I very recently posted an auction for my old Dell Inspiron 6000 (take a look if you like). She’s obviously old and has seen better days, but hopefully somebody will find it useful as a parts laptop.

The challenge here was to make an older laptop look half-way decent in an eBay listing photo. How to do it? Here’s how:

Yes, I know the laptop is old and you can clearly see the paint rubbed off the palm rest from years of use (this is common to the older Inspiron series), but the blue backdrop makes the overall presentation look much more appealing.

Do I have some ritzy photo studio to make a product photo look good?

Hardly:

It’s a blue piece of fabric purchased from Wal-Mart and tacked up on the wall. I smoothed out the fabric in the area where the laptop is.

The camera I used? A cheap point-and-shoot. Nothing fancy.

Here’s some tips on using a proper backdrop and other things you can do to make what you sell more attractive in a photo:

1. Blue, black or white backdrops only

Even the cheapest of digital cameras "like" the color blue. Black is good also, but sometimes may not serve well if what you’re showing is also black. White works well as long as it’s actual fabric and not a towel from the bathroom (whenever I see that I laugh because it’s so obvious).

Red is bad. Psychologically this says, "WARNING!" Not good when you’re trying to sell something.

Green is bad because it tends to "fuzz" when you take the shot. It doesn’t matter how good your digital camera is because on upload to eBay or like service your photo will be downsized and compressed, resulting in a seriously crappy look (you will actually see the JPEG artifacts in some instances.. very bad.)

Patterns are also bad, because the first thing potential buyers will pay attention to is the pattern and not the product.

2. Angle it

For laptops or anything with a screen on it, shooting on an angle is always better. It literally eliminates the big white spot a camera flash creates due to reflection.

A very common mistake is that people will shoot products with screens on them from dead center. This makes the product look horrible. If you angle it, it gets rid of the aforementioned flash and you can actually show the screen turned on and in use.

You will notice that for any – and I mean any – dead-center shots of something with a screen in use, the screen will always look dim even at the brightest setting. But when you angle it, it looks proper.

3. Show what it comes with

You’ll notice in my photo that the XP Pro operating system recovery disc and the power brick is clearly seen. This lets any potential buyer know that yes, it comes with those items included. Both items are a big deal to anybody who purchases a laptop new or used.

Per my photo above, showing the power brick not plugged in while the laptop is turned on proves the battery still works.

4. Show it turned on

Many people also make the mistake of showing an electronic device not turned on in a listing. The immediate thought (at least for me) when I see that is, "Oh. I guess it doesn’t work." This is obviously not the impression you want to give. You want to show that yes, whatever you’re selling does work. So show it.

5. Don’t try to hide the flaws

In my example, the rubbed-off paint on the palm rest is a huge eyesore. But there was nothing I could do about that, so I left it as-is and in my description noted it. She’s an older laptop, anybody that looks at it will also know it’s older, and she’s nowhere near mint condition. Any attempt by me trying to convince a potential buyer otherwise would be a fool’s errand. Being honest with your product photos goes a long way with buyers because it establishes confidence, i.e. the buyer knows up front what he or she is getting with no guesswork.

Did you also know that your thumbnail will also look much better shooting product photos like this?

The blue really separates this from the other listings you would see for like products, and is done so in a way that’s not garish/tacky.

Will any of my tips above guarantee the sale of anything? No, because nothing is guaranteed no matter how good you make it look. But the likelihood of people actually looking at what you post does increase, and this may give you a better chance of selling whatever it is you have.

What photo methods do you use (if any) for the stuff you sell online?

Are there any "tricks" you use that have proven to be successful? Let us know in the comments.

Simply put: something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. No matter the item and regardless of what it is appraised for or what ‘book value’ says it is worth, it boils down to what someone can actually sell it for.

A great way to find out what virtually anything is worth is by using eBay’s completed listings tool. By using a typical keyword search, you can see all the applicable listings in the past 15 days which includes both items that sold and those that did not, as well as the final price. While this method certainly isn’t the ‘be all’, it is a very easy way to get an idea of what you could sell or buy something for.

The completed listings search on eBay requires you to have an account, but this is negligible compared to the value this tool offers.

If you do a lot of buying on eBay, going through the standard interface has some limitations with the most obvious being that you have to refresh the page to get the most up-to-date bidding information. To overcome this limitation and introduce new functionality not available via the web interface, check out eBay Desktop.

