Pinkcotton's Guide to eBay Shopping

I think i can be considered a very late adopter of eBay shopping. When so many people around me have been bidding like crazy on eBay since time eternal, i'm a little embarrassed to say that i've only started like around 1 month ++ ago. Since, i've had a few friends asking me how do i bid on eBay and such (seems like i'm not the only newbie after all :D), i decided to write a brief guide on bidding on eBay. 

I think the first item i bidded on eBay was this OPI DripDry cause it is being sold at a very expensive price here in Malaysia so i thought i'd just look around in eBay and i actually found one that's pretty cheap! (i won it at only $2.05, rrp at $4.40) and that's when the addiction began =_="

So first you search for something you like

And you can see what's the current bid and what's the time left for bidding and the description of the item. You will also be able to see how much it would cost to ship the item to your place. I normally login to ebay.com.my so it will show the postage costs to ship to Malaysia. If you are happy with the item and you would like to bid, just enter your maximum bid (meaning the maximum price you'd want to pay for the item)

It will prompt you for the second time whether or not you want to confirm the bid. And if you are the current highest bidder, you will see this.

Normally, i would prefer to bid for an item with a shorter remaining bid time because that would mean that the chance of me winning the item would be higher :D

I personally, think it would be advisable to bid the next minimum bid whenever you make a bid. Meaning if the current bid is $1.04 and the next minimum bid is $1.29, don't be a smart alec and try to bid at $4.00 or something like that because that would mean that you are increasing the price for everyone and even if you do win the item, you might have been able to pay less for the item. But of course, after your initial bid if you are the current highest bidder, you can increase your maximum bid so that the next time another bidder comes and outbid you, eBay will automatically increase the bid for you until it reaches the maximum bid that you set :P

So far, ive been using paypal to pay for all my items and i'm pretty satisfied. Of course it would be advisable to purchase from a reputable eBayer with good general feedbacks. My parcels from US (with USPS First Class Mail Intl) took only around 10-14 days, from UK it would be a little longer and postage would be a little bit more expensive and i think it took around almost 2 weeks to reach Malaysia. From Hong Kong, it takes around 7 days. So enjoy bidding on eBay :)