How This Book Is Organized
This book goes beyond the instruction page to the idea of “hacks”—tips, tricks, and techniques you can use to make your experience with eBay more profitable, more fun, less exasperating, and (if you enjoy such things) more challenging.
On a daily basis, eBay users assume many different roles: consumer, seller, technical support specialist, diplomat, teacher, nuisance, application developer, nuclear safety inspector, web designer, and, of course, hacker. With that in mind, the hacks (and chapters) in this book are divided into four main sections.
Hacks for All
- Chapter 1, Diplomacy and Feedback
Feedback in the eBay world is like credit in the real world: you use it to buy and sell things, you build it up over a long time, and you protect it like a first-born child. This chapter introduces eBay’s feedback system and describes the many different ways to maintain a good feedback profile and use it to inspire trust in others.
Hacks for Buyers
- Chapter 2, Searching
The only way to find anything on eBay is by searching, either by typing keywords into search boxes or by browsing through category listings. The hacks in this chapter describe how to find auctions before anyone else does, focus your searches with a variety of tools, and even create an automated search robot.
- Chapter 3, Bidding
This chapter explains both how bidding is supposed to work, and how it actually works in the real world. It also discusses how you can use eBay’s proxy bidding system to improve ...