We covered what to do to prepare for signing up for eBay in the last article so we’ll pick up from there.
Next:
1. Sign up with Paypal - go to Paypal.com and sign up for their service so you can pay for your purchases through their website. It’s free to sign up and send money, and there are many sellers that accept Paypal only, I am one of them.
eBay owns Paypal, so the system integration makes it very easy to pay for items, and you don’t have to give your credit card information to each seller that you purchase from.
Some eBay sellers have their own merchant accounts and accept credit cards themselves, but that is just one more entity that you’d have to give your credit card information to, so when you have the option, I advise using Paypal.
I have seen complaints floating around on the ‘net about Paypal, but I’ve never had a problem with them. They actually offer protection for purchases made on eBay from “confirmed” sellers and monitor for suspicious activity.
Again, you’ll need your financial information handy when signing up.
2. Build up feedback - you’ll want to build up your feedback rating on eBay so sellers won’t be wary of you, worrying that you’re not a serious buyer.
Also, some sellers put conditions on their auctions determining which eBay members can bid. A minimum feedback rating probably being the most popular condition other than specifying what country(ies) a buyer must reside in and that the item must be paid for through Paypal.
You can build up your feedback quickly and cheaply by buying cheap items, mostly ebooks, for as low as $0.01 (or C $0.01, AU $0.01, EUR 0.01, etc.).
To do so, go to eBay and click on the “advanced search” link, shown just to the right of the “Search” button.
Enter the word “ebook” in the “keyword or item number” field that you’ll see.
Scroll down to the “Items Priced” area and enter “0.10″ in the “Max” field.
Now, scroll down to the “Show only” area, click on the drop down menu next to “Buying Options” and select “Buy it Now”.
A couple of lines below that, check the box next to “Free Shipping”.
Now just scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the “Search” button, and you should be shown hundreds of results for your search, with all having a “Buy it Now” price of $0.10 or less.
Go ahead and go through the results and purchase 20 of them, making sure that you do not purchase more than one from the same seller because only one feedback from another eBay member is counted toward your feedback rating.
It may take you a little while to find 20, some sellers list many of the same item at the same time.
Don’t bother to try to find things that you’re actually interested in, the goal here is to build feedback.
Purchasing the items is a simple process, just click on the item listing, click on the “Buy it Now” button that you will see on the auction description page, and follow along. You will need your PayPal login information to complete the payments.
After you have purchased some items, go ahead and leave positive feedback for the sellers, and then send them a message asking that they do the same for you.
In some cases a message may not be necessary because some sellers use an automated system that the detects when positive feedback is left for them and it then returns the favor.
Depending on the responsiveness of the sellers, you could have 15-20 positive feedbacks within a day. If you do not receive as many as you would like, repeat the search process, keeping a list of the sellers that you have already purchased from handy to make sure you don’t purchase from them again.
If you don’t find items from as many sellers as you had hoped, you could repeat the search without checking the “Buy it Now” box on the advanced search page. You would then be shown auction items along with the “Buy it Now” items.
You could then bid very low amounts on these items and often win the auctions. When bidding on auctions rather than “Buy it Now” items, it would be a good idea to use an eBay sniping service such as Hidbid.com to submit your bids for you.
Sniping is the act of waiting until the last few seconds of an auction before placing a bid. We’ll Get more into details about sniping in a future article, the next article in the series will be out shortly if it is not already, keep an eye out for it.
For now though, head on over to eBay and build yourself up some feedback.
Tags: Building eBay Feedback, buy on eBay, buying on eBay, eBay buying, eBay tips, register on Paypal, sign up on Paypal, signing up on Paypal