eBay is one of the greatest market places on earth. For a small fee, you can put your item in from of the world, literally. With such features, it's no wonder eBay gets millions of new listings a day. If you want to sell, you need to stand out from the crowd. Using the eBay auction site and paying attention can net you some serious money.
The first thing to look at is the title. Don't do the generic capital words like LOOK. This often turns off potential buyers. You have to look the expert part. Use keywords that buyers are using to find your item. If you visit eBay keywords where you can bid for ad placement, you'll easily find out what are the popular words. Remember this: searches only look at the titles, not the subtitles, and not the item page.
Next we'll look at the subtitles. These are important to provide further information that is less important than the title information, but still vital. It could be to clarify the item somewhat, or it could be free shipping, anything of that nature. Searches don't use subtitle words for matches, so you are looking to provide the buyers more information.
Next, we'll discuss the gallery picture. Many don't use it, but it's a fact that it either nets you more sales or more money on an auction, depending on the type of sale. A nice picture of the item you're selling can go a long way.
The item page itself is where the real winners stand out. There are many useful tips here: 1. Always include a picture, preferably a real photo if it's a real item. If it's not software or a service for sale, people want to see a picture of the physical item. 2. Don't make big paragraphs. Big paragraphs make people less like to read them. Make each paragraph 4-5 sentences max. Mix it up with lists, pictures, and tables. You want to make it easy on the eyes and invite users to read. 3. Absolutely don't put blinking text of any sort. 4. State your shipping prices on your main page. People want to know all the information up front. 5. Accept PayPal. Most of the eBay users have PayPal accounts. Many people feel comfortable with paying through PayPal as it is owned by eBay.
Done right, the item page can really sell a user. You want to lay out all the information for the buyer is a nice-looking fashion. Without a doubt, it could sway your sales 25% either way.
Another helpful solution is to look at buyers selling well and view their item pages to see how they flow.
If you sell anything either online or in real life, an eBay auction is a definite solution to more sales. Done right, you can increase your online sales significantly further.
What kind of browser are you using for online surfing? Explorer, Netscape, Firebox, Opera?? Sure, all are good programs but I want to talk about an excellent program called Netscape. If you use Netscape, do you know that you also get an amazing WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) web design program called Netscape Composer for free? Basically you don't need expensive HTML editors anymore. The list of commercially available HTML editor's software is endless ? and the price tags are enormous. Most people don't want to spend a lot of money to get started with their eBay business. Fair enough, since the goal is to make money and not to spend money. So it makes perfect sense to use a program to design auction listings which is available for free. And such a program is Netscape Composer.
It has the same professional features like FrontPage or any other similar program. To design stunning and professional looking eBay auction sites with Netscape Composer you need to download Netscape first. If you start up the program, select File->New Composer Page and basically you can start immediately to design your auction listings. You can make you letters in any colour, bold, italics, use background colours (or even images) etc. The options are endless. You can save this file on your local hard drive as html file. I used to have one file for every listing I generate. The best thing is that once you have got a nice and professional looking eBay auction listing, you can use it for ever. Just open your last listing in Netscape Composer and edit according to your new item. Amazingly, this takes only a couple of minutes.
But how do you transfer your listing saved as a html file on your local hard drive to eBay? The answer is simple. Once you have logged in into your eBay account and selected your category and starting price you have to type in your ?item description?. Did you see that eBay allows HTML format? Have a look when you launch your next listing. That's the time where you go back to your new listing you just have created with Netscape Composer. Down the bottom of your Netscape Composer page you'll see a button called: SOURCE - the source code of your listing. Click on that and highlight and copy the entire text. Select then the eBay site and paste this text into the ?Item description box?. Make sure that all links are working and that all photos are uploaded to the internet.
When you have finalized your listing you will be surprised. A stunning and professional looking ?DIY-listing?. You can always use ?ready-to-go? auction templates and edit these according to your item. You'll see that with an professional auction design you can easily attract more buyers and get higher bids. It's worth the effort. Keep in mind that professional web design software is highly expensive and does the same job. Alternatively, you can choose from a huge variety of third party auction services doing the job for you. But hey, there are incredibly expensive too. Don't you think that the eBay fees are high enough and you can easily do it yourself without spending any additional dollars? It's really simple!
Both Anthony Kristovich Iii & Meenakshi Kaur are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.