How to buy guides

Article for cell phone affectionado on how to buy cell phones at remarkable discounts. Shows you where to find bargains and sales on all types of brand name phone equipment. The article also has links to a website which can help you find all the cell phones you need.

This website features smart phones and some of the latest software innovations, themes and downloads. What are the new camera phones, where to get cheap flip camera phones, including information about prepaid camera phones. Also we highlight high-speed wireless services such as 3G, EV-DO, EDGE.

Includes information on cell phones, accessories for;

Smart phones
Camera Phones
Coverage Maps
Ring tones
Games
3G
EV-DO
EDGE
No-contract cellular
Once you have read the guide below I provide links which will take you directly to a web site that provides all the data you need to apply what I have shown you and make bargain purchases at nicely discounted prices. Thanks to the good folks at SilverDek for producing this excellent resource. Here is how you should read this article. Firstly I will briefly introduce the cell phone marketplace. Then I will explain the workings of the model I have developed. Finally look at the very bottom for other articles and resources that may be of value. Before we begin let me right away give you the link to the live data stream that I will be referring to. Open this up in a new window or tab by right-mouse-clicking on this link (I will also paste a picture that you can refer to a little further in this article, plus some graphs which will compliment this text) then click on one of the topics on the top-left panel, just under the word Select Category;

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Cut and Paste http://bargainbasementcellphones.com or visit Cell phones
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The Cell Phone Market

Its amazing how cell phones become obsolete within a few months. The technology is moving so rapidly and enhanced services are rapidly being released. More importantly there is a merging of technologies with PDA’s, iPod’s and the like rapidly taking on cell phone features. Besides this there are a continual supply of new and useful accessories.

Realizing that people are often trading in their old phones for newer models and because of the rapid evolution of technology, you can often pick up nearly new models at substantial discounts on places like eBay. The question arises, how can I beat out other buyers and still obtain substantially discounted prices?

With the large volume of cell phones traded on eBay everyday, a micro market (in economist terms) has appeared. This is a near efficient market. One can study the dynamics of this micro-market and determine some useful buying rules. With a little more information than the rest of the marketplace, one can almost certainly make some intelligent buying opportunities. This article focuses on how to identify these gaps and often purchase cell phones for 20-100% below retail.

eBay proves to me a superb marketplace for all the above situations. Here you can expect to pay premiums on hard to get latest and greatest and substantial value on third/fourth generation devices. How is it possible to ‘beat’ fellow bidders out and acquire items for bigger and better discounts. Like any other marketplace, its comes down to who has the most knowledge. Knowledge is power, and buyer with even slightly more information or tools will be at a substantial advantage. How to obtain the edge? Read on.

Some cell phone marketplace options are listed below;

First you need to find an active marketplace for cell phones. Somewhere where large volumes of buyers and sellers exist, and where many thousands of items are bought and sold every day. Obviously one place is eBay which is a really huge marketplace of buyers and sellers. We are going to take advantage of this marketplace and the information that surrounds it, to make informed buying decisions. Let jump right into a listing and how to interpret the information.

Take a look at the listing below;

So firstly, where is this information from? This snapshot is taken from a specially designed site that continuously polls eBay (and other resources) for useful information. I have found this site very useful in making my buying decisions. They have developed a vast number of mini-sites each focusing on a specific interest area. Read on and I will provide you with links and other resources I use to make my bidding work.

Just a brief note on this way the information is obtained. As I said it continuously polls the eBay site for data and extracts some very relevant information. Then it puts this information into a very useful and easy to read format, once which you can’t obtain from eBay itself. The site works by listing and grouping keywords, which is found in a menu on the left. You can search for keywords and if they are not present add them; so the next time that keyword will be available for all to see. So for example if you are interested in ItemA and you search for it and nothing is available, it will be added and the next poll you will see (and be notified by email) of the results.

Lets study this data for a second and let me explain how it can give you insider information on supply and demand. Just before we do that, understand that eBay pricing works much like any other market on a supply-demand basis. Simply put if an item is listed on eBay. The first question is how many of them are available, but on eBay this also means how many will become available close to the same time.

OK let’s look at the listing above keeping the headings in mind. Reading from left to right. First we display a thumbnail picture. Use this to scan down the listings along the left most columns. Look here for any unusually different pictures, this will sometimes highlight similar items, older models, packaging etc. Use the picture in conjunction with the price column.

Format, simply refers to the type of eBay transaction. A small hammer, meaning it’s an auction, will represent most listings.

The next columns refer to start price/current price and time left/end time. But before we examine these, take a look at the information above this line;

The line above refers to the listing description. Again scanning down the page of descriptions looking for pieces that are or are not in each description, IE. Look for the differences.

The line above refers to the sellers’ information. This is very useful, and shows there location, and also there eBay feedback ratings. Again use this to scan the page and compare with other listings. The icon is a very handy link that opens up a window showing you much more detail about that seller. For example it provides more detail on the sellers previous transactions. Also it is handy for finding out what else the seller is selling, what they have sold previously and the price they sold at!

