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I really like eBay, a great online auction site. They say you can find anything on it and in my experience that is a pretty accurate statement.

The first things I ever did on eBay were buying items. There is a handy search box that brings up results. You can sort these results by various things, usually time remaining on the auction is the best in my experience.

All the items will show the current price on the item, but they aren't always updated as quickly as if you click on the auction itself to see the current bid price.

If you'd like to bid on something you do have to make an account. Once you've done that you put in a max price and see if you're the new highest bidder. Sometimes even though you've bid higher than the current price you will be outbid by that same person. That means that the previous bidder actually has a higher max price than is currently listed on the auction.

You can get a good idea of what the going price for certain items are by searching for ended auctions. Remember when you place a bid that you need to also consider the shipping price. Every seller gets to decide their own shipping price and if one seller is listing shipping as $4 and another for $6, maybe you can spend $2 more on that first bid since you'll be paying less on shipping.

Since there are thousands of different sellers on eBay you never know for certain what sort of experience you will have. Always check the feedback of a seller. I try to always buy from people who have a feedback percentage in the upper 90s or 100. Every transaction gives both parties the opportunity to rate the other person on the transaction. Higher numbers with higher percentages means the person has had many transaction that were positive and most likely your experience will be similar. Be sure to rate your transactions too to help others get an accurate idea of what to expect.

There are different forms of payment, depending on what the seller accepts. The popular form is paypal, which requires setting up an account at paypal.com. I've had good luck using paypal to pay for most of the auctions I've completed on eBay.

I've also sold on eBay. You get to decide the starting price and if you want your product to be featured. You get to upload one image of the item and can pay to include more photos. You can describe your item in as much detail as you like, but the site does a good job of letting you categorize your item as well. Like if it is an xbox 360 game your game will appear under that category on the site once you list it.

I've only had two bad experiences on the site, of over 100 transactions so far. One was a burn of a CD, not the actual CD advertised for sale. The other was something I needed before Mother's Day and I paid for it 8 days before Mother's Day but did not receive it until after Mother's Day and the postmark indicated it wasn't mailed until after Mother's Day either, this being after I emailed the seller explaining it was a Mother's Day gift.

There are always potential bad transactions, but for the most part I've been very happy with eBay. I wish you the best for happy hunting of your 'It' on eBay.