How To Become A Top eBayer

July 23, 2012
By: Lauren Cope

Once upon a time eBay was seen as the place where parents bought used clothes and cheap socks, but now it’s a tool used by the smartest shoppers looking for a bargain. Just searching ‘Topshop’ reveals thousands of pages and if you’re clued up, you can find some gems. We have compiled the dos and don’ts of eBaying to give you a head start…

Don’t…

Think everything is a bargain.

A bargain is not buying anything you can find that’s cheap – that’s a shopping addiction. It’s all too easy to keep clicking the ‘increase bid’ button, so make sure when you’re bidding on something you actually want. Yes, you might have got that lovely mud-coloured poncho for £5 but let’s be honest, it wasn’t worth that to start with.

 

Get competitive.

When the line between bidding on something because you want to win it and bidding so you can beat someone blurs, you’ve gone too far. Sometimes, and it’s difficult, I know, you have to admit defeat, step away from the laptop and give up. Spending £30 on something worth a fiver because you didn’t want to lose out to misskitty9593 is stupid. You can get through it. There must be support groups for this stuff.

 

Turn your nose up.

Get rid of the stigma attached to eBay, it’s not just about second hand clothes. While you can get some great bargains through auctions, some of the best deals are through boutiques and Buy it Now items. Dresses, skirts and heels are available from as little as £4.99 and while you can’t expect designer quality, they aren’t bad! Some of my most complimented dresses are from eBay boutiques for little more than £10.

 

Do…

Shop in the middle of the night.

We’ve all been there. For some reason, you’re up at some early hour of the morning, your Facebook newsfeed hasn’t had a new story in 20 minutes and TV is for the hearing impaired. Make the most of your messed up sleeping pattern and head over to eBay, where you’ll have far less competition for that dress, as the sane people out there will be sleeping.

 

Change your viewing options.

If you switch to ‘ending soonest’ or ‘cheapest p+p’, you’ll get the chance to swipe on items that only have a few minutes left and have somehow escaped mass bidding. While the cheapest items might not stay that way it’s worth having a look, just in case you get lucky with anything.

 

Be smart.

Now for the safety part – check out the seller’s rating to make sure they’ve got positive feedback, inspect photos of items just in case there are any marks or faults they haven’t disclaimed and make sure they don’t just seem… weird.

 

Get detailed!

Because there are so many results, you can afford to be specific with what you want. Unless you’re just in the mood for a browse, change vague searches like Topshop or River Island to ones like ‘playsuit Topshop 10’. Narrow it down further by choosing your size, colour, buying format, price and location from the left hand bars.

 

Be prepared to get addicted.

There may not be a medical condition (yet), but eBay is addictive. When you can find vintage clothing for a steal and popular brands for even less (ASOS dresses often go criminally cheap), it’s hard to only buy one thing. Soon you will join the ranks of addicts and find yourself logging onto eBay as frequently as you do Facebook. Luckily for us, eBay has an iPhone, Android and Blackberry app… uh-oh.

 

Image from: www.lasugarlace.com and www.econsultancy.com