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more words together.
    If you’re dying to have several short words as your user ID, you can use underscores or hyphens to separate them, as in super-shop-a-holic . If you sign in to eBay once a day on your computer, typing underscores or dashes won’t slow you down.
    You can change your user ID once every 30 days if you want to, but I don’t recommend it. People come to know you by your user ID. If you change your ID, your past does play tagalong and attaches itself to the new ID. But if you change your user ID too many times, people may think you’re trying to hide something.
    Nevertheless, to change your user ID, click the My eBay link at the top of most eBay pages. From your My eBay login page, click the Preferences/Set-up tab and scroll to the Change My User ID link, fill in the boxes, and click the Change User ID button. You now have a new eBay identity.
    eBay also has some user ID rules to live by:
    No offensive names (like &*# @@ guy).
    No names with eBay in them. (It makes you look like you work for eBay, and eBay takes a dim view of that.)
    No names with & (even if you do have both looks&brains).
    No names with @ (like @Aboy).
    No symbols such as the greater than or less than symbols (> <) or consecutive underscores _ _.
    No IDs that begin with an e followed by numbers , an underscore, a dash, a period, or a dot.
    No names of one letter (such as Q).
    When you choose your user ID, make sure that it isn’t a good clue for your password. For example, if you use Natasha as your user ID, don’t choose Boris as your password. Even Bullwinkle could figure that one out.
    Hey, AOL users, this one’s for you: Make sure that your Mail Controls are set to receive e-mails from eBay. If you have Internet e-mail blocked, you need to update your AOL Mail Controls. To do so, enter the AOL keyword Mail Controls .
    The craze that began with AW
    Back in 1994, when eBay founder Pierre Omidyar had the idea to start a Web auction, he named his first venture Auction Web. The following figure shows a vintage Auction Web Internet auction that I won in February 1997. There were some great deals even in those days!
    Your License to Deal (Almost)
    You are now officially a newbie, or eBay rookie. The only problem is that you’re still at the window-shopping level. If you’re ready to go from window-shopper to item seller, just zip through a few more forms, and before you know it, you can start running your own auctions on eBay.
    Until you’ve been a member of eBay for 30 days, a picture of a beaming golden cartoonlike icon shows up next to your user ID wherever it appears on the site. This doesn’t mean that you have been converted into a golden robot; the icon merely indicates to other eBay users that you are new to eBay.

Chapter 3
    You Can Go Home — Again and Again!
    In This Chapter
    Getting the lay of the land
    Using the eBay home page’s links and icons
    Perusing the categories
    Finding out about eBay’s worldwide reach
    Checking out featured auctions and other fun stuff
    I hate to say it, but the famous writer Thomas Wolfe was wrong; the title of this chapter is true! You can go home again. At least on eBay! I visit the eBay home page on a regular basis; it’s a place where I can keep up with eBay’s newest offerings. Month after month, millions of people (just like us) land on eBay’s home page without wearing out the welcome mat (probably because they are wearing their bunny slippers). The eBay home page is the front door to the most popular auction site on the Internet.
    Everything you need to know about navigating eBay begins right here. In this chapter, I give you the grand tour of the areas you can reach right from the home page with the help of links.
    What Is the Home Page?
    The eBay home page is shown in Figure 3-1 and includes the following key areas:
    A navigation bar at the top of the page with five eBay links that can zip you straight to any of the many eBay areas, as well as two additional — and powerful —