Saturday, April 27, 2013

Getting what you need with persistent searches



There are tons of things on eBay, but sometimes, you just can’t find what you want. Maybe it’s some item that’s unusually rare, or maybe you just need it to meet a price point which the market isn’t serving up today. Thanks to persistent searches, you can have eBay help you find things by letting you know when what you want is up.

To setup a persistent search, start with a regular search for what you need. Work with the search parameters and keywords to narrow down the search as much as possible. The reason for this being important is because when you perform the search again some other day, you’d probably not want to go over a large list of items. After all, keep in mind that eBay items MOVE, so to get the best chance of finding what you need, you should be doing the search every day. The more results you get, the less likely you are to have the time to actually do the search every day.

Once you are satisfied with how the results are narrowed down, click * Save on the top-right (next to the search bar itself). Do note that eBay won’t let you save a search with zero results. When you save the search, eBay will offer you “Email me daily when new items match my search”. If you leave this on then you will get daily email listing such items. If you choose to not receive the emails, the search’s parameters are still saved and you can then go to My EBay and then to Saved Searched to see your saved searches and run any of them on the spot.

If you did subscribe to the emailed search, you’ll get the daily notifications (unless during the day no one added an item that matches your search criteria). Do note, though, that on the 1st day you’ll get the same items (more or less) that your current search got. This would seem stupid, but that’s the way it is. The persistent searches also mean that you need to be even more careful about narrowing down your search, or you might get dozens of new results every day. Lastly, once you did find and buy your item, you need to go to the saved searches page to turn off the Email notification, or they will continue on for the entire year.

Want to learn more? Read more articles on my blog, or better yet, attend my public class on eBay buying. Click here to find more details and about the next class dates.

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