Ebay isn’t what it used to be, but you can still find some quality products for great prices. Just the other day I was able to win the highest bid on a wetsuit for a fraction of its value. Someone was selling a bunch of new wetsuits that they had acquired from a bankrupt scuba shop. The starting price was $14 and the Buy It Now price was $45 (if you didn’t want to risk bidding). To make a long story short, the guy only had two suits my size and I managed to win one for $15 just one hour after the other one sold for $46. How did I save $30 on the same wetsuit? I combined a number of tips and tricks that I’ve built up over the years of bidding on Ebay.

Tip 1: Investigate your item

Research the product you want as much as you can. Who sells it? What else does that user sell? Does the user sell more than one of what you want? What is the shipping price? Etc.

Tip 2: Watch your item

Once you’ve found the item you want to buy, track it using Ebay’s “watch item” feature. This lets you track the activity of your item and the various sellers offering it. This way you can even keep track of auctions that have ended and see what others are paying for the item.

Tip 3: Set a maximum price

Know before you start bidding what you want to pay for the item. This is crucial because you will only bid once!

Tip 4: Only bid once!

This is the biggest one, and the hardest! In the dying moments of an auction, people start going crazy–bidding like mad, trying to be the last person standing. This is an emotional way to bid and will do you no good. What you need to do is bid at your maximum set price when there is only about 10 seconds left in the auction. With Ebay’s bidding system, as long as your max bid is higher than the previous bidder’s highest bid, Ebay will automatically increase your bid until it reaches your max set price. For example, if the auction is currently at $10 and I set my max bid to $20, if someone bids $15 Ebay will automatically bump my bid up to $16. This continues until either your max bid is reached or the auction ends. Now you can see why waiting until the end can help you. Stay away from early bidding which slowly increases the price and then set down a big bid in the dying seconds. Even if others can squeek in another bid, it probably won’t meet your max. They’ll never know what hit ‘em.

By following these tips I was able to buy my wetsuit for $15 just one hour after some other guy bought one for $46! Here were my steps that go along with my tips:

1) By researching my product, I was able to find out that this user had the best starting price on the type of suit I wanted, he had good feedback, he only had two suits in my size, and both auctions ended on the same day (an hour apart).

2) I watched both items and noted the differences between them. They were the exact same suit except one was black and one was blue.

3) In my mind I set a max price that I would pay. In this case I chose $45, the same as the Buy It Now price. I figured this was reasonable but didn’t “buy it now” because I thought I could get it cheaper.

4) The black suit was ending 1 hour before the blue one so I started watching it once there was about 10 minutes left in the auction. There were a lot of bidders and the price was quickly approaching $40. With seconds left, I submitted my bid for $45. As it turns out, someone had already set their max bid higher and won it for $46. I lost. However, I stuck to my game plan and, in the end, it would pay off.

A little while later I started to watch the blue suit. Surprisingly, there was not much interest in it. Perhaps people didn’t follow step 1 and thought that the black suit was the only one available and gave up after losing on the black one. If I hadn’t done my research, I may have spent all my energy (and cash) on the black one, too. Or maybe they just didn’t like blue (it was a bit uglier). In any case, I waited again until the last seconds and placed my max bid. This time I won… for $15

I’ve used this method many times and I have to say that it has never let me down. As long as you stay ahead of the game by knowing exactly what you’re doing and use discipline rather than emotion, bidding on Ebay can give you some great results!