When I first started out using the internet to make money it was quite a few years ago. I began using my hobby browsing charity shops and I could easily spot a bargain. I would find designer jeans for a few pounds and then put them on ebay to sell for a profit. I had one or two early successes with this with G-Star and Levis jeans doing the best. I also purchased a few courses from ebay itself which taught how to make money from the auction site.
One such course taught me to find items which were hiding in the thousands of items in ebay’s massive site. There are several ways to do this. One of them is simply looking through the listings in any given category for items which have been carelessly listed with a bad title. It’s amazing how many people list valuable items for sale with a title like ‘bike’ or ‘coat’! Since people are finding and bidding on these items mainly through the searches they are doing, it makes sense to list them with as many keywords in the title as possible. I would find items which were badly listed and which I knew were worth more than they were selling for and re-list them with a much better description in the title. I would also take much better photographs and make a bigger effort listing the items description.
To hone in on these bargains I found a useful tool: www.bargainchecker.com. Bargain checker and also www.misspellsearch.com allow you to look for miss spelled items listed on ebay. You can use this tool to look for items which are small but high in value so would be easy to post. I used to look for branded items which had common miss spellings such as berghaus, timberland, panasonic and other such items. I even found a Tom Tom sat nav listed as TmTom which was going for half its value. Quite literally you are finding the diamonds in the rough. Once you have done the search and found some items click through to ebay on the miss-spell site and then click on the tab for ‘Auction’. This will narrow down the search and cut out all the ‘buy it now’ listings to leave you with the bargains!
Some of the items will have a ‘reserve’ on them and these are worth avoiding. Really you want to find ones with no reserve and only a few bids if any. The advanced search feature on ebay allows you to search for items with any amount of bids and this is really useful to find those items which haven’t yet been discovered. The advanced settings tab is at the top on the right as you are searching through the items.
Once you have found your bargain item don’t just rush in and bid like crazy since this will only push up the price and is more likely to start a bidding war.  Particularly if there are other savvy shoppers out there! Use this website instead to plan your maximum bid and avoid getting drawn into a ‘must have’ frenzied attitude: www.auctionsniper.com. If there are no bids at all it is worth putting a low bid in just to secure the item and this also means the seller cannot withdraw it or change the description should they notice their mistake!Â
Auction sniper allows you to set and forget your bidding strategy so that ebay will bid on your behalf up to your maximum amount in the last few seconds of the auction. Remember that there may be other snipers out there who are doing the same thing so it pays to research how much you can expect to get for your item should you win it. This will give you an idea of what you should be placing as your maximum bid. Don’t get drawn in to a bidding war and exceed your maximum price since you are buying to make a profit remember!Â
To do this go to ‘advanced search’ next to the search bar at the top of the ebay platform. Enter a description of your item and click on the tab for completed listings. This will give you an idea of what you expect to get for a similar item when re-selling through ebay.
It is also worth having two accounts if possible since this is a sneaky marketing tactic and people can get rather upset when they see their items being sold off at twice what they got for them! You don’t want this to affect your feedback as this is important when it comes to selling your items.
I successfully doubled my money on several items using this method and obviously it pays to go for the larger value items to maximize your earning potential. I did find that there were also several people doing this and I would notice this as the price would fly up at the end of the auction with other ‘snipers’ putting their bids in at the last second – obviously using auction sniper!
After a while I decided there had to be a better way of making money from the internet and that ultimately led me to learn affiliate marketing. With the help of my marketing mentors I have now found something which is far better. Click here to learn more and to access the 7 day boot camp series which explains how you can do the same.Â