First off you should start watching some auctions to get a feel for the process. Once you get used to the process, get an Ebay id (do not use your e-mail name as your user-id, the spammers will get it!). Then start bidding on small items to learn the process and develop positive feedback. It all runs on feedback. Also multiple user-ids are still ok. Some people use one for selling and another for buying, so as not to let people know their sources.
You can also look under categories to find an item, but remember not everyone puts their article for sale in the correct categories.
When the seller has tons of items and you want to Only search Palm Pilot, go to seller search, go to the bottom of the page, enter Palm Pilot, and under Multiple sellers, put the person's eBay id (or several id's).
If you have a concern about the seller, ask them a question a few days before the auctions end (such as cost of shipping, do they take Paypal, etc.) to see how they respond.
Use odd numbered cents, such as .99 since the bids go up in increments of 50 cents, $1 (depending on the value of the bid), you may win an item by just one cent.
Think of any auction you have been to - it is only the last price at the close of the hammer that counts! Always snipe -- which is bidding at the last minute. In this auction format, it is only the highest bidder at the close of the auction that wins. If you bid during the week, you keep driving up the price, but bidding at the last second masks interest and usually results in a lower cost. You can use a service (www.esnipe.com which charges a fee or hammersnipe at hammertap.com which does not) or use a program on your own computer.
Bid the maximum amount you want to spend (proxy bidding -- only goes up to this amount if someone places a bid against you). Be aware of the Terms of Sale (TOS) for each seller. They differ greatly.
A set of tips is at the Vendio site (which also has an online bulletin board about ebay auctions). http://www.vendio.com/service/tipsandtactics/index2.html
When the item has arrived, don't forget to give feedback to the seller.
Ebay is where the market is in online auctions - it is an ever-changing marketplace, where change is constant.
Happy Ebay-ing!
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