Dave, I’ve just started getting into eBay and finding out about the terrific deals available on the site, but I’m not sure what strategies I should be using to get the best price on things I want to buy. Can you advise?

If you’re into hunting for deals, there are few sites more compelling than eBay. I’ll forget about it for a few months then end up sucked into the auction frenzy myself, bidding on a variety of things that (gasp!) I don’t even really need!

While lots of people have lots of different strategies for bidding on eBay auctions, including the popular sniping where you wait until the last possible second to submit your bid, often scooping up a great deal before any other bidders can react or respond (and if you’re interested in that, I recommend my friend Chuck Eglinton’s terrific Bid Robot service). Personally, I don’t use sniping as a strategy because I’m typically not quite that passionate about winning.

However, it’s remarkably easy to get caught up in auction frenzy and pay far more than you should for a given item. There are two ways you can avoid this…