[eBay] - Scam Used by PowerSellers to Top eBay Pulse List

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Posted by Kyo on December 01, 2007 at 10:04:27:

On a strictly technical (programming / IT) level, the article below (like many other similar "how-to-cheat" articles titled along the lines of "Secrets of Google AdSense!") is certainly interesting and insightful. On an ethical level however, we have - "So what this demonstrates, is that the most successful people in the material/financial/business sense, are by not necessarily the ones who offer the most helpful, useful and/or most cosmoethical, services or products, that benefit the most people in the most significant way, but are instead (ie. the criteria being) the ones who are most cunning, most cutthroat and most descpicable."

No surprise of course. Anyways, here's the article for those who want to have a glimpse into the cutthroat world of business (in this context, IT business) :

http://www.anthonyjudelawrence.com/breaking-news-secret-ebay-code-scam-used-by-powersellers-to-top-ebay-pulse-list/

Reproduced here (in case the website gets deleted) :

Everyday, there are hundreds of thousands of people that try to make a living on eBay. These people strive to get the greatest amount of sales from various listings, in the hopes that they will become eBay Powersellers. They also try every trick in the book to get the greatest amount of people to watch their auctions. There is one BIG reason for this… and that is that they want to make the eBay pulse list. The eBay pulse list is a dynamite in terms of being able to push more viewers to a particular listing or seller. You can basically triple your earnings if you do things the right way.

If you want to learn advance tips and trick on how to create linkbait, head to eBay. Some are amazingly deceptive, some honest and open, while a third class as downright illegal. eBay has been trying to tackle this issue for some years now, and not with much success. Anyway, I digress. Back to eBay pulse. As I was saying, its the home for the listing which have the most watched items on the eBay itself. So, all you would need to do would be to head there to know which are the auctions which there is a giant buzz about.

A popular forum post by LCOnline1 (who is a powerseller on eBay and makes her living selling ebooks), on her forums says that it takes about 270 people watching an auction to just get onto the list, let alone to the top of the list. As you can see below, she needed her auctions to have that many people before she even made it to the number 10 spot. From my own experiences, the numbers are geometrically progressive upwards.

So, doesn’t it make you wonder how other people who sell "make money online with my girlfriend" type ebooks manage to get so many watchers that they can hit up past 2000 watchers?

This is the process that they use, and its a two part process.

Part One:

You have to first create a few listings. Each listing has to be about the same thing, for example, selling ebooks. Make 1 listing on Monday, and one on Tuesday.

For the purpose of this example, we shall call it Listing A1, and Listing A2, and A3 etc.

Next, all you need to do is input the following link "http://cgi1.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MakeTrack&item=123456123456&ssPageName=VIP:watchlink:top:us" and code it with anchor text to say "Watch this auction now. (Obviously, change the 123456123456 number to auction listing A1).

The trick is obvious. Put that "watch this auction now" quote on all your listings, but the link should only contain the listing to auction A1. That way, the number of watchers for A1 increases exponentially.

This is called chainlinking, and is done by almost all powersellers out there now that are trying to make it in the "make money online" business. This is pretty legal and tame. Nothing to worry about.

Part Two:

This is where it gets interesting. And probably illegal. A lot of those sellers have a "about me" page which they display prominently. On that About me Page is a link to their own website OUTSIDE of ebay. On that webpage, they insert a script which basically tells all browsers to autowatch the auction listing that they came from. Furthermore, because most of them have already been logged into their eBay accounts when they were surfing on eBay, there is no problem of authentication.

Here is the code for your perusal (I am not responsible for any of you that seek to use this to rise to the top!)

Swap the 123456789123 with your own auction ID. Remember, putting this within an eBay page will get you BANNED IMMEDIATELY.

Domain sellers on eBay can use this to mint money, literally. They sell domain names, and all they need to do is forward people to their .com domain (which already has a 301 redirect to a particular page) and they will automatically end up watching a particular auction.

After this, all you need to do, is combine Part 1 and Part 2. This way, you will end up driving thousands of people to auto add your item and push you to the top. For eBay sellers out there that make multiple item listings, this is absolute gold.

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