Ebay has become one of the best places on the internet to find priceless and rare items that cannot be found anywhere else. It is a virtual treasure trove of unique and hard-to-find prizes available to anyone savvy enough to find them and put in a bid.
The problem for many is that these rare items are only listed for 7 to 10 days and unless you are willing to constantly go back and search Ebay’s listings, it’s easy to miss out on a great find. However, there is a little known and very powerful way to let your computer do the constant searching for you, an RSS feed. An RSS (meaning Really Simple Syndication) feed is a way of organizing web content into a summary that can be displayed on a feed reader. Feed readers are sometimes bundled into the latest internet browsers like Internet Explorer or can be separate or web-based applications like Googles feed reader. A feed works much like an web link, except that a feed reader will check the link every few minutes to see if there is any new content. If new content is found, the reader adds that data to the top of its content. That way, instead of constantly rehashing old content, an internet user will only read the latest information.
How does this apply to finding what you want on Ebay? Every time you do a search on Ebay, whether it’s a simple or advanced search, the results can be obtained in the form of a feed. For example, I like searching for props and wardrobe that were used on movie sets. I may go to Ebay and do a quick search on “authentic movie prop”. The list of search results will display like it always does, but down below all the results is a little gray bar that says “Tools:” On that bar is a little orange button with the letters “RSS” in white letters. That is the magical link to the RSS feed. In Internet Explorer 7, if you click on that button you will be transferred over to the feed page which displays a summary of the results you just saw. You now have the option of subscribing to that feed. When you subscribe to a feed, you also have the ability to set how often the feed reader will check that feed. It could be as much as every five minutes or once a week. Whenever the reader finds any new items on Ebay that match the original “authentic movie prop” search, that item will be added to the top of the list.
The RSS feed generator in Ebay also works with the advanced search. With the advanced search, such options as price ranges, specific sellers, preferred location, preferred buying options, and countless other restrictions can be specified. Making use of the advanced search can make a very powerful feed. For instance, I may only want to look for movie props from a specific movie like “Spider-Man”, from a specific set of sellers that I trust, and that is within my price range. I can add all that information into an advanced Ebay search and click on the search button. Since I was so specific, I probably won’t get any results, but I can still click on the RSS button and subscribe to the feed. I can set the reader to check that feed every hour. Now every time I sit down to check my e-mail (which is pretty often), I can also quickly check the feed reader and see if any new content has been added to the feed. As soon as one of my trusted sellers posts an item from that movie in my price range, I’ll know within the hour.
As you can see, using an RSS feed is a powerful and easy way to find what you want right when it is available on Ebay. The number of feeds you can create is limited only by the countless different ways you can search through the Ebay listings.
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Visit my blog, http://movieauctions.blogspot.com to see how I use RSS feeds to find interesting and unique treasures. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joe_Pickering |
