You can perform searches on items based on prices that are “Lower than Average”, “Closest to Average”, and “Higher than Average”. As you can tell, this will help you determine rock-bottom prices when looking for e-Bay auctions online. You can also browse through a tree-based category list on the left-hand side if you choose to narrow down items based on their respective category.

Pros – It’s free and very simple to use. The tool is good at returning relevant items in your search and it allows you to sort items just as you would on e-Bay. Terapeak.com allows you to do a fair amount of research that will help you specifically to find what e-bay auctions are at rock-bottom prices.

Cons - It does not show you shipping charges at all. This is a very big downfall as sellers very commonly lower there auction prices while raising their shipping prices! Just ensure to check out the shipping charges before you bid on any item from within this tool. The Terapeak.com tool could have a little more features, but for the money, you can’t complain.

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First, you can actually schedule each search to run at any time that you desire, even if that is in the middle of the night. You can turn off all of your automated searches with the click of a button.

This tool seems to be good even for dial-up users who don’t have the luxury of a broadband connection. If you have a scheduled scan run, it will even dial your default internet connection for you then disconnect when it is done looking for e-Bay auctions online. Pretty nifty, huh?

Second, TimeBlaster creates a nice layout of items in a “photo album” format which is very easy to look over. You can click a check box to ignore items that you don’t want to have show up in your list anymore; which is a nice feature to have.

TimeBlaster does include access to a bidding & esnipe service provided by AuctionSniper.com so you can place esnipes from within TimeBlaster.

Here it is all in a nutshell.

Pros - TimeBlaster is very simple to use when you’re looking for e-bay auctions online. You have more flexibility to schedule and automate your searches any way you want to than most other tools. Each search can have a different schedule if you so desire. TimeBlaster is affective for dial-up users that don’t want to tie up their phone line doing extensive searches.

Cons - TimeBlaster does not show you shipping charges so you get a true feel of what your final costs are for each item. The esnipe feature is not as nicely integrated into the tool as some other tools.

Finally, this tool costs $39 per year to use and the esnipe service provided by AuctionSniper.com costs %1 percent of whatever the final auction selling price is. This means that a $100 item will cost you $1. That’s a little high considering that there are other esnipe services out there that charge a flat fee for yearly use, or even better…FREE!

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Prospector Lite will even display shipping charges too! This is very important when it comes to knowing what the true price is that you’ll pay for an online auction item.

If you have had a bad experience with a seller, you can block certain sellers and/or sellers’ e-Bay stores so their items won’t display in your search results at all. Do you want a particular item to no longer show up in any of your searches or your search updates? Then that’s no problem. Just click the “Hide” check box for the item in question.

Your ability to perform advanced searches is incredible! The best part is that Prospector Lite makes these advanced searches simple to do when you’re looking for e-Bay auctions online. If you want to restrict your searches to a specific country/region in the world or restrict your search results to auctions listed for a certain currency, no problem!

Making bids from within this tool is very easy. Simply click on the item, and then click on “Tools” from the menu bar, then click “Bid”. This will automatically start the esnipe process as well. Watch out fellow bidders!

There is quite a bit to this tool, so I highly recommend that you read the tutorials on how to use this tool. It will be totally worth your time if you choose to do so.

The good news is that once you start using the tool, you’ll notice that there’s not much to getting things setup how you like them, and you’ll be a wiz in no time flat!

The thing that I like the most about Prospector Lite is that it gives you all the tools that you need to “get what you want at the price you want” all in one place.

If that wasn’t all there was to Prospector Lite, you can perform searches other than on e-Bay. You can search on Froogle (Google’s price shopping search engine), Google, and Amazon.com by using the “Type:” and “Search:” boxes at the bottom of the Prospector Lite toolbar.

Enough on that! I could go on and on about using this tool to use looking for e-Bay auctions online, but I’m not going to bore you with the details when you could be looking at the tool for yourself. So here are the “Pros & Con’s” for Prospector Lite.

Pros - All the search, bidding, and management tools you need are in one place. Searches can be automated easily. You can search for bidders, sellers, feedback for a specific e-Bay member, and all the items that a bidder is currently bidding on. Prospector Lite allows you to search, sort, and arrange in almost any way you can imagine when you’re looking for e-Bay auctions online.

