Anyone who’s keen on saving money has an eBay account.  It’s a great place to buy stuff at cut-rates, whether it’s used material being peddled from guy in Oshkosh or “new in the box” items straight from the manufacturer.  

If you’re a serious comparison shopper, you undoubtedly check eBay regularly and probably purchase via the online auction megasite with some regularity.

But did you know it was possible to save even more money than usual when making your eBay purchases?  It can be done.  All it takes is an eBay coupon.

I’d like to differentiate a true eBay coupon from what you might find if you go Googling for “eBay coupon”.  Many people will refer to any coupon offered for resale on eBay as an “eBay coupon”.   That really isn’t accurate.  If you decide to list a coupon to buy a new Dell computer for sale on eBay, it’s a Dell coupon.  Period.  The coupon doesn’t suddenly become part of eBay because it’s sold there.  And you sure as heck can’t use that coupon if you decide to buy a Dell from Marsha in Hoboken via eBay.

I don’t think people intentionally confuse the use of the term, but search engines (being the imperfect tools that they are) will often return results for coupons offered on eBay when one is actually looking for real eBay coupons.

Real eBay coupons are issued by eBay and they generally don’t have any kind of product purchase restrictions on them.  Usually, they’ll offer a flat percentage discount off of any purchase made on eBay.  The photo accompanying this post is of an actual eBay coupon.

That’s right, eBay will actually print ‘em up sometimes!  They send them out to site members every once in awhile.  Of course, you don’t actually have to turn over the paper coupon. It’s all just a matter of typing the code into the right spot as you check out while making a purchase.

Which brings us to the issue of eBay coupon codes.  According to the site, coupons are mailed or emailed to people.  That doesn’t mean that you have to be on the lucky receiving end of eBay’s largesse to actually use a coupon, though.  The web is a hotbed of people sharing coupon codes, enabling anyone to save some serious money on a virtual shopping spree.

For awhile, they weren’t hard find.  eBay went hog wild with coupons in the weeks running up to the holidays.  Now that things have settled down again, it’ll take a bit of work to get the coupons/codes.

Some smart Googling, combined with a willingness to sort through the aforementioned “eBay coupons” that are really just regular coupons being sold by eBay is a great way to dig ‘em up.  Another good trick is to keep an eye on a few of the more highly-trafficked online forums focusing on frugal living.  Those penny pinchers (and I use that as a term of endearment) are really generous when it comes to sharing coupon codes.  If you’d like to learn more about finding eBay discount coupons, eBay Habit has some good information.

If you’re an eBay shopper, you might as well save some extra money, right?  That makes finding and taking advantage of coupon offers from the big dog of online auctions a no-brainer.  If you’re going to buy something either way, you might as well do it with a coupon so you can keep a little extra dough in your pockets!

Oh, there is one restriction that should be mentioned.  You can only use eBay coupon codes when you’re making your purchase with your PayPal account.  If you use a different method of payment you won’t have access to the savings.  If you need a little explanation of how to actually use the codes, eBay has a nifty graphics-rich breakdown of the process that you might want to see.