Check eBay Pop until you drop
It’s about time to gear up for back-to-school shopping. Mixed Nuts this week gets into an online shopping mind-set, finding four sites that make online activity easier. All four come with the .TXT seal of approval.
Actually, one is a minipage at the highly rated ecommerce tracking site mpire.com. We’re talking about mpire’s eBay Pop trendtracker at www.mpire.com/ ebayPop.ivk.
This minisite sorts through the vast number of deals taking place on eBay and delivers up-to-date summaries of best-sellers, keyword searches and category best-sellers. It tracks nine categories, ranging from tech to collectibles. One category, Fashionista, offers several subcategories. Choose one, like wedding dresses, and you get summaries of best-selling brands in that group. Right now, for instance, Vera Wang wedding gowns are hot, but so are “vintage” dresses, according to eBay Pop.
Secondrotation.com
Newly launched Secondrotation.com is not a true shopping site as much as a selling site. It helps people who are casual sellers get rid of stuff they don’t want anymore. Particularly electronic stuff and tech gear that you’re too busy to deal with yourself.
Secondrotation buys your gear and sells it on eBay. You sign up on the Web site, enter your item into their database and find what price Secondrotation is willing to pay you. After you ship it, they’ll pay you and then sell it themselves.
This is sort of like stock market arbitrage. Secondrotation tracks selling history at eBay for any item you’re offering, then calculates what it can sell that item for. It offers you slightly less and makes money if and when the item is scooped up by someone else.
We checked what they’d pay for a good quality, like-new 1-gigabyte iPod shuffle, which retails around $80 and often sells on eBay for above $55. Secondrotation offers $24. Good deal? You decide.
Priceprotectr.com
Many retailers tell you they’ll cover the difference on a price you pay for an item versus the lower price offered by any retail competitor (usually within 30 days of purchase). Priceprotectr.com does that same thing, but does it online and spares you the chore of searching around to see if the price has fallen.
Priceprotectr says upfront it will only offer that service for roughly 40 retailers who’ve agreed to participate. So far, that list includes several biggies, including Amazon, Costco, Sears, Best Buy and Kohl’s.
Consumerist.com
For the price-conscious online shopper, we also recommend www.consumerist.com, where great advice on other e-commerce sites abounds. It’s written in blog form and relies heavily on tips sent in by savvy shoppers. Think of it as a very hip Angie’s List in blog style.