What do RSS feeds, shopping on EBay and Craigslist, and Outlook have in common? -- A shopping experience that lets you be first to respond on a new item.


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Video Transcription

This video tip is regarding how you can use RSS Feeds to help you be a better shopper on eBay or Craigslist. Now, that's probably a little weird hearing that, but RSS is used for so many things and I am just going to show you how you can use it in your online shopping needs, and I'll show you how to use Outlook to let you be the first responder to something that comes in on anyone of those. So for example, if you are in the market for a new vacuum and you really want one of those Dyson vacuums. You have got pets, you have got kids, you want one of those expensive $500 Dyson vacuums, but you just can't pay the $500 retail price. Well, lots of people are selling them on ebay or Craigslist. But, the really expensive one, the Dyson Animal, doesn't come up very often. So you need to keep your eye out for those and you want to be the first to respond and say, "I'll buy your Dyson Animal vacuum." Let me show you how you can do that. So you are going to obviously go to eBay. Let's start with an eBay here, and we want to type in our keyword Dyson. We'll even say dyson animal. Let's scroll down and see if anybody has the Dyson Animal on sale. Okay, a couple of people have them. Very interesting. Right now, you can't see the price on here that you really want to pay. So everything get okay. Well, I just want to keep looking. Well, instead of having to come back to EBay on a regular basis and check for Dyson Vacuums, you simply put in your search like this, and I am going to have you scroll all the way down, until you see the little RSS button. Now, once you click on that, this is basically the RSS Feed for this specific search feature. So what's awesome about that? Let me ask you this. Also, if you are using Google, a Google Homepage or Google Reader, you can add this quickly to your Google Reader or your Google Homepage. So if you are into Google, that's a really great thing to do from eBay. But, I am going to show you how this works in Outlook. So we've got this right here, and I am going to simply grab that. I simply select that URL. I am going to use my Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut to copy that, and we are going to switch over to Outlook. We are going to go to our RSS Feeds in Outlook. I am going to right-click. I am going to say Add a New RSS Feed, and I am going to do Ctl+V to paste that eBay URL in there. So I'll say Add, Yes, and let's go ahead and see where it says dyson animal right here. And as a matter of fact, if I want to change that to say, Ebay - dyson animal, I can see that right here. So I'll see that right off the bat when that comes in. So what you really want to do is have some sort of desktop alert. In other words, an In Your Face type of thing. You can see here that I have already added the Craigslist shopping filter for the Dyson Animal, and let me show you how I did that. Let's go here. So in Craigslist, I have typed in dyson animal, and hit Search, and it's pulling up a list of Dyson Animal vacuums in my local area. So I am going to scroll down, I don't see something in here as for the price that I want. I am going to scroll down, scroll down until I see the RSS Feed Orange Icon. I am going to click on that to pull up the RSS Feed, and I am going to select the entire address, the URL up here in the address area. I am going to use my Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut command to copy that, and then we're going to switch over to Outlook again. This is where I right-clicked on RSS Feeds, set Add New RSS Feed, and I did a Ctrl+V to paste that in there, and then I clicked on Add. So I am going to cancel this since I have already done that. So that was easy for me to add an item list for Craigslist just for the Dyson Vacuum and it's going to pull a new information into my Outlook RSS Feeds. Now, let's talk about those in your face, New Item Alert windows, because what you really want to do is when something new comes into either one of these RSS Feeds, you want to be the first person to respond. Maybe the first person to say, "Yeah, I will kind of take a look at your Dyson Animal vacuum and maybe buy it from you." So you absolutely want to be the first responder in some of these, especially Craigslist. So I'll show you how to setup a New Item Alert window. Well, you are going to select the RSS Feed folder, and then you are going to right-click on any one of the items that are in that folder. And I am going to right-click and go down to Create Rule, I'll say left-click, and in this one, I'll go ahead and Check the Subject contains, and I am going to remove some of these items here, so maybe Dyson. Then, I definitely want to check Display in the New Item Alert window, and I'll say OK. It's going to tell me that the rule has been created. Great! I'll do the very same thing for the Ebay - dyson RSS folder. I would right-click on one of the items in that folder, left-click on Create Rule, Create Rule, and I am just going to Check From dyson animal, and also Display in the New Item Alert window. I'll say OK. It's telling me that this rule has been created, and I'll say OK. So the next time a new Dyson Animal vacuum comes into either one of those areas, eBay or Craigslist, I am going to be notified right away. It's going to be very quick. As a matter of fact, what you want to make sure you have is, you want your RSS Feed list to be updated on a regular basis. Just make sure that your send and receive setting in Outlook is to pull in your RSS Feeds as often as possible, just like when you are pulling-in your email, incoming email from your different email addresses, just make sure your RSS Feeds are coming in just as fast. So very, very fun. It's very easy to settle this up, and it could make you a much quicker, a much more efficient shopper, especially for the holidays coming up. Hope you enjoy this tip, and I'll talk to you later. Have a great day!