Posted by ada on 2004-10-12 07:27:58
Post Subject:
I don't know quite how rudimentary your Ebay skills are, so hopefully I'm not just repeating stuff you know :)
Firstly, go in to the category that interests you (e.g. 'Jewelry and watches', subcategory 'vintage, antique').
Secondly, build a search term in the search box like this:
1. Your key words (e.g. "earrings silver"). Do not put commas between these.
2. A bunch of words that you would like the title to include; if you write it like this:
"+(contemporary, chunky, drop)",
then any title with at least one of those words in it will come up. Put the plus before the bracket, seperate the words in the bracket with commas.
3. A bunch of words you do NOT want in the title. For example, if you want pierced-ear earrings only, you might add "-screw -screwback -clip", which would get rid of all those which specify in the title that they are one of those types. Do not put commas between these words, and put the minus sign directly in front of the word (no space between the two).
Then your search term would be:
earrings silver +(contemporary, chunky, drop) -screw -screwback -clip
Building a good search term is a bit trail and error, and you can make it as long as you like (well, probably there are limits, I've never reached them). When you get your list of titles that match your search, you can sort by 'price: lowest first', to see the cheaper ones.
Often even after all this the number of hits is awfully high; sometimes I will devote a bit of time to looking at all the hits, and then if there is nothing I like yet I will save the search term, do the same search again the next day and sort by 'newly listed', and just read the new ones; and so on every day till I find what I am after. Can be a bit timeconsuming and obsession-fostering, though.