Features:

• Access eBay through an application, not your browser
• Search feeds, item reminders, and persistent filters put you ahead of the game
• Recent item cache, outbid alerts, and no need to refresh

Note the last feature: outbid alerts and no need to refresh. This is huge for obvious reasons as you can now stay on top of the auctions you are watching.

eBay Desktop works on Windows and Mac, so if you bid on eBay often it might be worth a look.

Said honestly it’s amazing that if you ask someone, "Where’s the best place to buy or sell stuff online?", the the typical answer is "eBay".

I disagree with this. The best place is Craigslist (abbreviated commonly as just "CL").

First, a few facts about CL:

• It’s been around just as long as eBay has (since 1995).
• It’s far easier to use than eBay overall.
• It loads way faster than eBay does.
• You can place ads for free.

I don’t know about other countries, but in the United States people genuinely appreciate being able to conduct business on a local level. eBay has never really been able to accomplish that, but with CL you can quite easily.

For example, my local is tampa.craigslist.org and chances are your local is listed here somewhere.

My reasons for preferring CL over eBay when buying and selling items are as follows:

Staying local works

As noted above, with eBay it’s a challenge at best to go local and stay local. Sure, you can set options on your item when selling it to keep it regionalized – but why bother forking over cash just to post an auction when all you want is a quick local sale?

PayPal is annoying

I’m sure there are more than a few readers out there who can say how much PayPal sucks at times. With eBay it’s more or less required to use PayPal just to buy or sell. How many auctions have you seen that state very loudly "PAYPAL ONLY"?

If you use PayPal, you only do so because you have to, not because you want to.

Better for the bargain hunter

Are you cheap? No, seriously.. are you really cheap? You’re in luck because CL has a "free" category for every local. Here’s an example from the Tampa local. You’d be surprised at the stuff people are willing to give away.

Some quick Q and A

Can you get scammed on CL?

You can get scammed anywhere, be it online or in person and CL is no exception. You know the old saying "let the buyer beware". If you think something sounds like a scam, it most likely is.

CL states very clearly to deal locally with people you can meet with in person, never wire funds, don’t do checks or money orders, don’t give out any of your personal fiscal information, avoid deals involving shipping or escrow and so on.

Even if you decide not to use CL, you should go to that link anyway just to get educated on how to spot scam stuff. It’s a good read.

Can you meet "scary" people from CL?

Of course. But CL has tips on that also.

Can I really post an ad for free and sell using straight cash in person?

Absolutely.

Can I get everything I want from CL?

Possibly – but I don’t know what you want to buy or sell. CL is free to use so you have nothing to lose by checking it out.

Are you doing your holiday season shopping now?

If you are you should definitely check CL out for yourself whether you’re buying or selling.

So you’ve got an old computer that you don’t use anymore. It’s in decent working order and you’ve taken care of it, but rather than let it sit in the closet/garage/wherever you want to put it on eBay and make a few bucks. Continued

We recently had a laptop battery go dead (well, it wouldn’t hold a charge for over 10 minutes) on us and needed a replacement. The laptop (a Dell), itself is about 3 year old but running like a champ (knock on wood). So we call up Dell and find out the battery will cost over $300 and wouldn’t ship for over a month… seriously.

No thanks we said and went over to eBay and found the exact same part number, brand new, for $80. We placed the order and the part shipped the next day. A 375+% savings isn’t bad at all.

So the next time you need a part for something off-warranty, consider eBay. There are tons of surplus resellers which are running constant “Buy It Now” auctions so you can get exactly what you need.

If you do any form of communication over the Internet, online frauds and scams are something you always have to be wary of. I have been fortunate enough to avoid such scams as I keep my email reasonably locked down, have a relatively good “BS detector” and am overall a tad bit on the cynical side (only slightly though!… maybe…). That said, I have never been an actual singled out target for a scammer until recently.

I thought it would be fun to do a writeup dissecting exactly how the scam worked (in a both a real world/average user approach as well as in a technical sense) and also point out how, with a careful eye alone, you can spot a fake (or spoofed) email. Sit back and enjoy.

