Savvy Shopper

I scored a great deal this Christmas season. Staples had a deal online through which you could buy a Kodak digital camera, and after some rebates, get the camera plus a photo printer for a total of $70. So I bought the camera (it's my Christmas present) and put the printer on eBay. I'm not really interested in printing my own pictures. I'd rather just upload them to Walmart's website and let them do it.

Well, yesterday the printer sold for $52. I was quite surprised, because the most I saw the printer selling for on eBay was about $35. It was two important eBay selling principles that helped me get this great price:

• Start the bidding low. I started the printer at $0.99. While it may seem risky to start that low without a reserve (don't set a reserve price), you can see by looking at completed listings how much money you can expect to fetch for your item. Bidders are more likely to bid an item up to $52 starting low than they are to bid $52 on the item as a starting price.

• Don't inflate the shipping costs. Most of the auctions for this item listed shipping at $25 or so. I took the package to the Post Office to weigh it, and determined how much it would cost to ship, and listed that as my shipping price. It came to about $15.50. Of course, shipping cost depends on where the package is going, so I usually type in my home zip code from ND to get a representative price.

I don't know if this made a difference, but since there was a "free gallery picture" promotion, I put the $0.35 I saved towards the $0.25 gift icon for my listing. Judging by the results of this auction, I should do that more often. Of course, maybe it was the combination of Christmas and the gift icon that made the difference.

In the end, I will have gotten a digital camera for about $25, factoring in eBay fees and whatnot. But I'm not supposed to know that. It's my Christmas present, after all.