Whether you�re buying your special someone the perfect Valentine�s Day gift or just trying to sell stuff that�s been sitting in your garage for a while, eBay is the place to go, a mammoth online marketplace for used and new items.

You can purchase nearly anything you need or want on eBay at prices that are usually better than those found in traditional brick-and-mortar stores. To optimize your buying experience, here are a few ideas for getting a better deal on eBay:

Fine-tune your bidding strategy.

Bid sniping (placing a bid as late as possible within the auction closing time) is probably the most-often-used strategy, but it isn�t always effective. The underlying ideology is that your bid will go unnoticed and competing bidders will not have a chance to reciprocate and bid higher since there is not much time left. This strategy is somewhat flawed. First, eBay uses an automatic-bid-increment system. The danger in using the bid-sniping strategy is your last-minute bid may still be under the current bidder�s highest bid. If this is the case, your bid sniping will only increase the price the winning bidder pays, while you lose out on the item. Second, there are numerous variables that could go wrong, causing you to miss your chance to bid on the item. While bid sniping may be effective in many cases, it is not effective for every auction.

Odd numbers pay off.        

Many eBay buyers tend to round off their bids to the nearest dollar figure. Some choose nice, familiar coin increments like 25, 50 or 75 cents. But the most successful eBay bidders have discovered that adding a penny or two to a routine bid can mean the difference between winning and losing. Get in the habit of making your bids in oddish figures, like $15.06 or $43.77, as an inexpensive way to edge out your competition. For the first time ever, your two cents may actually pay off!

Spell it wrong.

If you�ve searched for an item and can�t find it at a reasonable price, try spelling the item�s name wrong, especially if it is an easily misspelled brand. Every serious buyer on eBay has a story to tell about making a bargain buy on an item with a key misspelled title or text word. It happens far more often than you might think. An English teacher�s nightmare is a bargain hunter�s dream.

It can�t hurt to ask.

There are plenty of eBay buyers willing to haggle. So ask. There�s nothing wrong with requesting a discount, even if the listing doesn�t show the �Best Offer� option. Haggling works best on buy-it-now listings, or auctions with a high start price and no bids. Message the seller and make them an offer. To contact the seller, click �ask a question.� Be polite and friendly, and you�ll get further. Blunt requests such as �will u take 50 bucks?� usually just annoy the seller. You can also use the �can�t hurt to ask� theory when you want to break up items in a listing. Message the seller and ask to change the listing to make it possible to buy only one of the items. It doesn�t work every time, but it�s definitely worth asking.

Make life easier; follow a search.

If you want something very specific or hard to track down, you can �follow� the search, so eBay sends an email each time a seller lists your desired item. Simply type a product in eBay�s search bar, such as �Star Wars Lego Millennium Falcon,� and click �follow this search.� Be as specific as possible for the most accurate results. This is a great feature for someone who likes buying on eBay, but doesn�t want to spend their life hunched over the site.

Bad photos might mean a good deal.

You search for an item, fine tuning your search to only include NWT (new with tags) items. Twenty photos of the same item appear in your feed. Midway through the list, you see a listing with a low-quality photo. Don�t do what every other buyer does and scroll by it. Stop and take a look at the listing. If it�s an NWT item and has a decent description, take a chance and bid on it. Chances are, a slew of other buyers bypassed the listing because the photos weren�t high quality, so the price stays low and competition is diminished. Or, if it�s a used item, simply request a better photo from the seller. Other buyers likely won�t take the time to ask.

Good luck, eBaying!