Don't know what TLA's are?

Don't worry, you're not the only one.

I'll give you a clue. Up until very recently, whenever my wife (who is no stranger to eBay) saw ?NWT' in the title of a listing, she thought it was a brand name. So just imagine her confusion when she began seeing ?NWOT' in titles! Similarly, many eBayers believe the intials ?NR' in a title means ?not real'.

If you still haven't figured out what I'm talking about, I'll put you out of your misery: I'm talking about abbreviations. TLA, in eBay and other corporate ?speak', stands for ?Three Letter Abbreviations' (or acronyms) funny how abbreviations have their own abbreviation! Actually TLA's can be two, three or four letters.

The experience of Luci I just mentioned serves to illustrate an important point: if you are using TLA's in your listing titles, don't assume that everyone understands them. If potential bidders don't know what your abbreviations mean, they are completely wasted. Also, anything that buyers don't understand is intimidating do you really want to intimidate your potential buyers into going elsewhere?

So should you use TLA's in your listings? And if so, when should you use them? Well, simply put, TLA's are not necessarily wasted space as long as you bear a few things in mind. Firstly, remember that your listing title is the ultimate, prime real estate and it should be filled with as many keywords as possible to help buyers find your listing.

Abbreviations are rarely, if ever, keywords who searches for a ?NIB iPod'? (NIB means ?New in Box'). If anything, potential customers are far more likely to search for simply ?new iPod'.

So abbreviations should be used as space fillers, only when you have filled your title with as many keywords as you can possibly cram in. They are rarely searched, so they simply serve to insert an abbreviated extra piece of information about the item.

Bearing in mind that many in your audience will not know what certain abbreviations mean, full words such as ?New', ?With Tags', or even ?New in Box' are preferable to their three letter abbreviations.

Sometimes a TLA is completely unnecessary. Going back to the example of my wife, if sellers had used ?new' in their titles instead of ?NWT' which takes up the same amount of characters and basically means the same thing she, and many others, would have instantly understood that the item being offered was new. And, with that information, they would be far more likely to click through to the listing, where they would quickly discover that in addition to being new, the item is actually ?new with tags'.

So, in summary, TLA's have their place in a listing title, but only after every possible keyword has been added to the title. And don't forget to explain in the listing description any TLA's you've used.

Here's the most commonly used TLA's on eBay:

BIN - Buy It Now

DOA - Dead on Arrival

EUC - Excellent Used Condition

FAQ - Frequently Answered Questions

GBP - Great Britain Pounds

HTF - Hard to Find

LTD - Limited Edition

MIP - Mint in Package

NARU - Not a Registered User

NIB - New In Box

NR - No Reserve

NWT - New with Tags

NWOT - New Without Tags

OEM - Original Equipment Manufacturer

OOP - Out of Print

URL - Uniform Resource Locator (website address)

USPS - United States Postal Service