should be your first clue that something's fishy. Check out some of the seller's other auctions (both past and present) and look for patterns (or lack thereof); for example, do all the photos have the same background? If they don't, the seller may have snatched them from other auctions or web sites (see [Hack #58]). This can either mean that they're selling something they don't have, or merely that they're lazy.

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Bid at the last minute to simultaneously ensure that you win the auction and that you pay the lowest possible amount.

It shouldn't take long to figure out that it's usually better to bid later in the auction—the later the better. Many eBayers wait until the last few minutes of the auction to bid, leaving no time for lower bidders to be notified and respond with higher bids. This is called sniping, and all it takes is a little nerve and the ability to tell time.

Sniping leaves no time to read the auction description carefully or to ask the seller any questions you may have. Make sure you take care of these things long before the end of the auction.

When you've found an auction you want to snipe, the first step is to track the auction and make note of its closing date and time; see [Hack #24] for details. Then, all you need to do is return to eBay a few minutes before the auction ends and place your bid.

The problem is that many eBay users make a habit of doing this, so you'll likely have competition. With multiple snipers, the prize often goes to the bidder who can enter a bid closest to the end of the auction.

The most effective snipes occur within 10 seconds of the end of the auction, leaving no time for other bidders to even see your bid — not to mention outbid you — before it's too late.

Give yourself about two minutes to set up. Start by opening two browser windows (press Ctrl-N to open a second window), and open the auction page in both windows. Move and resize the two browser windows so they're side by side on your screen.

Type your maximum bid in one of the windows and click Place Bid (but do not confirm your bid on the next page). If necessary, scroll the page so that the Confirm Bid button is visible and not obscured.

Then, switch to the other window and reload (refresh) the page by pressing Ctrl-R. Reload it again a few seconds later to see any changes to the current price and the time left. Repeat this until there's only 10-15 seconds left in the auction.

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Use eSnipe to snipe without actually having to be there when the auction ends.

Sniping is an effective way to increase your odds of winning an auction while simultaneously lowering the final price you pay (see [Hack #21]). But there are significant drawbacks to sniping that limit its practical usefulness:

You have to be in front of your computer, ready to bid, at the exact time the auction ends.
It's nearly impossible to snipe two or more auctions ending at the same time.
If your computer crashes or your Internet connection goes down moments before you snipe, you lose.
You can easily forget to bid, or even become distracted moments before bidding time. (I can't tell you how many times I've been distracted by a doorbell ring or a good song on the radio, only to turn around and find that I've missed my two-minute sniping window.)

The solution, of course, is to simply bid early, and then return to the auction after it's over to find that you've been outbid by 4 cents. Fortunately, there is a better way.</

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