How to get more people to find your eBay Auction

When doing a search on Google for an item, it is quite common to get eBay auctions to pop up in your search results. If you want to get your eBay Auction found on Google or other search engines, I recommend that you follow some of eBay's search term guidelines.

Use Keywords - Pick three to five keywords that relate closely to your item. Ask yourself what words people are likely to use in a search engine when looking for what you're selling. Once you have these keywords, use them appropriately in your listing title and item description.

Take Care with Titles - Your listing title is a key factor in natural search. Include the most important keywords or keyword phrases in your listing title.

Get the Most Out of Your Item Description - Your item's description is the most valuable tool for creating search engine-friendly listings. While your primary goal is to describe the item you are selling to your eBay audience, here are several ways to use your description to its fullest:

• Create Good Content: Describe your item the best you can and in as much detail as possible You should include approximately 200 words of visible text in your description, with the most important keyword phrases comprising 5 to 7% of the total. (In 200 words of text, you'll want to use your keywords 10 to 14 times.) Note that search engines only read a certain amount of information per page, so overdoing your description with non-relevant information isn't a good strategy.
• Avoid Keyword Spamming: Do not overuse keywords in an item description as it can reduce the effectiveness of content. Moreover, keyword spamming is a violation of eBay policy as well as an irritation to prospective buyers.
• Avoid Hidden Text: Do not add invisible copy; search engines will not read it.
• Vary Font Strength: Use bold headers and use a font size of 12 or 14 maximum.
• Include Links: Add links to other products, to your eBay Store, and so on. The words that are linked should be relevant to the destination. For example, "Visit my Store" or "See other items" are more effective than "Click here."
• Use Image Alt Tags: These are keywords associated with the images you use in your listing. If you do your own HTML, be sure to include alt tags. This provides yet another opportunity to optimize keywords or keyword phrases that both describe the image and are consistent with your content.

Source: Search Optimization

Auction Formatting and Font Size

What is with the big font their guy? When you make your auction templates you should use a small font in a legible color. No giant light green letters. This not only makes your eBay ad hard to read, but it also makes you look unprofessional.

When formatting your add, keep it simple. Use crisp pictures when possible, and keep the majority of your font sizes under 16.

The Importance of Pictures in Ebay Auctions

When constructing an Ebay auction, one of the most crucial elements you can add is a picture. The next best thing you could add to your auction description would be a second picture. Seriously, they are that important. The only way to tell what you are buying from someone is by looking at their pictures. Think of the last time you bought something without seeing it first. Exactly. Having pictures in your auctions is a necessity, and fortunately, it is an almost painless process.

If this all seems like review, skip down to Adding Photos to your Ebay Auction

The Camera
If you do not have a digital camera, and are attempting to sell on Ebay, you are doing something wrong. Buy one now! They do not have to be that good, they just have to take relatively clear pictures.

You do not need a 10.4 Mega pixel SLR digital camera to sell on Ebay. You can get a relatively cheap used one, mine is a 2.3 Mega Pixel point and shoot, and it does fine. The reason you do not have to worry so much about quality of photo, as far as pixels go, is because you will be posting your pictures on the internet. Here bandwidth is key, and the smaller the picture, the faster it will load.

I set my camera to its lowest setting for taking pictures at a resolution of 600x800, there are some that go smaller, and that is perfect for what we are doing here. The important thing is that your pictures look crisp.

Taking Pictures
So now, assuming you have a camera, and you are comfortable using it, lets talk about taking the pictures. When you are taking a picture it is going to have to have a background. White I have been using recently is my wooden table. The brown wood grains provide a nice neutral backdrop, but others use solid sheets.

The important thing is that you are not taking a picture of a black object on a white background. Harshly contrasting colors will make your photo lack detail, the easiest thing to do is to use a neutral type color that works with black as well as white and shiny objects.

If you want to get really serious about taking pictures, you might want to look into making a Light Tent, or Light Box (I need to put this on my to do list).

Editing Pictures
Well great! Now we have pictures taken, and you have figured out how to put them on your computer, now we just have to get them ready for the web. In order to do this you are going to need a photo editing program. There are a lot out there, many of which are free, and for your uses will be fine (I use Adobe Photoshop. All you really need to do, assuming you took good pictures, is crop them.

