eBay is an online auctioning website. You should know that it’s not just a simple auctioning website – in fact it’s the world’s biggest auction website. If you already have an idea about how an auction works, then you should have no problem understanding what eBay us.
How eBay works is that someone puts something on the site that they wish to sell, and then various buyers and bidders place bids on that item. It goes over a certain period of time, and the person with the highest bid gets the item. It’s really that simple. The buying and selling spots on eBay are not reserved for just the ‘elite’ – eBay will actually list any item on the site, irrespective of value.
‘Bidding’ is how much you say you are willing to pay for that item in that specific auction. However, bidding on eBay doesn’t exactly work the same as a normal auction. How it works on eBay is that you tell the site what the highest amount you are willing to pay for each item. After that has happened, eBay will place a bid for you on that item on your behalf. The beauty of this is that you might have said that you would pay a maximum of $200 on an item – however you will only have to pay $100 if that was the highest bid that was placed by anyone else.
It might sound complicated to you right now but it really isn’t. The quickest way to get accustomed to it is to give it a try. The best thing you should do is go on the eBay site for your country. If for some reason, you don’t know that the address for it is, I recommend visiting www.ebay.com, and you will be able to find that information there. On the first page there is a box labeled “search”. This is where you type in whatever you are looking to buy on there.
You should now see a list of for sale items on your screen, and with it, should be information on when the bidding period ends for that item, and also how much other people are bidding for that item.
After you have selected what item you would like to place a bid on, scroll down until you reach the bottom of the description page. The next thing to do is type the maximum payment you are willing to pay into the box. Then the next thing to do is press the ‘place bid’ button. You should also note that you might have to sign in if you haven’t already done so, or if you don’t already have a user name, you will be required to go through a quick register process.
In the case that some else placed a bid that is higher than your maximum bid, eBay will inform you through e-mail, and you will now have opportunity to bid another time. If you are not contacted by eBay, then you are the highest bidder! Now all you have to do is just simply wait until the auction time period has been completed.
You might be having second thought about whether or not eBay is a safe place to buy from. Be assured that while fraud cases do happen from time to time, eBay remains one of the safest places to purchase from on the Internet.
