Ebay
Here’s a quick way to make money with ebay using the misspell search tool at http://www.bargainchecker.com. Firstly decide on an item to search for. It needs to be small and valuable since you must post things from ebay so bulky items are not as good and you want to make money on your purchase so the more valuable the better. I find electrical items work well since you can search for brand names and there are many electrical items which are small and are over the £20 mark allowing you to make more money from them. You could also use a word like ‘diamond’ which is small and valuable.
Type your search term into the search bar in bargainchecker.com and search through the ebay results for the misspelled items. You can refine your search by clicking on the category options on the left once you are through to ebay since you might get many results. For example if I search for panasonic, then click ‘view these items on ebay’ it brings up 167 results. If I then click on consumer electronics on the left I get 23 results which is much quicker to browse through. Then click on ‘auctions only’ (just above the search results) and this eliminates all the business listings and leaves only the potential bargains!
Below is a listing I found using this method and you can see the original listing below is incorrectly spelled ‘Pansonic’. Although I only made £7.50 on this it shows the potential of what can be done. There were a lot of bidders on this item which pushed the price up rather high unfortunately. I used http://www.auctionsniper.com to bid at the last couple of seconds. This has the advantage of not pushing the price up in an auction and stealing a deal at the last minute. You can also set your limits too and this helps prevent you getting into a bidding war and overspending on an item.
When I re-listed these headphones I made sure to spell correctly and also I included more keywords which were not included in the previous listing: ‘Panasonic RP-WF810 Wireless Cordless Stereo Headphones’ rather than ‘Pansonic headphones’. These keywords will attract more buyers including those searching for the specific model or any combination of the other terms used, and therefore hopefully it will fetch a better price. Below: Original listing sold for £16.50. My revamped listing sold for £24.
This Tom Tom satellite navigation system was very badly listed and therefore very few bidders could find it. I found it with the bargain checker tool mentioned above and re-listed it with additional keywords to attract more bidders. I started the listing at 1p!!! Having a low starting bid attracts more bidders and is more likely to encourage a bidding war between buyers. I bought this for £46 with £6.99 postage and sold it for £108 with a £3.99 postage. Having your postage costs too high can put off would-be bidders so I don’t recommend overcharging for postage. Sat nav original listing £46. Revamped listing £108.00.
Obviously ebay is a huge site and you must always buy with caution. Check the feedback of the seller and make sure they don’t have too many negative feedback comments. If so it might be worth giving them a miss. Also compare the description and make sure the condition of your item is good. If in doubt email the seller for more information and always be as helpful as possible when describing your item for sale.
Here is a pair of ‘Timerland’ shoes or rather Timberland shoes! Timberland boots are very popular on ebay and this spelling mistake meant only a few people could see the item. I took a better picture of them when I re-listed and added more keywords to the title. Again I started the listing at 1p to encourage more bidders. Original listing went for £8.50. My revamped listing sold for £45.98.
Here is another pair of ‘Timerlands’ found again with the bargainchecker tool. I re-listed this item with a nicer picture and more keywords. The high postage of £10 will have likely put off any other bidders but I thought I’d take chance on these! There are literally millions of listings on ebay and even though there are many snipers out there picking up these bargains there is still plenty of scope for making money using this method. Original listing went for £0.99p but with a £10 postage fee. Revamped listing sold for £21.00 with a £4.49 postage charge.
Here I found 6 pairs of brand new Calvin Klein boxer shorts with a misspelling for £21.01 . Calvin ‘Kein’ instead of Calvin Klein. I re-listed with a nicer photo, correct spelling and more keywords and sold 5 through a ‘buy it now’ listing and the last one on an auction. They sold for £9.99 each on the buy it now and £8.50 on the auction. When looking for suitable items to bid on you can check what price they are likely to fetch by looking at similar items in the advanced search options. Simply click on the advanced search option in ebay above the listings and to the right of the search button. Enter your keyword search term in the box and scroll down and click on ‘completed listings’ then click search. This will bring up all the items within your search criteria which have already ended showing sold items with the winning bid in green and unsold items with the starting price in red. Before bidding on any item make sure to do this search to check you can make a profit, and set your maximum bid on auction sniper accordingly.
Obviously this tactic may not be appreciated by those who have lost money by making the spelling mistake in the first place or listing the item badly. Also bidders may be put off by the fact that you have only just purchased the item yourself and are not the original owner. This may give the impression of less credibility to your sale. For these reasons it is best to have two accounts with ebay so as to prevent any problems and to buy with one account and sell with another. If you already have an account use the one with most feedback to do your selling. Often people avoid buying from new account holders as they can be less reliable.
When you re-list your item include a few good quality photos. You can upload them to http://tinypic.com/ which is a free image hosting site. Choose message board for the size and get html code once uploaded and you can paste them into your listing for free without paying extra listing charges. Just paste them into your item description in ebay when listing.