If you are taking a lot of pictures, hopefully you don't have to crop or edit them. This stuff might only take a couple of minutes, but if you are doing 40 posts a day that adds up! I usually try to take the best couple of pictures I can, and then just post them, but if you plan on selling the same thing over and over, or are focusing on quality, not quantity, it is worth spending a lot of time making your photos shine! If you need a basic tutorial and a good free photo editor check out Gimp.

When editing your pictures, make sure they are small enough that they load quickly. I always save my photos for the web as a JPG. This way I can have pictures with decent quality and small size for good loading time.

Adding Pictures to your Ebay Auction
Okay, now we are to the most important part. Adding pictures to your auction. Well, first we need to take the photos from your computer and upload them to a server. WE DO NOT USE EBAY'S PHOTO HOSTING SERVICES! This is a huge waste of money if you want to add multiple pictures (which you do) or have a large image in the middle of your description (which you do!). You save a lot of money by doing this yourself, and it is no harder.

The photo hosting service I use is Photobucket. It is quite simple, and allows for multiple uploads which makes my life considerably easier. The steps are simple, follow them and upload your pictures.

Now comes the not so tricky part. Adding photo's to your website is as easy as this:

Just replace the "yourimageurlhere" part with, well, do I really have to spell it out? You can place this tag wherever you want, and put as many photos as you feel is important to describe you are selling.

How to Write an Ebay Auction Description that Sells

Writing A Title
Nobody will look at your auction description if they can not find it. The first thing you have to do is write a good title. I wrote pretty extensively about this on a previous post, it is called Writing Good Auction Titles. The basics are:

• Be as descriptive as you can
  
• Lead with Brand Name first, then other specifics. Many people just type "Women's Jeans 8" and the Brand name first will set it apart from the other titles. Also, I like to CAPS the brand name, "GAP Women's Denim Jeans Size 8 NWT"
  
• Don't spam keywords that are similar to your item, and don't use "L@@K," this is a waste of precious space, and nobody searches for "L@@K." If they do, you do not want their bids!

Item Specifics
Make sure you provide Item Specifics, many people use the sidebar to help narrow down their searches, and these are narrowed down by the "Item Specifics." You can add these above the "Description" box in the Sell your item page. For clothing Item Specifics would be things such as Style, Size Type, Size, Color, Condition. Try to fill in as many of these as possible, if you can not figure them out, look to auctions similar to yours and see what they write.

Item Description
This is probably the most important part! It is important to write as thorough of a description as you possibly can. Try to imagine what the bidders might ask you, and write it down! This will save you a lot of time in not having to answer questions, and also make you look more trustworthy. Add as much information to your auction description as you can, this is the internet, there is no space limitation! When selling pants I provide something like this:

• Brand: Gap
  
• Style: Boot Cut Jeans
• Material: Denim/100%Cotton
• Color: Dark Indigo
• Size: 8
• Waist: "32
• Inseam: "30
• Rise: "8
• Condition: New With Tags

Actually, this is the basic format I provide on my clothing auction descriptions as well. Whatever you sell though, you should note anything any of the tags say, things like Model Numbers and such, as well as the dimensions. Describe it to the best of your ability. This is why we are supposed to research the things we sell, so that we can learn from others success.

After you have all of your specific information about the product it is helpful to sell your item a little more. Don't hype it up too much, but it would be fine to say something like, "These pants are so comfortable, and fit great. I am sure you will be pleased with them." It is a good thing to write your description as if you are talking to your bidder in an informal type of way. Also, saying things like "I am sure you will be pleased" inspires confidence in the bidder.

When writing your auction description it is a good idea to say something like, "You are bidding on a..." implying that they are already committing to a transaction. It is also important to tell the bidder to "BID NOW" or something to that extent. "If you don't bid, you will never understand how comfortable these pants are!" Ask them to bid, tell them to bid, get the idea of bidding into their heads.

Another good idea is to say something like "the high bidder will own this item at the end of the auction," this is functional because it implies that once you bid you already kind of own this item. This kind of mentality induces bidding wars; if a bidder already thinks they own an item, they will not be so happy when someone "steals" it from them by bidding higher.

Ebay sellers thrive on their bidders passion!

Also, as a seller, it is your goal to not only sell the item that you are currently writing the description for, but to sell all of your items. If they are similar, there is a good chance one bidder would want to buy something else from you. You have to sell yourself. Tell bidders to check out your other auctions, tell them to look at your About Me page, tell them to add you to their favorite sellers list. Provide buttons and links for all of these in your description.

Another good way to get the same bidder to buy multiple things from you is to offer a discount on shipping multiple items. Reward your bidders for their patronage, they will appreciate it, and sometimes bid on more of your auctions!

