Ebay is an online auction site ( www.ebay.co.uk or www.ebay.com ) where people from all over the world can buy and sell unwanted items.

Basically when you first visit ebay, you will be taken straight to the home page where there are adverts for items for sale, a list down the left hand side of the screen of all the different categories you can list in and a big search box at the top.

Once you have found what you want, you can either "Watch the item" or you can bid on the item. Some auctions will do a buy it now price, others are auctions that run for a certain number of days.

To watch an item, you can either sign in as a guest to ebay where the site will remember 10 items for you, or you can register with ebay and you can watch numerous amounts of items. When you register you pick a user name, password and then a secret question and answer incase you forget your sign in details. You cannot bid on an item with out being a member, and alot of ebay sellers are wary of first time users due to so many time wasters bidding on items and then not paying.

Alot of sellers will ask new users to contact them before placing a bid with their contact details. I have never understood how this helps a seller keep a buyer honest so have never implimented this technique myself. The other option is to set up a paypal account and look for people who sell ebooks or codes for tesco etc. You can buy these cheap, pay immediately by paypal and build up your rating (most sellers want at least 5 positive feedback).

Paypal is the online payment service that is linked to Ebay. You register with Paypal the same way as ebay, with a username and password, you then link a bank card or credit card (cannot be a maestro card) to your paypal account and when you purchase an item the money is moved from you bank account/credit card and paid into the paypal account of the seller. This service doesn't cost the buyer anything, but does cost the seller, the standard charge is 20p per transaction and then 3.4% of the amount paid. A few sellers will put in their listing that a surcharge will be incurred for payment by paypal. Ebay did try and stop this but there are still a few who put the cost on the buyer. The easy answer to that practise is if they try to pass the paypal cost, don't buy from them, or pay by cheque.

Ebay have a Disputes console where you can put an alert against a non paying bidder or a seller who hasn't sent the item you paid for. You will each be notified when the other person sends a message. This is supposed to help ebayers sort out any disputes to minimise negative feedbacks and fraudulent buyers / sellers. Also if you are a seller and your sale falls through, once you have set a non paying bidder alert up, you can get your fees back from ebay.

I personally like ebay, and have been using it long enough to know the scams that sellers use. My pet peeve is placing a bid for an item (you can put in a maximum bid and ebay will automatically bid up on your behalf up to your maximum against any other ebayer who places a bid), and another ebayer outbids me in the last few seconds of the auction. Unfortunately this is a part of ebay life, and as I am guilty of doing it myself when I really want an item I can't really complain.
The fees are awful for ebay, but I always start my auctions at a price where I know me ebay fees will be covered to make sure I am not out of pocket.
The Disputes Console is easy to use, and in my 200+ transactions I have only had to use it six times and have only had a bad experience once.
There is a huge downside to ebay (apart from the seller fees) and that is you can get caught up in ebay fever, bidding more for an item than it is actually worth. I usually set myself a limit on what I am willing to pay and have long since learned to stick with it. I also now keep the money I make from selling on ebay in my paypal account and that is what I use to purchase things on ebay so I don't actually spend money out of my bank account and get myself in financial trouble (I know that sounds strange, but you can get into money trouble if you don't keep an eye on what you spend, especially as you can buy alot of things for 3 - 4 pounds, which soon adds up).
The plus side to ebay is that I have managed to get rid of 80% of my sons old toys and clothes and got a few pounds back for each item (which we saved up and bought our sons first real bike with!!) If managed properly, you can make a lot of money on ebay, no where near as much as ebay will make off you but still every little helps.