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Bad Spelling Pays on eBay

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the know-duhh dept.

peebeejay writes "People say that as long as they're understood, spelling is unimportant. These people are unwittingly making others a lot of money online, according to this article in the NY Times (DNA sample and clean boxers required). So, aside from clarity and respect for your reader, there's another good reason to either spell correctly or use a spellchecker: get bidders to find your eBay items and give you their money! Or you can go ahead and see how many people bid on your 'labtop computers,' 'camras,' and 'earings.'"

12 of 525 comments (clear)

  1. Old, old trick. by DdJ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've been using this trick since I started using eBay, something like six years ago. When you look for something, always look for misspellings first, because you're less likely to have competition. Even got a gemstone or two this way.

    It's been known for years, and it hasn't changed much. I don't think this article is going to cause much of a change, even if it's widely read.

  2. Lower Standards for all! by Lord_Frederick · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is the glass half empty? Is the glass half full? No! The glass is simply too big! What ever happened to rewarding those who did things well, as opposed to making sure nobody gets their feelings hurt because they don't do something as well as someone else. I heard that in some schools they're not running spelling bees anymore because it makes the kids that don't win feel too bad.

  3. An Extra Hyphen Made me $350 on Ebay by hwsquaredcubed · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was looking for a BikeE recumbent bike. There weren't any on Ebay. I tried "Bike-E" with a hyphen. There was an almost brand new demo model listed for $500. (They retailed for about $1200 at the time, I think.) I bought it, didn't even take it out of the box, relisted it with the correct spelling, and sold it for $850 seven days later. (I did have to pay for the bike to be shipped to me, which was about $35, I think.) I have also found that you can buy items that are poorly described and relist them with more thorough descriptions, links to the manufacturer's website, better photos, etc., and they will typically sell for higher than you paid for them.

    1. Re:An Extra Hyphen Made me $350 on Ebay by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I did buy an ATI card on eBay, installed it and decide it wouldn't work for what I wanted to do with it, sold it a month later for about $50 more. All I added was a couple better pictures and a spare $5 DVI to VGA dongle that I bought to use it.

      Apart from proper spelling, good photos and a reputation for accurate descriptions, another thing that seems to help is to be willing to ship overseas, especially for the retailer exclusive items that overseas bidders couldn't get. It is a bit of a hassle but I think it helps the prices, and usually I sell to domestic bidders anyway.

    2. Re:An Extra Hyphen Made me $350 on Ebay by Rorschach1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Very true. I bought a stack of HDS ViewStation X terminals at a local DRMO auction and sold a couple on eBay. I wasn't expecting much, because the last one I'd seen sell went for about $15 - but that had no pictures and a single vague paragraph about what it was. I wrote up a whole page about it, took a picture, and sold two of them for over $100 each.

  4. I do it on purpose ... form of keyword spamming by adzoox · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Since eBay says that adding terms to your auctions, that are unrelated is called; "keyword spamming" - I purposely don't spell some words right in the description so I can get others who may not spell words right. Some terms in the Apple category are often spelled incorrectly.

    --
    Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
  5. Re:This article is ridiculous by LiberalApplication · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Actually, this is exactly the kind of thing I'd been hoping noone would bother to publish as "news", precisely because I (in my cheapass, impoverished, bargainhunting gadgetlusting ways) have always managed to find the things I've wanted on eBay for great prices simply by repeatedly performing searches on what I'd expect to be common misspellings/permutations of spellings of the names of the items (whew... long sentence... deep breath...).

    That having been said, I wound up with a MITS Altair for $100 because it was listed as "Vintage Altar Comp", and a "sonydcv1" for about $300.

    My point being that as geeks, we should encourage all non-geeks we know who have an interest in selling items on eBay to forgo spellchecks and not worry about spelling in general. We stand to profit from it! Any attempt to educate the general populace (as this NYT article attempts to do) will reduce the number of magic bargains to be found on eBay ;)

  6. "Plam" pilots are very common, too by Dr.+Manhattan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Almost always a good deal in that category.

    --
    PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
    1. Re:"Plam" pilots are very common, too by Benwick · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Representing college literature professors in the arts I can safely say I would simply never buy something advertised as a Plam Pilot. What if it really was a Plam Pilot, like maybe some weird knock-off Palm from Vanuatu or something?

      Bad spelling really turns me away from these things... Even though there's no real connection between spelling and intellect, it is very hard to read poorly crafted prose and respect it if it's badly written. Oh well, not lkie abyndoy's pinayg aotitentn...

  7. Oh, the irony... by WIAKywbfatw · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A story on Slashdot about accurate spelling! And referring to eBay no less! Oh, the irony!

    This is the first article about eBay where the editors haven't spelt (yes, "spelt" not "spelled") the company name as "Ebay".

    Somehow, they alway (well, almost always) manage to correctly spell iMac, iPod and iTunes, but eBay, nVidia and ATi often become "Ebay", "Nvidia" and "ATI". It would be nice to think that this article was the start of a trend but I seriously doubt it.

    --

    "Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
  8. Illiteracy on the internet by Pedrito · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I remember back in the early days of the web, when it was just becoming popular, that John Dvorak hailed it as the coming of true mass literacy. His belief was that with so many average every day citizens posting web pages, surely this would lead to increased literacy.

    It couldn't have been a year later that he retracted that prediction and instead said that the web has proven just how illiterate Americans (and I presume others) are.

    Anyway, just thought I'd toss in my little anecdote.

  9. feedback loop by ScottSpeaks! · · Score: 4, Interesting
    "Before the Internet came along, poor spelling by the public was by and large not exposed,"

    Just as importantly, it wasn't reinforced. Kind of like the lady who felt reassured by seeing "chandaleer" on hundreds of web sites, people whose reading consists primarily of web pages, e-mail, and chat (rather than books vetted by proofreaders) are learning to spell incorrectly. It's like the blind leading the blind. I've got nothing against spelling changes in principle; language is going to evolve. But this seems more like a case of language forking, almost geometrically.

    Ironically, the internet seems to be taking us back a few centuries, to the days before English spellings were standardized by the likes of Webster and other lexicographers. Which was fine back when all parsing of text was done by humans, who could easily figure out that "Thomas Smith" and "Tomas Smythe" were the same person. But as this article points out, it can be a problem when more literal computers are concerned.