I'm always surprised when I talk to people about eBay and I find out that they don't understand the bidding process. I have had thousands of transactions on eBay, and I forget how nervous and confusing bidding can be at first. Once you learn the in's and out's of bidding, you can really increase your chance of winning great auctions for lower prices.

1. Bidding Basics - The most common mistake I hear about is that people think that when they enter a bid, the auction will instantly go up to that amount. This results in them bidding lower than they actually want to pay and then trying to return to the auction over and over again to bid the item up little by little. Luckily eBay has an automatic bidding system so you can enter your highest amount the first time and eBay will bid on your behalf up to that maximum amount, but the auction may never reach that amount. For instance if an item has a bid of $5.00 and you would be willing to pay $15.00 for that item, you could enter $15.00 as your maximum bid and eBay will bid on your behalf up to $15.00. Your bid would raise the price up to $5.50, but it would not go higher than that unless someone else has entered a higher maximum bid than $5.50. There is no reason to bid in small increments and keep returning to see if you need to bid again. EBay will do all that for you. Go ahead and put your maximum bid in the first time. When I am bidding I do this and then I don't return to the item until the auction is over. This prevents me from getting into a competitive bidding war that may cause me to pay more than I really want to just for competition's sake. I once had 2 ladies bid up past $200 on a $30 dress, just because they didn't want the other to win the auction. I bet the winner was the sorry one when she realized she had to pay over $200 just to beat the other lady! The real kicker is that I had 2 of these dresses. I emailed the second bidder and offered her a second chance offer, meaning she could buy the second dress for her highest bid of $199. She told me that she would never spend that much on this dress, she just didn't want the other lady to win. The next week she won that second dress from me for $30. Had they not been so competitive with each other, they could have both had that dress for around $30. Don't get sucked into the competitiveness of the bidding process.

2. Search Completed Listings to Determine Your Maximum Bid - Before I bid on an item, I like to find out exactly what a fair price for the item is. I do this by searching for item I want and then click the box on the left hand side of the screen with all of eBay's searching tools that says, "completed items". Then I sort these items from lowest to highest to see how cheaply my item has been selling for in the last 30 days. Usually the top 10% and the bottom 10% of the selling prices are flukes so I look to see the low end of the average price range and I pick my price from there. Then I start bidding. I enter my maximum bid (that I picked out from the low end of the average price range of the completed items) and then if I get outbid, I just bid on a different auction. Sometimes I have to bid on several auctions over time to get my price, but I eventually always get the lower price that I picked out from the completed listings.

3. Time of Day - Because so many people try to bid at the last minute of an auction, you can get better prices by bidding on auctions that are going to end in the middle of the night when there are less people bidding.

4. Sniping - This can be controversial technique. Some sellers really hate it, but it is a valid technique. Sniping is when you bid in the last few seconds of the auction hoping to bid late enough that no one has time to bid against you. If everyone always entered their maximum bid amount sniping wouldn't work, but since so many eBayers don't bid like that, sniping can get you an auction for a pretty low price, because your competition doesn't have time to respond. Sometimes I snipe when I think an auction is going really low, too low, for what it is. I assume that there are a lot of last minute bidders and I don't want to tip them off that I also want the item. There are 2 dangers to sniping. The first is that someone else has entered a maximum bid higher than your snipe amount. Ebay will automatically bid up to that for them after your snipe and you won't have time to respond. If you've entered your maximum amount in the snipe, this won't matter, but if you only enter an amount 50 cents above the current bid, you may loose. The second danger and the one I hear the most complaints about is that you miss the end of the auction and forget to bid in time. I get emails weekly from would-be bidders expressing regret to me that they missed the end of my auction. This is an easy fix. There are many sniping services out there that will automatically snipe an auction for you. I use BidNip.com. It is a very cheap service. If you win the auction with their sniping service, they charge you 25 cents. If you don't win, they charge you nothing. Again, enter the maximum amount you are willing to pay with the sniping service and they will enter it for you with eBay.

Next time you are shopping on eBay keep these tips in mind. Don't end up paying $200 for a dress just because you have a competitive personality. More often than not, that same dress will be there again next week for $30. In fact, doing a completed check before you bid will tell you exactly how many of the same item were sold in the last 30 days and what a reasonable price is.