Websites Help Shoppers Find Misspelled Items on eBay
Sellers on eBay don’t always spell brand names correctly, making their goods harder to find for those searching with a correctly spelled keyword, writes The New York Times.
Fortunately for buyers, about a half dozen websites have sprung up that let them search for such misspelled items, often getting them a better deal because there are likely to be fewer bidders on the item.
Sites such as Typo Bay and Typo Buddy search eBay for misspelled versions of hard-to-spell brand names like Abercrombie & Fitch, Louis Vuitton, Manolo Blahnik, and Banana Republic. There are misspelled categories, too: “Jewlry” is one of the most popular.
For each search that results in a sale, eBay pays the sites a small commission.
They appear to be thriving, particularly in a holiday season market full of deal-seeking consumers.
Typo Buddy, which started about six months ago, already has up to 80,000 visitors “on a good day,” according to its its president, Jonathan Lieberman. Typo Bay, founded in 2007 by 19-year-old Joseph Mantha, said October was the site’s busiest month yet, with about 4,000 unique visitors and some $500 in revenue.