As mentioned elsewhere on the board, my daughter recently lost her iPod Nano. As I am presently away from home for six weeks, and her behavior thus far has been deemed acceptable (well, for a 15-year old) by her mother, I am interested in finding a replacement device for her.
She’s got her heart set on an iPod Touch. I say “fat chance,” unless I am able to score one for sixty bucks or less. I am also open to finding her another Nano (Generation 3 or later) at a somewhat lower price point.
Thing is, I really have no idea how to strategically manage my bidding so as to actually win an auction. Also, I’m getting weary of scrolling through dozens (or hundreds) of auctions that contain the words “ipod touch” or “ipod nano” but are actually for accessories for these devices.
Is there a good filter I can place on my search terms that will eliminate any results that are not for actual iPods? Preferably not broken ones, but I’m willing to cull through those myself, if necessary.
I could sure use your assistance, guys, and I thank you in advance for any advice you are able to offer.
After searching for “ipod touch,” sort the results by price. I bet most of the accessories would fall to the bottom of the list, being cheaper than the actual ipod.
Tha might work, but sorting by “ending soonest” might be better. Look at a sellers feedback, be careful of any who don;t have 99%+, read their Feedback if so, check why- slow shipper might be OK for you, but “ships broken stuff” might not.
try this search:
ttp://electronics.shop.ebay.com/iPod-MP3-Players-/73839/i.html?_nkw=ipod+touch&_catref=1&_fln=1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m282
that is “ipod touch” under In iPods & MP3 Players a subcategory of Consumer electronics, that is weeding out most of the accessories. If you further narrow it down by capacity (this is for 8 GB, a very good price area for a good used ipod touch) you get even less.
this searches for the same but only used or refurbished.
It looks like they are going for about $80+. Find one with less than a hour to go, bid $81.00 and I think you’re good. Watch for S&H charges! I know that’s a little more than you wanted to spend, but checking “completed listings” and it looks like about the normal low price point.
Be careful of sellers with weird Terms of Sale like “When the package leaves my hands i am no longer responsible for the goods, goods lost in mail are not responsibility” altho that is 100% false (ebay will make him refund if he can’t prove it got into your hands via Delivery confirmation" it will take longer and be a hassle.
Don’t buy from sellers with very low Fb ratings and lots of hot new stuff for sale.
there are ways to filter your search. For example, if you want an “ipod nano”, and those two words always occur in that order, put the search term in quotes, and they will skip items that don’t have the two words together. also, words that you want to see in every item, put a + sign between the two terms. So, for the previous example, you could type ipod + nano and get the same results as the first search, but you’d also get items that have ipod and nano in the ad without the words being together.
You can also choose to look at just the title of the item or the entire description. Check the box that permits you to only search on the description, which usually cuts down the false reads alot.
If you don’t want to see a result that keeps popping up, you can take it out of your search by using a “-” sign before the word. No space between the"-" and the word. For example, if you want an ipod nano, but you didn’t want a blue one, your search would look something like “ipod nano” -blue
etc, etc, etc. There are a number of ways to search ebay and get rid of or add descriptors to help you narrow your search.
When you find one you want to bid on, decide the highest price, including shipping that you’re willing to pay. Enter that amount in the last window to bid and pull the trigger at the last possible moment. With a fast internet connection, I usually do that with seven seconds left. Only once out of many attempts did it not work in time. That doesn’t mean I won it every time, but most were successful.
MacCat describes sniping. This is the only valid way of using eBay. The idea of “strategically managing your bidding” is an illusion. A sniper bid in the closing seconds is the only mechanism that makes any sense. A bid at any other time can only ever result in you paying more. This is because despite the fluff and window dressing that makes eBay look like a competitive bid auction, that is all an illusion. Normal auctions where you competitively bid do not have an ending time. Bidding continues until everyone is done. And the last bid is the price paid. eBay has a termination time, and the amount paid is the second to last bid plus a margin. A termination time means that you know exactly the moment when the highest bid is reached. If you bid moments before this time you know you can’t be outbid. Competitive auctions always allow you to be outbid.
With eBay, because the price paid is the second to last bid, the last thing you want is the price to rise. Let the idiots that think they can get a $5 iPod put in their bids, but do not compete. All it will ever do is drive up your final price. Your sniper bid is what you are prepared to pay. If it is higher than anyone else’s bid, you pay no more than that - but most importantly - possibly a lot less. Unlike a competitive auction. If the highest bid for the iPod is $5 five seconds before the close, and you bid $80, you will win and pay $5.50. If you start bidding $6, $7 and get into a bidding war, you might still win with your $80 bid, but you may end up paying $50, or whatever price the last idiot bailed out at.
