Category: Tips

Sunday Listings

Historically, eBay sellers like to list auctions items on Sunday afternoons so they end on Sunday afternoon the following week.  It’s a good time to have items ending, since the number of buyers online tends to be higher then.

While BIN items can be listed at any time, Sunday listings are also popular for fixed price items.

Be sure not to miss these popular listing times for scooping up deals with BINSniper and VieBuy.

Other times that get more listing action for Sundays are Thursday afternoons for 3-day and 10-day listings.  Tuesday afternoons for the less common 5 day listings.

 

Using filter exclude options in BINSniper and VieBuy

We’ve noticed that a number of users are checking ALL of the exclude filter options. Checking all of the boxes will prevent you from seeing most if not all items.

The viebuy.com filter screen has been changed to warn about this and clarify it a bit:

If you check all the boxes, you will be excluding free shipping items, returnable items, best offer items, etc.

The same is true for BINSniper.  We will update the the BINSniper screen in 3.01.

Performance Tuning for BINSniper 3

The article describes performance tuning for the eBay website for VieBuy and BINSniper 3.0 or higher.

 

How this varies from the BINSniper 2.x recommendations:

BINSniper 3.x is more efficient on the network and performs better over 3G, WiFi and satellite connections too. There are no settings that improve item delivery speed.

The following Firefox setting can be used to improve image and script loading time on fast network connection. This primary impacts load time of the eBay pages.

Enter about:config into the Firefox address bar (where you type URLs). A settings list should appear. You may receive a warning first. If you do, accept the warning screen.

Enter the following into the search box:

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server

Warning: This setting affects all websites. Increasing this setting too much may result in excessive demands being place on servers and you being banned.  10 is a reasonable maximum.

 

Double click to adjust the setting. Increase it to 10.

 

If this setting does not exist, right click the blank area of the screen and select New->Integer. Paste the name into the preference box, click OK, and enter 10 for the value.

Increasing this setting can improve image and script loading time on eBay.  Image loading may be improved on BINSniper and VieBuy websites when many items are displayed. This setting has no effect on item delivery speed.

 

Network Pipelining

Firefox has settings to enable network pipelining that are widely recommended as cure-alls. While these may improve performance in some cases, they are not likely to improve BINSniper performance for most users. Broadband users are unlikely to see any improvements at all in any circumstances by modifying the Firefox settings. Pipelining may also introduce some security risks. See this article at sys-con for more information on these issues. We do not recommend pipelining to improve BINSniper performance.

 

Use more specific searches for better speed and ease of use

For best performance, you should make your searches as tight as possible. Very broad searches will result in the entire item list being replaced with each update. More specific searches will yield fewer results and make it easier to work with the lists. You can use the streamer mode to separate lists on the screen, one for each search.

Limiting the number of searches improves display time on your browser. But more importantly it allows you to focus only on items that you would actually buy.

For example, if you have the following searches:

ipod nano blue case
ipod shuffle blue case

You could replace these with:

ipod blue case

The nano and shuffle searches would be included, as well as other ipod models.

Or you can use the OR syntax to limit the results to nano and shuffle only:

ipod blue case (nano, shuffle)

which means:   items containing “ipod” and “blue” and “case” and either “nano” or “shuffle”

 

Pale Moon

Pale Moon is a performance optimized version of Firefox for Windows. Pale Moon is (or was) derived from Firefox code, and has some hardware restrictions. It is not supported by Mozilla. Some BINSniper users are running Pale Moon, but we cannot provide support for it. The current release does not appear to implement the necessary features of Gecko 29+ required by BINSniper. We have not tested any version for performance or compatibility.

 

 

eBay Feed Changes

Data Feeds
eBay recently migrated their data feeds to a new system and severely reduced the speed at which items are added. They appear to be batching items, so some items will be very new while other with be minutes old when they hit the feed.

According to eBay, their websites will use the same data feed source, so items should appear in BINSNiper and VieBuy at the same speed as they do on the website.

In testing we find that items may arrive around 10-12 minutes after being listed, but will appear on the website at the same time. This also means that items will tend to arrive in groups rather than singly.

In practical terms, the new changes to the eBay servers mean that you will typically see items that started 0-15 minutes ago appear in the list with the majority being either less than two minutes old or around 10 minutes old. If eBay improves this batching behavior, the items will appear earlier in your results.

 

RSS Feeds
RSS speed is not yet affected by the data feed changes. We have also observed that RSS Feeds are not complete. Many items are never delivered via RSS but then later delivered by the Data Feeds.  The RSS feeds are also now delivering some items that are 12 hours old which should not be included.

 

Updates to deal with this

VieBuy 3.0 addresses these issues and filters out outdated items.