There are other versions available for those who do more than either 60 searches per day or more than 30 esnipes / bids per month. You can get Prospector Searcher where you have unlimited searching capability and 30 esnipes / bids per month. Or, if you’re more inclined to do more bidding than searching, you can get the Prospector Bidder version that will let you do up to 60 searches per day, but your esnipes / bids are unlimited per month.

Cons - There are hard to find cons for this tool. However, here are some. You can only do 60 searches per day and 30 esnipes / bids per month. Any # of searches or esnipes / bids over that threshold will require you to purchase another one of their versions. This not an issue if your using this tool for personal use.

If you use e-Bay for a business or job, then you might want to consider getting one of the other versions of Prospector from MoxieProxy.com.

The automated search feature cannot be limited to a specific search. If you have more than one search defined, all searches will update at the interval you define. This means that each time any of your searches are started, each automated and configured search will count against your daily search limit. However, you can turn this off at any time.

Once again, this shouldn’t ever cause an issue for you e-Bay users when you’re looking for e-Bay auctions online.

It would be a nice improvement to be able to schedule each search separately.

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AuctionMapper.com allows you to search by location. You may ask, “Why is this handy when I’m looking for e-bay auctions online?”

Well, the answer to that is rather simple. BIG ITEMS! LOL! Let’s just say you wouldn’t want a sofa shipped to you! The price you’d pay for shipping would probably be as much as the item you’d bid on. Also, some sellers won’t ship an item at all, for whatever reason, and they require local pickup.

Simply put, there are some treasures in these auctions that you just don’t want to miss, even if you have to drive a little ways to get it.

Yet, that’s not all there is to AuctionMapper.com. It’s a pretty decent search tool for just about anything. There is a category tree built into the tool that you can use to sort and browse the categories that interest you.

Here’s the cool part; you can drag and drop the category you’re interested in onto the AuctionMapper map and WHAM!...an almost instant map for the location of each item in that category that your search turned up.

That’s pretty nifty. AuctionMapper.com should help you save on shipping costs too, even on smaller items!

Still, there is more. You can perform advanced searches to ensure certain words are included or excluded. Let’s not forget about making sure that you can search and block a certain seller’s items from showing up in your results. Not a bad thing if you ask me.

When I’m looking for e-Bay auctions online, I’ll take every edge I can get!

So here’s the scoop:

Pros - AuctionMapper.com is very useful to help you find all items that are closest to you. This is a real shipping costs saver for you, especially for those bigger online auction treasures.

They also have an awesome 5 minute video tutorial on their homepage that really simplifies the use their tool when you’re looking for e-Bay auctions online. The tutorial makes it virtually unnecessary to ever read any lengthy “How-To” documentation.

Cons - Searches cannot be automated so that you have an additional increase in your chances of catching those really good deals when you’re looking for e-bay auctions online. You cannot find out what other bidders are bidding on, thus reducing your chances even more of finding that hidden gem. AuctionMapper is still a tool to keep in the ole online auction toolbox.

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And The Winner Is....

First, it provided all of the features that you need in order to gather the information that you need to determine which prices are really rock-bottom

Second, this tool gives you the abillity to search on bidders & sellers so you can have a perspective that gives you an edge above other bidders.

Third, it gives you the ability to compare auction prices to other online sources by having Froogle, Google, and Amazon search features. When you’re looking for e-Bay auctions online, you’ll find that this an invaluable asset.

Forth, it includes an esnipe service…FREE! Ok…that’s hard to beat.

Finally, this tool is completely FREE! If you stay under 60 searches a day and less than 30 esnipes / bids per month, you’ll never pay a single penny. There are no catches or gimmicks.

Drum roll please! (As if you haven’t already figured out what I’m going to say next!)

The tool to use when looking for e-Bay auctions online is the Prospector Lite tool! With the strong set of features this tool offers, this tool should be around for a while to come!

The Prospector suite of tools definitely has earned its place as the #1 Tool in your world online auctions toolbox.

Download the latest free Prospector Lite tool now!

2nd Place Goes To…

For the features that you get for the price (FREE!), AuctionMapper.com comes in at a very strong 2nd.

Click here to go to AuctionMapper.com!