The New ebay: The Official Guide to Buying, Selling, Running a Profitable Business

Chapter 6

Bidding on and buying products

In chapters 2 to 4 we learned how to search and browse for products on eBay and find the most appealing products within a search results page. In chapter 5 we carefully reviewed all of the item and seller information on the View item page. Now that we’re confident we’ve found the best item from the best seller, we’re ready to bid at auction or Buy it now.

Bid at auction

When a seller has listed a product for sale using the auction format, you will be asked to enter a bid amount. eBay will specify the minimum bid amount required — in the example in figure 6.1, the bidder is advised to ‘Enter US $11.49 or more’.

Figure 6.1: placing a bid

When a seller has listed the product on an overseas eBay site, that site’s default currency will appear and eBay will make the conversion for you (‘Approximately AU $10.67’ in figure 6.1). Minimum bid increments are automatically decided by eBay, depending on the current highest bid. Table 6.1 identifies how these increments are determined.

Table 6.1: eBay auction bidding increments

If previous bids have been made on the product, a link to the right of the price will appear (in this example, 1 bid). Clicking on this link will take you to a (de-identified) list of previous bidders, the ...