- Search: Start a business
- Online auctions
- Selling on eBay

You can buy pretty much anything on eBay, from land, property, cars and businesses to second-hand clothes, doll's house miniatures and playing cards showing Tony Blair in drag.

If the mood takes you, you can even bid for X-rays of someone else's teeth, a replica of a shrunken head or a (fake) picture of you with Osama bin Laden.

The auction website is a magnet for bargain hunters and collectors, and a fantastic outlet for offloading all your unwanted clutter.

But despite its allure, eBay can be a daunting place for 'newbies'. Here are a few tips to smooth the way.

Lurk for a while

If you hang around the eBay online forums you should start to pick up tips on buying and selling, and learn from other people's mistakes. Register early on: you can't bid for anything until you have an eBay ID, and you don't want to be registering with only minutes to go before the end of an auction you're interested in.

Finding what you want

You can either browse through the hundreds of eBay categories or search using key words. When searching, be specific. 'Bridesmaid dress' will bring up thousands of listings, while 'bridesmaid dress pink 10' will produce a more manageable number.

Search thoroughly. Lazy buyers ignore listings without a picture on the list page, which means buyers who do click on these are less likely to face competition. It's also a good idea to search for common misspellings. Sellers who list a 'bridesmade dress', for example, are unlikely to attract other buyers, so you could snap up a bargain.

Bid or buy it now

eBay has a number of different listing types, but the most common are auctions and Buy It Now. With auctions, the first bidder must bid at least the start price, and if no one else bids, they win at the start price. Otherwise the highest bidder wins. Some sellers place a reserve price on their item, in which case the highest price above the reserve wins. On Buy It Now listings, you simply click to buy at a set price.

Assumption is the mother of all stuff-ups

Don't assume anything. Read item descriptions and postage costs carefully, and if you want more information email the seller. If you win a second-hand travel cot and it arrives smelling of smoke, it's not the seller's fault you didn't ask if it was from a 'smoke-free home'.

Check the seller's feedback rating from other eBay users by clicking on the number in brackets after their user ID, and particularly read any neutral or negative comments. Check the returns policy, and whether the seller has PayPal Buyer Protection.

As with anything else, if the listing seems too good to be true, it probably is. You don't get new, perfect iPods for £10, even on eBay. Careful reading of some listings, purportedly for electrical goods, will reveal that the seller is actually selling only a specification sheet or a weblink.

Watching and waiting

If you see something you like but want to wait before placing a bid, you can put a watch on it. It will then be listed on your 'My eBay' page, along with everything you have bid for in recent weeks.

Placing that winning bid

New eBayers often get carried away with auctions - they bid early and keep on placing new bids every time someone outbids them, which drives prices up.

A more cunning ploy is to decide on the absolute maximum price at which you would still feel that you had a good deal, and then wait until the last minute of the auction to place it. That gives virtually no time for previous bidders to respond. Other buyers may be using the same approach, so you may be outbid in the final seconds, but at least you won't have overpaid.

When you place your maximum bid, whether there are nine days or nine seconds to go, eBay will automatically bid for you up to that amount. So if you bid a maximum £50, and another bidder has bid £25, eBay will place a bid for you at £26. If a third bidder has placed a maximum bid of £40, eBay will up your bid to £41.

Many buyers bid round pounds, so it can be a good idea to add a couple of pence to your maximum. If someone bids £50 but you have previously bid £50.02, you would win.

Another trick is to check the bid history to find out who the other bidders are and click on their feedback to find their previous winning bids. Sometimes that will tell you if they have a bidding habit, like always bidding £7.77 or £77.77, say, instead of round pounds. If so, you can potentially beat them at their own game by adding 78p to your maximum bid.

How to pay

A few businesses selling on eBay take credit cards, and if they do it's the best way to pay, offering insurance if the transaction goes wrong. PayPal, an online payment engine owned by eBay, is the next best option, as it offers some protection and dispute resolution. For small transactions most buyers will risk sending a cheque or postal order, as long as the buyer has a good feedback rating.

Never pay by Western Union or other money transfer service.

Feedback

When you have won your first item, you'll be looking forward to getting your first feedback rating and, when you have a rating of 10, getting your first star!

Prompt payment and good communication with the seller should ensure you get good feedback.

If you have a problem with your seller, you should leave honest feedback, but always give the seller the chance to sort out any dispute before you leave a negative. Most sellers are only too happy to have the chance to put a problem right.

If things go wrong

If your item fails to arrive or is not as described, and the seller won't sort the problem out, you can take the dispute to eBay, or to PayPal if you paid that way.

If the listing showed the PayPal Buyer Protection logo, PayPal will refund you up to £500 if it finds in your favour.

If the auction wasn't covered by Buyer Protection, PayPal can only refund you from any balance in the seller's PayPal account. If there is no balance, you won't definitely get a refund.

PayPal can freeze accounts, and eBay can cancel memberships, but neither will force sellers to offer a refund.

Jargon

Sellers often use acronyms in their listings. Here are some of the most common:

BIN = Buy it now
BNIB = New in box
BNWT = Brand new with tag
MIB = Mint in box
NPB = Non-paying bidder
NR or N/R = No reserve
NWOT = New without tags

A final warning

eBay can be mighty addictive. In the words of one forum member: "Get out! Get out! Leave while you still can! We are all trapped in this buying and selling hell they call eBay. Leave while you still have links with the real world. Don't get sucked into this virtual addiction. Stop before you get hooked!"

He loves it really.