BINSniper 2.X is unaffected by the RSS issues, since it doesn’t use RSS, but is experiencing delays due to the data feed changes. BINSniper 3.0 now under final development will use our new data feed technology and should correct these issues and bring order to the galaxy.

 

The Future

eBay has made at least one public statement indicating that the they plan to do away with RSS feeds entirely. This may not end up being the case, since many webmaster tools such as WordPress plugins depend on the RSS feeds. But if RSS is eliminated, VieBuy will continue to deliver the data feed. Since everyone would then be on the same data source, timeliness should not be impacted.

 

Update  June 2015

Our stats indicate that RSS is no longer delivering items early.  We’ve stopped delivering RSS items to VieBuy and BINSniper 3+.  This allows faster processing of the data feeds.

 

 

eBay Fashion – Buy and Resell on eBay with BINSniper

eMarketer, who post data and insights on ecommerce, recently released an analysis of ecommerce in 2011 and projections for 2012. In the article, they project 20% growth in the fashion category in 2012, making it the fastest growing category.

That makes clothing lots a great buy/resell opportunity.   Use our BINSniper add-on for Firefox or the VieBuy.com website to find the best deals as they are listed.

Here’s an example:
Item: Lot of 100 set Alpaca Wool Sweater+hat+gl​oves+socks, andean designs high quality

Price: $1400 with free shipping from Peru, seller Detuei

Elsewhere on eBay, single priced alpaca sweaters range from $35-$150, Hat+scarf sets for $20+.

Breaking apart this lot and selling it as single items/set will yield more profit. When broken down, this lot could be sold as singles – 100 sweaters and 100 gloves/hat/mittens sets. Breaking it down further (separating the hats and scarves) would probably not add additional profit, but would add more work.  Potential income from resale is $5500-17000 or $4000-16000 profit!

The more you are able to spend, the better the deals get. Smaller lots are available too. It’s also possible to resell single items for a profit, such as premium designer items.

 

See some live clothing lot listings:

 

How to Buy and Resell on eBay

Using some of the tools found on this site, you can source items for resale and then list them on eBay or other sites. BINSniper and VieBuy are two tools that perform a similar function: they alert you to new items that meet the criteria you establish.

eBay is not only a good place to buy and sell, it’s a great place to buy and resell. You can buy product on eBay for resale and then sell it on eBay, or a number of other sites, or even in your brick and mortar store if you have one.

Where these tools add value is in the instant alerting features. Instead of searching through thousands of listings or bidding on auctions for days, you get alerts of brand new listings that you can buy immediately.

By setting criteria such as price range, keywords, and category, you can set the tools to show you deals seconds after they are listed on eBay. Check out the free eBay buying tools listed on auctionbucks.com

Finding product
To find products that can be bought on eBay and then resold on eBay you’ll need to browse listings looking for items that have a wide range of selling prices. Some examples are cellphones, PDAs, musical instruments, GPS, industrial equipment, cameras, high end fashion items, some collectibles, laptops, electronics, network routers, and more.

Generally speaking, the higher the item price, the more room you have for markup. Using BINSniper, set the keywords to search for, optionally set a category number, and then set the price range to monitor.

Many new or casual sellers undervalue their items. They will typically put the item up for auction and set a BIN price below the normal going rate. If you use BINSniper to find this item before other buyers and before anyone can place a low-ball bid, you can purchase it at the BIN price.

In other cases, fixed priced items that a seller is unfamiliar with will be placed up for sale and the first buyer to find the deal gets it. BINSniper can alert you in seconds of an item being listed and typically a minute before it is displayed on the eBay websites. (depends on the site, category and day)

An example: A Cisco 2811 router currently sells for anywhere from $500 to $3000 depending on the options installed. A router valued at $500 may be resellable at $800 without any modifications.

A less costly example: An iPod Touch listed at $59 can be resold for $89. BINSniper lets you monitor for iPods priced from $49-$69. Setting the low end of the range excludes unwanted listings like cases, chargers and other accessories that would fill the search results on the eBay website.

A bad idea: A zhu zhu pet hamster that sells for $5-$9 on eBay is probably not a great target for resale. The inbound shipping costs will undo any profit you might have made. But if you can buy them in lots, it might be worthwhile. For buying and reselling to be profitable, you need to factor in all your costs including eBay fees. Generally speaking, you’ll need to look at items where the BuyPrice+ShippingCost is less than ResalePrice+eBayFees.

There are items out there, and hundreds of eBayers use BINSniper everyday.

You should also consider using two eBay accounts. One to buy and one to sell. This helps prevent your purchase price from being researched thru your feedback listings.