If you know what you�re doing, you can quickly find what you�re looking for on eBay. Here are a few golden rules.
Be specific: If you�re searching for the first edition of the original Harry Potter book, you�ll get further searching for �harry potter rowling philosopher�s stone first edition� than you will searching for �harry potter�. You�ll get fewer results, but the ones you do get will be far more relevant.
Spell wrongly: It�s a sad fact that many of the sellers on eBay just can�t spell. Whatever you�re looking for, try thinking of a few common misspellings � the chances are that fewer people will find these items, and so they will be cheaper.
Get a thesaurus: You should try to search for all the different words that someone might use to describe your item, for example searching for both �TV� and �television�, or for �phone�, �mobile� and �cellphone�. Where you can, though, leave off the type of item altogether and search by things like brand and model.
Use the categories: Whenever you search, you�ll notice a list of categories at the side of your search results. If you just searched for the name of a CD because you want to buy that CD, you should click the �CDs� category to just look at results in that category. Why bother looking through a load of results that you don�t care about?
Don�t be afraid to browse: Once you�ve found the category that items you like seem to be in, why not click �Browse� and take a look through the whole category? You might be surprised by what you find.
Few people realise just how powerful eBay�s search engine is � a few symbols here and there and it�ll work wonders for you.
Wildcard searches: You can put an asterisk (*) into a search phrase when you want to say �anything can go here�. For example, if you wanted to search for a 1950s car, you could search for �car 195*�. 195* will show results from any year in the 1950s.
In this order: If you put words in quotes ("") then the only results shown will be ones that have all of the words between the quote marks. For example, searching for �Lord of the Rings� won�t give you any results that say, for example �Lord Robert Rings�.
Exclude words: Put a minus, and then put any words in brackets that you don�t want to appear in your search results. For example: �Pulp Fiction� �(poster,photo) will find items related to Pulp Fiction but not posters or photos.
Either/or: If you want to search for lots of words at once, just put them in brackets: the TV example from earlier could become �(TV,television)�, which would find items with either word.
So once you�ve found your bargain item, bid for it and won it, what if it all goes wrong? Don�t worry � eBay has a thorough dispute resolution procedure, and we�ll cover it in some depth in the next article, so you�ll be prepared if the worst happens.