The Scam – A Real World Perspective

A couple of months ago I decided to post a couple of old laptops (one of which was advertised for parts only) I had laying around the house on eBay. I go through the usual motions, of taking a picture, setting a price, etc. One of the stipulations I clearly put in my terms of sale was I would only ship to the United States. So the week of the auction goes by and my “for parts” laptop sells, but of course to someone in Nigeria.

The “buyer” (interpreted loosely in this case) in Nigeria sends me an eBay request for an invoice, to which I reply with an eBay message telling them:

I’m sorry, but as stated in my auction, I only ship to the United States.

Of course, the buyer sends me a few more messages as they must have been checking their email at the same time as me, one of which says (none of the emails are edited):

Have already transfer the moeny..so i have paid the sum of $100.00 for the shipment fof the item through USPS Global express mail…so i want you to get the item posted as sson as possible..

Now, from the email image above, my item sold for $56 with a $10 shipping fee, so the buyer was going to “pay” me $100 to ship a for parts only laptop to them overseas. I was scratching my head at this point and then I receive an email from eBay:

No sooner did I finish reading this, I received “another” email from “eBay” contradicting what the previous message said. I only had to read first paragraph to tell this second email was a fake. I took a look at the email headers which clearly proved this was a fraudulent email. I have highlighted everything in the email below which is evidence support the email is garbage.

Reading the text is actually quite humorous as the text is so poorly written. Combine that with the fact of the reply to addressing being an @instruction.com email.

It doesn’t stop there, about 45 minutes later I get a “payment confirmation” from “Paypal”. Not only had payment been made, but this this generous individual “payed” a total of $300 for a $66 item. They must have really wanted the parts. Of course, the Paypal email was a fake in the same fashion as the eBay spoofs.

I will say this for fake emails sent, at a quick glance they do appear legit. A respectable job was done in replicating the fine print at the bottom (not showing in the “Paypal” email). All the images (when shown) resemble their authentic counterparts and (most of the) links in the emails took you to the correct locations.

After I received the first fake eBay email telling me the item was reinstated “and you can go ahead with the transaction”, I did not send a another email to the scammer. Here are all the emails they sent me after this, each getting a bit more threatening:

2 days later:

Payment made for your ebay item.

i have transfered the payment for your item and the money for your item as been deducted from my paypal account.and i have not head anything from you since then.so i want you to get the item shipped to my store’s address and send the shipment tracking number to paypal at their customer care link given to you in order for the money i transfered to be credited to your account.
get back to me as soon as possible so that we can dialog and complete this transaction.

1 day later (this one from “Paypal”):

PayPal Shipment Reminder for Transaction ID: 92S849286985130M

PayPal Postage Verification Center is using this message to remind you of the transaction between you and [fake name] about an eBay item paid for by the Buyer who also is our Client .We are yet to receive the shipment details of the transaction,the buyer has paid and your money is still in our Account Database ready to be credited into your account once we verify the shipment of the item.
The buyers shipping address has been confirmed by us:

[... address information ...]

This PayPal payment has been Confirmed and Approved by us,but due to that its International Transaction all we need from you is the shipment proof for the verification of your money.Once this as been received and verify by us,You will receive a CONFIRMATION E-MAIL from us informing you that the money transfered to your account as been credited.

1 day later:

Why can’t you just reply !!!!!!!!!!!

I have transfred the payment for your ebay item and the money for the item as been deducted from my account.and i receive a mail from paypal informing me that to protect bot parties that you need to send to the the shipment deatils for the item so that thye can creditmthe money to your acount so i want you to get the item shipped and get back to paypal at thier customer care link given to you….
N:B :
I want you to get back to me or else i will report….!!!!

3 days later:

Confirmation of payment…get item shipped!!!!!!!!!!

i have Already contacted pay pal on your behalf about your fund and the explain that they are taking new procedure for international transaction in order to secure but buyer and seller against fraud and they just introduce the new system for international transaction only and your have been deducted from my account already and i await you to complete the transaction.I hope you would have been contacted by pay pal now for confirmation of payment.
thank you and pls reply if you have any question

3 hours later (this one from “Paypal”):

*** Message From PayPal Postage Verification Department ***

Dear Customer,
PayPal is using this time to remind you about the transaction between you and [fake name]. The money transfered to your paypal account by [fake name] for your ebay item as been deducted from her account and its here in our Data Base side for security purpose. so we want you to get the item shipped to the buyers address and get back to us for verification of your money to your account once we have the shipment details for the items from you, your money will get credited to your paypal account immediately. Now get this done as soon as possible and get back to us with the shipment details so that your money been PENDING days ago can be release and credited to your paypal acount.