Lets move back now the Start Price/Current Price; these are placed underneath each other for quick comparison. Obviously this tells you the difference between the starting price and what is currently being bid. Look at this in conjunction with the time left (next column). If the starting price and current price are the same then it means that no bidding has taken place. If the time left is a matter of a few hours, this might be a nice opportunity.

Also when the two prices are the same it can mean that this is a buy now offer. This means the seller is not offering bidding on this item, but is rather selling it at a fixed price, which is the same as the start price. Don’t ignore fixed price offers. Many opportunities can be found, and I will show you a technique shortly for finding out what previous similar items have sod for.

Lets look at End Time and Time Left. Also look at this in conjunction with the Start Time, which are the right most columns. Although this site is not designed to find auctions ending immediately, rather it finds value in actions ending within the next few days. However, the time left is an important variable when scanning the other criteria. Shortly I will show you how to use it to maximum effect.

The next three columns are the most valuable pieces of information available on this page. These are number of watchers, bids, and number of questions. Number of watches is in fact information only available to sellers! These three numbers are very important and impact directly on the supply - demand balance. Let me digress for a minute and discuss this.

Supply - Demand

Price on eBay and in fact anywhere else is a factor of supply and demand. Let’s try understanding this as far as eBay items are concerned. There are a number of dimensions to eBay supply. Obviously the key is how many of the identical item is available. The term available has a different meaning on eBay. It must be taken to mean how many identical items have nearly the same end time. Further, nearly the same can mean different things depending typically on the value of the item. The more valuable the item (in terms of its final selling price) the more a buyer is willing to wait for a longer end time.

So how does a buyer establish supply demand and thereby make informed decisions. Firstly, find out how many of the same product with similar end dates are available on eBay. Take a look at the columns Qty and Qty Sold. Typically these will be 1 and 0 for most auctions. However the buy now sales you may see a large quantity available and a little quantity sold. The key strategy here is to find a similar item under auction, and sure enough you should be able to hold the price down well under the buy now price.

There are three more very important variables. I don’t know of any other website that groups and displays them to buyers in a similar fashion to this example. Take a look at the number of bids, number of watchers and number of questions.

The number of watchers is the numbers of people who have placed this item into there My eBay items to watch. This gives a fair indication of the number of people that are considering placing a bid.

The number of questions gives two indications. First it tells how many serious buyers there might be, or second, it might indicate a confused item description, which in itself may present an advantage to the buyer. A strategy here is to look for a high number of questions and a low number of watches, this is an upside down item and may indicate poor description which may imply less people will stumble upon the item.

A large number of watchers and little to no bids, especially on an item which are popular means that buyers are getting ready for a last minute bidding war with possible snipping. Avoid.

Although a little difficult to read since I wanted to keep space to a minimum, the X-axis is the number of questions, bids, watchers. The Z-axis is time to end of auction. As you move in the time gets closer to the end time. The Y-axis is the count of how many people asked questions, or bid or watched.

The left graph shows a poor listing where the number of questions goes up, watchers also go up, but bids remain constant. I nice opportunity if the seller mad a genuine error in listing that odes not impact the quality of the item.

The second graph shows a more typical situation. Here questions remain low, watchers increase, and bids increase rapidly as we get closer to end time.

There are many variations of these graphs, and each lends itself to an opportunity. Experience will allow you to map these in your mind and spot some nice buying gaps.

Techniques

Now I will discuss a number of techniques you can use when perusing this listing format. Finally I will provide you with a link which will take you directly to the website that produces these listings.

Dashboard scanning

Like a pilot scanning his instrument panel, the process here is very similar. Basically you have in front of you a very handy instrument panel with lots of useful information. Once you understand how to scan and use the information, then suddenly opportunities will stick right out at you. The idea is to scan columns downwards and zoom in on 3-5 listings, ascertain the differences and you should see some buying gaps.

1. Bookmark and right click. When you have the site open and are planning to visit various links, I suggest you first bookmark the page you are on. Also when visiting links Right-Click on your mouse and select open in new window or open in new tab. This will prevent you loosing track of this valuable information.

2. Scan pictures, and why some items don’t have pictures. Quickly scan down the page looking at pictures. You will soon notice similar or identical items since many sellers use generic photographs. You should also look out for very different photographs or angles. This often highlights interesting or slightly different options. However, the generic similar items are where the best deals can often be found, unless you are looking for a specific ad on.

3. Scan titles. This is similar to photographs. Titles can be subtler. Often sellers will use a keyword but not actually mean the keyword but rather an accessory related to the keyword e.g. toy Ferrari. This scan should help you isolate similar products and also vastly different products. It’s a good idea to scan this whilst keeping an eye on the category column (extreme right). These two combinations will quickly highlight the items you wish to focus on.

