eBay Dos and Don'ts

Big red flags to avoid when bidding on eBay auctions.

eBay is full of rare, interesting, and popular items. While most of them are legit, some of them just plain aren't, and it can be a bad investment to buy a counterfeit product.

Stolen accounts are one of the most serious, and regrettably one of the more common, problems in the eBay community. Find out how to recognize a stolen account problem and what to do to fix it.

How messages that fraudulently appear to be from eBay can be used to commit crimes in your name, take your money, or steal your identity--and how to stay safe.

Are you running a small eBay business? Have you taken steps to ensure that you don't turn any of these necessities into a management gaffe or pitfall?

In tough times sellers face an unusual array of temptations. Keep your head about you and your business model sound with these eight tips to help you navigate troubled marketplace waters successfully.

Too often eBay traders take feedback for granted or assume that there's nothing additional that they can do to enhance their feedback. Not true! These five easy to execute tips will help you to improve your feedback scores.

eBay buyers and sellers often complain that as eBay grows, there are more and more problem eBay users. Are you doing your part to ensure that problem users are removed from eBay? If you're not filing disputes in response to bad experiences, you may not be.

Getting suspended as an eBay trader can be a rude awakening, or even a totally unjust situation. Here is what you should (and should never) to do get back on track at eBay.

Your friends and family can not bid on your auctions. It's not only unethical, it's against eBay rules.

Old school buyers and sellers routinely bemoan eBay's shift in emphasis away from auction format listings, but as times, policies, and the eBay marketplace change, the auction format has become risker and less promising for all involved.

eBay makes "Buyer Protection" sound automatic, but in practice actual humans review the cases. What do you need to do to ensure that you come out on top, whether as a buyer or as a seller?

Drop shipping and other types of "no overhead" selling can be tempting for sellers, but for sellers who don't take them seriously enough, such techniques are like playing with fire. Be sure that as a seller, you don't burn your buyers or yourself in the process.

eBay may reach a global audience of buyers, but it's also an auction format sales site with a lot of sellers. List too many items at once and you could drive down the price of your own goods.

By selling too high, you might earn no sale at all, while by selling too low you chould cheat yourself.

eBay buyers rely on categories and keywords when they search for items to buy. When you miscategorize or use unrelated keywords, you don't make friends with buyers and you make eBay harder to use.

Sellers who knowingly sell defective items but mention only that they are "AS-IS" or "condition unknown" are risking negative feedback and worse.

If you've been suspended from eBay, you may be tempted to simply open a new account. Don't! eBay will very likely figure out who you are, suspend you again, and lock you out permanently. Here's what to do instead.

eBay makes it so easy to sell that it can also be easy to accidentally transition from casual seller of used personal items to professional seller for profit. Don't do this without first registering yourself as a business.

No buyer is going to remember, much less try to return to a bid on, an uninformative, unenlightened listing.

Promotional features are powerful tools, but there is a definite limit to the kind of return that they can provide.

Photos used to sell goods on ebay, like photos in any other industry, are copyrighted works belonging to the photographer that took them.

Before you leave negative feedback, exhaust every avenue to resolve the dispute with your trading partner. Don't rush to leave a negative from the start.

Before getting upset after being disappointed with an eBay purchase, read the item description carefully to be sure that your expectations were fair.

Nobody wants to hear unsolicited requests or sales pitches from strangers, so don't contact other eBay members unless you're trading with them.

Many readers took umbrage at our earlier article on eBay auction sniping, so it's time to revisit the issue and answer the two concerns that figured most prominently into user feedback.

eBay shopping may be fun, but if you're not gaining anything by doing it, it may also be addiction.

Sometimes the best way to win is to let someone else win, especially if there are several listings that feature the item you want to buy.

This eBay guide explains how to identify the all-too-common email messages that claim to be from eBay but are actually be harmful to your computer, your eBay account, or your bank account. Read it carefully!

This document from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) discusses spoof emails of the type often seen by eBay members and gives details on how to detect them.

This quick and dirty guide from Consumer Fraud Reporting gives a few basic points on how to avoid getting scammed on eBay and other auction sites.

These days you've got to use eBay's catalog to list your items if you want the best search placement. At the same time, the catalog isn't perfect, by any means.

eBay increasingly offers tempting listing promotions to sellers on a regular basis: 100 free listings this weekend, 1,000 free listings next weekend, and so on. What's not to like? Shouldn't you take advantage of these promotions since eBay is offering them? The answer may be more complex than you imagine it to be.

Sniping isn't for everyone and it doesn't help in all cases, but it is for some, and sometimes it does win the day. Here are some dos and don'ts for sniping on eBay to help you decide whether to do it, when to do it, and how best to snipe when you choose to be a sniper.

Being a new eBay shopper isn't exactly an easy task. For all the cost savings and variety to be had on eBay, it also remains a complex and often chaotic shopping experience when compared to other online shopping venues. Here are the top mistakes new eBay shoppers make.

eBay scams aren't as common as some imagine, but they are out there. Learn to recognize the signs and avoid them by running in the other direction when you see them.

eBay scams aren't as common as some imagine, but they are out there. Learn to recognize the signs and avoid them by running in the other direction when you see them.

The amount (and method) of cleaning that you apply to an eBay sale can have a lot to do with the value at which it ultimately sells. Here are some tips about cleaning (or not cleaning) used items on eBay.

Sure you can buy most anything on eBay, but there are some kinds of goods that you should only buy on eBay after having thought long and carefully about your purchase.

Pictures are a reality of life for all eBay sellers. Here are eBay's rules and best practices for seller photos, as well as how much it's going to cost you to follow them.