Profit from Other Sellers’ Errors on eBay

The best way to buy on eBay to resell on eBay is to look for items that are poorly or wrongly listed, and which currently are attracting no bids or have just low bids and one or at most two bidders. 

These are the kind of items you can buy for a fraction of their true market value, which subsequently you list more professionally on eBay to attract multiple bidders and higher finishing prices.

You make this concept work by searching constantly on eBay for items you can buy at less than their normal selling price on eBay.  This discrepancy can be due to several reasons, for example:

*  The item is poorly listed and failing to attract interest because it is listed in a category where few potential buyers will find it.

*  The seller offers an item Buy It Now or accepts a ‘Best Offer’ at much below the price the item regularly fetches on eBay.

*  The listing has spelling mistakes or typos which render it oblivious to eBay’s search engines when potential buyers seek for similar items.

*  The pictures are poor and that deters people from bidding.

*  The item is highly desirable but the seller isn’t aware of the fact or fails to describe the item properly so only eagle eyed punters like yourself actually get to notice the listing.

*  The seller has poor feedback and bidders are deterred from buying his goods. But you are willing to take a risk because you’re paying with PayPal and you know you’ll get a refund if the product does not arrive or is not as described. 

This PayPal ruling applies to all buyers, incidentally, but still few private buyers accept such risks.  However, it is usually worthwhile for you to take such risks when profit potential is high – assuming, of course, that your own feedback is flawless, which it always should be!

These and other anomalies represent products you might buy cheap and relist almost right away to at least double your investment and maybe earn a great deal more. 

Tips

*  Look especially for items failing to attract bids because they are poorly described, listed in the wrong category, have spelling mistakes or typos, have poor illustrations, or which are missing essential words and fail to respond to eBay’s search engine. 

In all cases the item can usually be purchased below typical eBay value and relisted immediately after corrections and improvements are made. 

*  Look for items with no bids and close to auction end, where you might find many poorly described which reduces  bids on an otherwise valuable item.

You might also find sellers of Buy It Now items remaining unsold just a few hours before auction end will accept Best Offer bids way lower than would be so when the auction began. 

Check manually or find last minute no bid auction and Buy It Now listings using www.no-bids.com or click on the ‘All Items Ending Now’ icon normally middle of screen on the home page at www.ebay.co.uk

*  Do price comparisons on eBay.  You’ll often find items available Buy It Now or Best Offer which regularly fetch much higher prices through auction listings. Higher prices frequently occur because people get caught up in the thrill of bidding at auction and chase items they don’t really need or want just to prevent someone else from having them.  

And that is the reason you will sometimes find items worth a few dollars or so fetching one thousand plus dollars or more, such as a postcard depicting Hartlepool in the UK which I would not pay more than two pounds for which went at £1,200 plus!  

A major benefit for resellers is that by buying Buy It Now items and relisting them at auction you’ll be able to use much the same listing as their original seller as long as you take care not to break copyright rules of course!

*  Apart from spelling and typing errors for which seek-and-find software is available, you should also spend time physically looking for items to resell because they are wrongly described for example, and which do not respond to search engines or software programs. 

*  With so many items listed on eBay, in several country sites and in hundreds of different categories and sub-categories, you really do need to focus on one or a handful of product types or you’ll just get horribly confused. 

You also need a good system to keep count of items viewed, low price Best Offer opportunities, and so on.  A spreadsheet will usually do nicely.

*  When you find arbitrage opportunities, look at other items from the same seller.  Many will make the same mistakes through all their listings, such as incorrectly spelling the same item through countless listings, using the same incorrect template through all listings as mentioned earlier, using poor photographs and incorrect categories, and more. And that means you will find some sellers a regular source of arbitrage opportunities, purely because they haven’t spotted their own mistakes.

*  The best arbitrage opportunities exist with unprofessional sellers, people who continuously use poor photographs or list in the wrong categories, sellers who list only in their own country and never overseas on potentially a more effective eBay site, people using a template with a spelling mistake or template error that’s existed from day one and was never corrected. 

Keep careful notes of these sellers’ eBay IDs and refer to them often.

*  Look for auctions that end while most of the world sleeps when some amazing buys are possible especially for listings without bids (check them out at www.no-bids.com).

As for other mistakes there are some sellers who constantly end auctions when no-one is bidding purely because they repeat a one-time mistake that has never been corrected.  This is a common problem and all but the most professional sellers may take weeks or months to spot their mistakes. 

For example, I once listed one hundred plus items on eBay, all on a Friday evening, all with intention to sell seven days later, also on Friday evening.   

I was listing many same theme items that evening and I know it’s a good idea to leave a short time between listings to give multiple buyers time to move between auctions to check their bids. 

Because five minutes is long enough between listings to make sure people can easily bid on subsequent items, I rather stupidly timed all my listings to end at five minute intervals.   Starting 8pm, I listed 100 items plus, at five minute intervals, which means my last fifty or so ended long after midnight!  Not a good idea! 

But this is a great mistake for others to make and for you to capitalise upon.   Again, it’s all down to physically checking auction ending times for products you might resell.  

Add all items within a specific time frame to your ‘Items Item Watching’ category. Thankfully, you don’t need to wait up all night to bid on your chosen items, you can use sniping software to bid in your absence.

*  ‘Speed’ sniping is the process of seeking BUY IT NOW arbitrage opportunities within minutes of items being listed and long before the seller realizes the mistake or someone else has chance to bid. 

*  Be careful about shipping costs as you will encounter eBayers who charge way above actual cost of delivery which stands to eat heavily into your profit margins.  Check postage costs before bidding and also check feedback to see if this is a common problem for buyers. 

*  Also check sellers’ feedback for scams such as not actually delivering your miracle find.  I have had sellers say an arbitrage find has been lost or damaged or has been posted and got lost in transit – which in my book means they discovered their mistake and decided not to part with the product!

*   Check the arbitrage product is available to bidders from your country.  All listings give information about countries to which products are available, most are offered ‘worldwide’, but mistakes and ambiguities are common and I have seen a description state that items are available worldwide only to discover the seller has eliminated specific locations from his bidding rules.

*  Try to bid as late as possible in the auction.  Most sellers forget what they have listed and just let auctions run their course, mistakes and all. 

Most sellers make regular checks on what items actually have bids and how many people are bidding and this is the time when most of us spot our own mistakes and withdraw the listing. 

Believe me that very few sellers ever check their entire listings.  So it follows that an early bid could reveal the mistake and get the listing withdrawn and you lose a miracle find! 

So bid as late as possible, manually if you wish, or using sniping software of which many different types are available, including popular favorite Auction Sniper – www.auctionsniper.com.

Like all good tools, Auction Sniper charges for each search but there is a free trial period.

*  Don’t spend too long on individual arbitrage opportunities, except for those ending in the next few hours.  It’s far better to check listings first and add suitable items to the ‘Items I’m Watching’ section of your eBay account. 

This way you won’t spend so long focusing on one listing and overlook another better opportunity with even less time to auction end.