Why misspelled eBay auctions can save you a small fortune

October 4th, 2008 6:39 AM by tipster

It’s not widely known but a large proportion of eBay sellers consistently fail to read through their auction listings before they submit them to eBay.  Sometimes these auction typos are deliberate and arise because the sellers are trying to squeeze too much detail in to the auction title (eBay limits this to just 65 letters).  However, more usually these typos are simply due to careless typing or a basic inability to spell correctly.

But why does this matter ?

Because unless someone searching on eBay for a particular item happens to misspell their search word in exactly the same way then these misspelled auction items are unlikely to be found.

Up until relatively recently the only way that these misspelled auctions could be located was by wading through the auction listings line by line.

But now there is a better way to find these misspelled auction items: one that’s been used successfully by tens of thousands of users over the twelve months and it’s to use a third party web site to search for eBay misspellings called Auction-Fatfingers.com.

This specialized search engine functions by taking a correctly spelled word or brandname, deliberately misspelling it in a variety of ways and then submitting the list of misspellings to eBay.  Any misspelled auction items containing any of the words on the list of misspellings will then be shown on eBay.

Sure it’s clever, but what is the point ?

The answer is stunningly simple !  Because these eBay auction typos are normally so difficult to find they attract less bids. This means that misspelled auctions usually sell for less than the same item which is correctly spelled, if they sell at all.  So while these stupid typos cost the sellers money they mean that you, the buyer, can grab a real bargain.

If you’re smart you can even relist any misspelled items that you purchase (taking care to avoid introducing typos) in order to make a profit.

So what are you waiting for ? Why not pay a visit to Auction-Fatfingers.com right now and try searching for ‘Abercrombie’, ‘Motorola’ or ‘Playstation’. You’ll be amazed at the bargains that you can find.

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