4. Listings are listed in order of soonest to end time. The listings are ordered in order of soonest offer to end time. Typically the next 50 offers are listed. The page is typically refreshed every 10 minutes or so. So now your scanning strategy starts to take these factors into account. From the above steps you have found similar item of interest and you can now see them in order of expiration.

5. Scan the color-coded watches, bids, and questions columns. This is the most significant step. This section should be read in conjunction with the supply - demand notes. Notice the color-coding of the three variables. If its green it means there is no demand at all, and if the end time is soon, that immediately highlights an opportunity. If it is red, then that indicates at least one (or more) question, whether or bid has occurred. This is not a bad thing, and you need to learn and understand the supply demand curves.

Briefly in a normal scenario you will always get more watchers, then bidders and finally lowest questions. That is a typical curve. However the angle of this curve may differentiate various offerings. You may have a scenario of many questions and quite a few watchers but low bids, which normally means an ambiguous listing. So you will learn, with the help of this guide, common sense, and experience how to interpret these results.

6. Scan where items are located, is there an over supply in a region. This is often an after though scan. But it does tell you if one particular seller dominated the field, or if there is a surplus of items in a particular region.

How to find other nuggets of intelligence

a. How much was recently paid for these types of items - take a look under the tabs at the line View the most recent current searches and then a little further, See what … sold for. This latter link will open up a screen of the most recent completed transactions for this item. Note, importantly, you need to be logged in to eBay to view this type of information. If you are not logged in your will have an opportunity to register on eBay (see below on How to Register on eBay). When you view this completed data you will see the price that items sold for. I suggest you click on the Price column and sort by highest price. If a price is in a red font it means it did not sell, green obviously means it sold. So right here you have some more market intelligence on how much similar items sold for in the last 30 days.

b. Has the seller sold these items before, is he selling any more in the future. This one is an easy one to see. It’s useful in an overheated market. I f the seller has a history of selling these items, perhaps it wise to wait a while, especially if you can see she attained lower prices on previous sales. Once you click on the out arrow, and open the sellers Items for Sale page, take a look on the left side for Completed Items, check this. Remember all Completed Items require you to be logged in on your eBay user. The view of items for sale (without Completed checked) is also interesting. Typically you can see if the same item is for sale sometime into the future. Back to Completed items (items already sold), the best way to view this screen is to sort by highest price obtained. Remember Green colored price means the sale concluded with a sale, red means the transaction did not complete.

c. Is the highest bidder knowledgeable? Again use the out arrow next to the highest bidder name to view the bidders sale history and feedback scores. Firstly the sales history (if any) tells you the area of interest or expertise that the bidder may have. The feedback score will tell you the experience, as will the feedback comments.

A word about feedback scores

I am not sure how much value to put by feedback scores. Obviously they are relevant, but I think undue focus is placed on them - certainly by sellers who have high scores. In fact often sellers with low scores will provide great buying opportunities. There is somewhat of a decision trade off, because lower scores have less history and fewer track records. Again the value of the overall deal comes into play. If high and the potential for loosing money is high then be wary. However, also note that eBay and Paypal have safeguard up to certain limits. Check these and this will help give you some degree of confidence, although they can make you jump through hoops before you get your money back.

An interesting feedback score to evaluate is the highest bidder. This often is a surrogate for bidding/buying experience. Therefore for items with large bids and/or watchers - the high scoring bidder will often mean you are up against highly experienced traders. However, it is unlikely they have the kind of decision data that I discuss in this paper. Remember always look at the feedback scores together with the id history (on eBay’s site). The id history is tabbed to show you buying and selling transactions separately. Often new sellers will build up their score by buying lots of small cheap items and receive great feedback in the process. So be wary that this often does not include any selling feedback, again a possible opportunity being a naive seller.

Resources

OK so where do I find this information on a live real time basis. Well the guys at SilverDek a small firm from just outside Atlanta, GA produces the data I talk about. Each web site focuses very tightly on a predefined vertical niche such as Digital Cameras. You will also notice they keep adding tabs at the top with other resources. So not only do they provide the supply demand numbers from eBay, but they are actively adding insightful articles, data from Amazon, coupons and other useful bits and pieces. Keep checking back!

The first resource is the web site I discuss above;

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Cut and Paste http://bargainbasementcellphones.com or visit Cell phones
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The second resource is very useful for finding the latest and greatest newest released product. One caveat to the whole eBay model is that sometimes the availability on newer or more unique specialist items is not always there, then these web sites will provide the answers. So use both together to match pricing and availability. These guys generally have supply of all the newest models and names and sometimes you need to make a trade off;

If you follow these techniques carefully I believe you can save/make a tremendous amount of money over the long run, in reducing your bids and finding the best possible deals. You need to learn to scan the data presented on the page. After some practice this can be done in seconds. The page is perfectly displayed to give you key information at a glance. After a little work nuggets of opportunity should begin to stand out. I am working actively with the developers to add some graphs as depicted above. Also they plan to add feeds from Amazon, and other wholesale opportunities. I suggest you bookmark there site and revisit on a regular basis.