updated: eBay outage since last night and still on going

As of 9:00 AM PDT, eBay outage seems to have ended. You should now be able to login to eBay.
All JoyBidder server sniping and mobile eBay auction sniping service are currently restored and working.
JoyBidder Pro and JoyBidder Free users please restart the program and do the following.
1. go to JoyBidder User Manager
2. select the eBay ID
3. click the Save button (make sure "I am CAPTCHA'ed" option is un-checkec"
4. close JoyBidder User Manager
5. click Reload All toolbar button.
6. All the invalid / error status of items should be gone.
 

eBay outage since last night and still on going. You can get to the web site, but you cannot login to eBay. When you do, you will get the following.

This affects all JoyBidder eBay auction sniper service and product. Item cannot be updated and bid cannot be placed.

More information on this outage can be found here.
http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2014/9/1410692548.html

Video Tutorial: JoyBidder eBay Auction Sniper import from saved eBay search

Monitor eBay BuyItNow Price Drop

It is a common practice that eBay sellers drops prices of BuyItNow items in order to move their inventory. For sellers managing large inventory, they use software to automatically adjust prices bases latest sales data. Since the goal is to move inventory while keeping maximum profit, seller don't usually tell the buyer there is pending price drop.
Some buyers manually tracks price changes of the items they are monitoring, but this is a very manual process.

Good news for eBay buyers, latest version of JoyBidder has implemented price alert feature. You can enable price alert on selected items and get alerts you when price changes.

Are eBay engineers smarter than 5th grader?

I guess most of them are smarter than 5th grader if not by much, but definitely not all, at least 2 of them are dumber than you would possibly imagine. Here is the proof. See the screen capture below.



The label says "shop by top 4 deals" on the up-left corner, while there are 5 items in the list on the right. See the highlighted section in the screen capture.

Then you would ask why this has to be a carefully coordinated work from at least 2 engineers. Here is the deal. You need one dumb developer to invent this "4 equals 5" nonsense first, then you need another even dumber quality assurance engineer to give a green check before it meets public eye.

Anyone wants to join eBay, please make a note of this. You see, next time you talk to eBay recruiter, bring this article with you, and confidently tell them you are more than good enough to replace these two dumb ass.

Seriously Disclaimer: I am not referring specific to any eBay engineers, if you think you might be one of two dumb ass showcased here, you have the right to remain silent, or reveal yourself by commenting here. Or even better, link this article to your LinkedIn profile.

call of duty black ops first week ebay price

Do you want to know how much Call of duty black ops sells during its first week on eBay? Here is the research I did. Enjoy.


Summary



Price Trend


Volume Trend

Sell through rate is very high and auction price is almost the same as Buy It now price, which means the demand is very high.

Price average is at around $58, with daily lowest under $50. Use eBay deal search tool such as this and our auction sniper software, it is not difficult to get one at $55. Use eBay bucks and affiliate program, you can save 4% off. So your take home price is $53 including shipping, which is better than retail which sells at $59 plus tax.

Note:

1. The price discussed above including shipping already.
2. Nov. 15 volume is not complete, since this study is done on this day.
3. The summary and chart are produced by JoyBidder Auction Analytic software, which is currently available as public beta in JoyBidder eBay Auction Sniper.

You can get xbox kinect cheaper on eBay

Major retailers are announcing that Microsoft xbox kinect is sold out quickly. Even Amazon sells used ones at $200. Can you get a better deal on eBay? Absolutely YES! Here is my study.

Sales Summary


Price Trend


Top sellers

Volume Trend

Sell through rate is not high, which means there is plenty of supply on eBay.
Price average is at around $195, with daily lowest at $150. Use eBay deal search tool such as this and our auction sniper software, it is not difficult to get one at $155. Use eBay bucks and affiliate program, you can save 4% off. So your take home price is $149, which is better than retail, which sells at $149 plus tax.

Note:

1. The price discussed above including shipping already.
2. Nov. 10 volume is not complete, since this study is done on this day.
3. The summary and chart are produced by JoyBidder Auction Analytic software, which is currently available as public beta in JoyBidder eBay Auction Sniper.

Apple iPhone 4 16 GB is sold as high as $1925 on eBay

Apple iPhone 4 is released today. It is in such a high demand that an Apple iPhone 4 16 GB was sold as high as $1925 on eBay. On averaging it sells at around $800, a $600 profit from the $199 pre-order price.



This is the only thing that cheered me up today when mortgage rate hit all time low and Wall Street has suffered another significant loss due to fragile recovery fears.

How much used iPads are selling on eBay

Beside just released the JoyBidder eBay Auction Sniper Free Edition recently, I have also been working on an eBay Sales Data Analysis tool for a while now.

Since the tool is almost done, I wanted to run some tests on real eBay data. I am really interested to know how much used iPad 16GB is selling on eBay, so I set up a scheduled search in JoyBidder eBay Auction Sniper Pro Edition. To save some electricity and mostly spare my aging computer, I have JoyBidder running in sleep mode, so it only wakes up computer every 2 hour, search eBay and import any newly ended iPad 16GB items to JoyBidder and then back to sleep. Although I only had it running two days, I am already getting some interesting results. See charts below.

used iPad 16GB Daily Price Trend

used iPad 16GB Daily Volume Trend

You will notice some interesting stuff here:

• Both price and volume have a big rally during the Father's Day
• Once in a blue moon, there is some incredible bargain on eBay. Some used iPad 16G were sold under $300. (This is the total price including shipping). Here is one of the link if you are suspicious of any wrong doings. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290443689687

Something useful

• The eBay sales data analysis tool will be released as a separate purchasable module of JoyBidder eBay Auction Sniper Pro Edition for a very affordable one-time fee.
• You can use JoyBidder Pro Edition to run scheduled search to find bargain or rare items.

Unknowingly beat another sniper

I won this item 2 weeks ago. Today when I read the bid log, I realized I just beat another sniper :)

Here is the JoyBidder Auction Sniper bid log screen capture.



My sniper bid fired 10 seconds before auction ended, and I was the highest bidder at $30.89 then. However the price was raised to $33.50 before the auction ended.

Reviewing the eBay bid history tells me what happened.
Here is the ebay bid history screen capture: (my bid is marked with green, my competitor's bid is red)



As you can see, another sniper bid of $32.50 came in 5 seconds later, although it didn't win. If without this final bid, I could have got the item with $3 less. Anyway, I still won the item with 7 cents less than my max bid, and beat the other sniper, not bad :)

I really wish my competitor was using a sniper program to place that last 5 seconds losing bid. Otherwise, I couldn't imaging how unhappy this guy would be after patiently watching the screen, counting the seconds and yet lost the auction to me, who was having lunch with friends then.