Finding and Getting the items for cheap on eBay.com (Bidder's View)

My background regarding electronic gadgets:

I am a student and love to buy electronic items. I have bought almost every kind of electronic gadget (a cheaper version of it because I am money minded). I have been a crazy deal seeker since the week I came to the United States. But to buy all those I need money, rite? which I don't earn so much that I spend on hobbies. I had around 6 Walkman (personal cassette player) before buying my first branded Walkman and I owned 3 different unknown branded Flash MP3 players before I got a CREATIVE MUVO and then the iPod. All these were different looking and variety kind of gadgets. My friends couldn't tell what it was by just looking at it and that made it even more cool! Whatever I buy I use almost every function of it. I take care of them as if they were living things. I am such a hobbyist of electronics that I want to buy whatever gadgets come in the market.

"Where there is will there is a way!"

So to meet my "need" to buy electronic gadgets for cheap with good brand name, I started looking for items on some deal sites like deals2buy.com and dealnews.com and bought several items for even $0 (i.e. Free) using the Mail in Rebates and promotional offers. Later I got addicted to selling used items like my friends's broken or/and working items which they want to get rid of and buying new and used items which were not in too bad condition on eBay for cheap. Selling is easy on eBay but searching for the right deal is a biggie.

 

Stage 1

When I was a beginner in eBaying I used to just search for an Item with its keyword (like New Nintendo Wii for Wii) and get thousands of results. Then I used to sort the results according to lowest price first, this used to bring the cheapest Wii's on top ($0.99 + some shipping price) with a few days left for the auction to end. I watched these items for a few days to buy the Wii for less than what we buy in any retail store but eventually the other ebay users of the world bid like CRAZY on the item. They bid 100s of dollars in one go and the price went to way over the MRP (appx. between $400 to $1000 when the MRP was $249.99). I tried this a number of times but always failed because there were not many people in the world who thought like me.

"If every person in the world who uses eBay thought like me, they would stop bidding high amounts at once and let others win for less if the bidding price was reaching more than the MRP, so that if not me atleast let the other guy get it for cheap, I can try another one because there are so many opportunities."

 

Stage 2

After realizing that this sorting according to price is not working out for me, I observed the pattern and found that people bid in the last few hours on the item. They keep a watch on the item and wait for the last few hours and then bid on it like crazy and thats where the prices go high. So I started searching for items and then sorted them according to ending time. This helped me get better results because I ended up finding few results with lower prices faster with only few minutes left. But even this had the similar flaws of technique of Stage 1. We are not controlling how the users think. The bidders are still bidding in the last minute and trying to get the items for themselves at ridiculously higher prices even if they can get it for cheaper somewhere else. In this case, people like me feel out numbered because there are more people who want it and have money to buy it but people like me still look for deals for cheap.

"Sometimes the CRAZY bidders pay even more than 75% of the new items price for a broken or non-working item. This is really crazy."

Stage 3

For quite a while I wasted time searching for the items for cheap. It is almost impossible to find a cheap deal these days on eBay unless no one else in the world is bidding on eBay. I came across a few resources while searching Google for methods of getting cheaper items on eBay. Few websites mentioned that some people on eBay dont know what they are selling so they either donot write their description appropriately or misspell the item names. For example a "Digital Camera" could be written as a "Digtl Camra" and PS3 might be mentioned as a Huge heavy box [:p] by an illiterate person! So the best way to get cheap deals is to search for misspelled items on eBay using the websites which help you do that. because the number of people who would reach the "NINTEND We" will be a lot lesser than "Nintendo Wii" because everybody is looking for a nintendo Wii but not a Nintend We. I have been using this technique for a couple of weeks now and have successfully found some nice inactive items on eBay for a DS and iPod.

"Think like a person who doesn't know anything about the item you are looking for and describe your item in his words and you might get what you want."

I have been addicted to eBaying and have been searching many techniques/methods of getting deals for cheap on eBay. I also sold some items I got in Garage sales for something more than what I paid for and earned some money to buy something which I want.

 

I just like to share what I learn so I write it in blogs. Hope this helps you guys.

Thanks for reading.