At absolute worst, eBay is a sealed bid auction, and if everyone used it that way, and understood it works that way, there would be no problem anyway. But a large number of people either don’t understand this, and somehow think that bargains can be had because they see stupidly low current bids, and only bid low. Sniping allows you to actually take advantage of this, and if you are lucky, sometimes get a bargain. But you have to always bid with the clear understanding that you may win and get the item for exactly what your top bid was. So, decide what you are prepared to pay, and snipe with it. You win, you are happy, You lose, you didn’t pay too much. There are no downsides.
There are also automatic systems and web sites that will snipe for you.
Well, I don’t know if this is a hijack or not but:
This isn’t really true.
Sniping is a reasonable technique for winning an auction at a lower price point than using proxy bidding, but it’s also any excellent way to lose an auction. As a very long-time ebay user (since 1998), it’s become clear to me that sniping is useful if:
a) there are many similar items on sale and
b) you don’t really mind not winning the auction.
If either of these isn’t true, then sniping is a bad idea, and the best bidding strategy is to proxy bid your absolute drop-dead highest price and walk away.
Of course, one could find a listing that has a buy it now with a price in the range of where other similarly situated items have seen their bidding end and bypass the entire bidding process altogether. You may or may not a premium for this convenience.
Feedback, feedback, feedback. Read it and live and die by it. Don’t buy from sellers with an unproven history. Customize your search results to show the Feedback column so you can instantly see them while browsing by price.
And read the item description in depth, especially to make sure it doesn’t say things like “AS IS” or “FOR PARTS”; you want a unit that’s in good, working, TESTED condition – hopefully with pictures that say the same.
You might also consider searching Amazon.com for Nanos from third-party vendors. (In addition to selling products itself, Amazon also hosts individuals and other resellers, but in a fixed-price format. The advantage for buyers is that Amazon’s search interface is usually a lot cleaner, letting you see all the iPods of a certain type grouped together in one product page for easy price comparisons.)
This search wil retrieve items with the words Ipod Nano and black or silver in the title. In addition, items in which the title contains the words accessories or strap or pink or used will be omitted. The or function is very useful.
The sort drop down is also very useful (most bids, highest or lowest price). Also, if you have the Search Descriptions boxed checked unchecking it will eliminate many items in your search results that you probably don’t want anyway.
Thank you for the elucidation on sniping. That’s pretty much what I thought I was referring to when I mentioned “strategically managing my bidding.” I put in my top price of $60.00 about ten seconds before the end of the auction (when the top bid was currently $56.00).
But what happens when two or more people place their top bids at the same price point? Does the auction immediately jump up to that level?
Let’s say the current bid is $56, somebody else had a max of $60 and you tried to bid $60. The current bid will jump up to $60 for the other person and you’ll be automatically outbid.
I’d like to hijack the thread and get some advice on selling stuff on e-bay.
I have 100s of back issues or Rolling Stone magazine (I’ve completed the process of photographing all the covers) and some other magazines (Maxim, National Lampoon). I also have a yard-high stack of coffee table-style books and 100s of LP records (classic rock and classical) and some 78s.
Should I even bother to try and sell this kind of stuff on e-bay? How best does one maximize profitability in this area?
No. With ebay, the price paid is one increment above the second highest bid. That second highest bid could have been placed in the first five minutes of the auction; it could have been the first of a dozen bids, by a dozen different bidders.
Sniping is just late proxy bidding: bidding the maximum you’re willing to pay, but doing it at the last second. It won’t make any difference at all against another proxy bidder, whether early or late. If you bid $50 with one second to go, but someone else had bid $60 on the first day, you lose.
Again, no. You can absolutely be outbid, by a much earlier bid.
But you can’t be reactively outbid. In other words, if the only other bidders are nibblers who are incapable of deciding what they’re willing to pay without seeing someone else’s bids in front of them, then yeah, you’re in luck. The problem is that there’s no way to know in advance whether you’re bidding against a proxier or a nibbler, or whether there’s another sniper waiting in the wings to bid at the same second as you. Hence the importance of bidding your max (ebay won’t use the whole lot unless it’s necessary).
Sort of. Except that, just because the bid amount showing five seconds before the close is $5, that doesn’t mean that actual highest bid is $5. It could well be that that bidder has a proxy of $50, but ebay isn’t using it because it hasn’t been needed. So even if the bid price showing is $5, your bid of $51 could still leave you paying $51.