Thanks for contacting us.
We hope to serve you better till Future.

After the last reminder from “Paypal” I didn’t hear anything else. The timing was such that they waited a week with no response from me before giving up and moving on. This having been the first scam I was singled out on and looking at it from an average user’s perspective, I can understand how someone would fall for this scam. In general the emails are convincing enough (although, the scammers spending 30 seconds to spell check and proof read their emails would make it more convincing) to lure in someone who is relatively new to eBay or somewhat naive/trusting. It is a real shame these are the ones which get taken advantage of.

The Anatomy – Breaking Down The Scam Technically

In this section, I am going to do a quick breakdown of some of the technical elements which definitely prove the emails are fake. You do not have to be a “geek” to follow as I will explain in plain English.

Since the scammer sent me several fraudulent emails, they must have gotten my email somewhere. My eBay user name is not my email address and I have nothing in my eBay profile to indicate my email. So the first place I started looking was in the emails eBay sent to me and, indeed, they got it on the invoice request email.

As you can see, the email was sent to me but additionally to the scammer via the carbon copy (the scammer’s email is blurred out). I can only guess when the scammer was sending the email through the eBay system, they selected the option to have a copy of the email sent to them. If this is the case, I cannot believe eBay would be so careless as to let this happen as they are adamant about warning you to only send and respond to messages using the eBay system. Supplying such a simple vehicle for unscrupulous people to subvert this safety measure is a big time failure on eBay’s part. Again, I stress the emphasized “if this is the case” above.

So once they had my email address, the barrage of spoofed emails ensued. From here, producing their cleverly replicated eBay and Paypal emails was, probably, just a matter of copying and pasting a template email where the scammers reproduced a legit email, modified the text and “filled in the blanks” with my information. In the case of this scam, the email format was replicated reasonably well, but the wording of their text was so poor you could recognize the email as a fake right away.

Suppose the scammers did take a few minutes to actually read their email before sending it and the result was an email which is the spitting image of a legit message with flawlessly worded text. How do you recognize it then? You have to use the full email headers to find out where the message originated. To demonstrate the dissection of the headers, take a look at the image below where I have headers from a legit email sent from eBay on top of the headers from a fake email.

When you take a look at the information indicating where the email was sent from (look at the “Received:” values above), you can immediately see the domain name for valid emails end with “ebay.com” where the fake ones end with “yahoo.com”. Why would eBay send messages from Yahoo’s servers? They wouldn’t. The scammer was clearly using Yahoo Mail to send their fake emails.

By doing simple things like changing the ‘friendly name’ on their Yahoo Mail preferences to something like “service@ebay.com” or “notification@paypal.com” in place of where you would usually put your actual name and changing the ’send replies to’ setting to an equally crafty email address can make an email appear to be legit when only quickly glanced at.

Taking Action: Protecting Yourself And Reporting Scams

The most effective weapon you have for protecting yourself against scammers is common sense. Scammers make a living by playing to people’s naivety, trust, greed, ego or all of these. In my case, why would someone voluntarily pay me $300 for an item which went for $66 total? This is way to good to be true as nobody is that generous. Combine this with the incessant fraudulent emails calling for immediate action “or else”, the scammer was counting on me being naive, trusting or greedy. Another interesting observation is they used a female name, for all of their correspondence. Perhaps there is more perceived trust when you are dealing with a woman? I have no evidence to support this, just a thought I am throwing out.

As an extra measure, and to help others thwart these types of scams in the future, pretty much all major online sites have methods to report suspected fake emails. In the case of eBay and Paypal, this involved just forwarding the unmodified email to “spoof@ebay.com” or “spoof@paypal.com”. I did this for each of the fake messages and got a response back in no later than 30 minutes. Any time you suspect a email to be fraudulent but are not totally sure, be sure to do this before responding to the suspect email.

If you have already fallen victim to a scam or want to report the attempt, you can report them to the Internet Crime Complaint Center. Here you fill out a somewhat detailed form regarding the scam (i.e. how did they solicit you?, how did they want you to send money to them?, where did they want you to send money?, etc.). I filled out one to report this scam attempt. Every little bit helps.

Stay smart.