Adding Photographs.
This demands an entire post for itself, and one is coming, but we can get you started for now. First of all, you have a description, and that is great, but if you want to make any money selling on Ebay, you will need a photo. A photo is worth a thousand bids, (well maybe several) and listings with photos end with considerably higher prices than those without. Photos enhance you description like nothing else you can do, and even if you are selling an Ebook, or something that does not exist in real life, a picture will still make it sell better.

If you are doing this as a business, you need to not rely on Ebay's photo hosting service. It is crap! It does not allow you to have a photo of any decent size, and the photo that is on your page is at the bottom of your auction's description. Also, you have to pay more for multiple photos. This is a huge waste of money, and really adds up if you do a lot of auctions a week.

Hosting your own photos is easy, the service that I am currently using is Photobucket.com It is simple to use and has a multiple upload feature which is quite easy. It also provides you with the code to add pictures to your descriptions in a very easy way. If you only do one thing this article suggest, HOST YOUR OWN PHOTOS!

Special Policies
when writing an Auction Description it is also important to specifically spell out your selling policies. What kind of payments you accept, shipping, returns, everything.

Payment Instructions: I used to accept only Paypal, as it is fastest, but now I believe that it is worth the wait for a money order, especially if the person who wants to buy with a money order drives the price of the auction up. The more payment options you offer, the more bids you will get. But don't get too wild, dealing with cash is sketchy, and against Ebay policy. Also be sure to provide a time frame for payment. I usually give them a week, but I am thinking about becoming less lenient and requiring payment within three days at the end of the auction unless they contact me asking for more time. Buyers can be lazy, and it is nice to get paid as soon as possible so you can move on to other things.

Shipping: I usually offer two different shipping options. USPS Parcel Post, as it is quite economical, and the low price attracts more bidders, and Priority, because sometimes people want to get their item fast, no matter how little they pay for it. Also, it is important to spell out how often you ship, within 24 hours of payment, in 1 business day, or 2. People depend on these guarantees. To find out which shipping provider is right for you, check out this article: Comparing USPS UPS and FedEX Shipping Fees. Also, make sure you have a tracking number, even if you don't provide it. This can save you from scamers later in the game.

Return Policy:
It is a good idea to have a return policy. It inspires a lot of confidence in your bidders if they can return their item if it is defective. A good disclaimer I like to throw into the description is that they can return their item if it is not as described, though others prefer a policy where they accept all returns no matter what. If you have a lot of similar items, it is a good idea to do a return as an exchange, though if you sell many different things, a return might be better as cash back.

Please let me know if you have any more tips, or if any of these ideas have worked for you.

Writing a Good Auction Title

Now that you found something to sell on Ebay it is time to learn how to write a good title for it (description next time)

The Title
When writing a good title it is important to be specific, remember, you are trying to have as many key words as possible that might be searched for. For example, I am currently selling the Super Nintendo cartridge Donkey Kong Country. However, when creating a title for this game I will not simply write "Donkey Kong Country," but I will make it more specific. It is the first of a series of 3 games, so it deserves a 1, but also, people often use roman numerals in searches so it also gets a "I." Also, it is important to indicate which system this game was made for, as there are many other Donkey Kong items floating around on ebay. In the end it became Donkey Kong Country I 1 (Super Nintendo).

When writing the title it is important to be as specific as possible, and attempt to guess what the potential bidder will search for. Sometimes this includes misspelling listings. For example, the brand Quiksilver is often misspelled, and if there is room in the title it would be appropriate to also include "Quicksilver."

One thing you should never do with titles, which I hope some day dies out, is to write something like "L@@K," This is obnoxious and a waste of keyword space. If you want someone to look at your item, add a picture to the side (we will get into this later). Also, when writing your title do not write keywords to similar but better and more popular things. Instead attempt to describe your product as best as possible with your limited amount of space.

Adding a Subtitle
Sometimes it is a good idea to add a subtitle to your item to draw more attention to it. It is especially worthwhile if the item will sell for a lot of money. Subtitles are especially effective if they set your almost identical auction apart from many others. Here you can draw interest in specials you offer, for example your Ipod comes with "3yr warranty and extras." Or the signed book you are selling has an inscription saying "I am so glad to hear about your sex change, Chuck Palahniuk." These are things that draw attention and will help you get more bids.

However, a subtitle is not necessary, and a waste of money if you know your item has perspective buyers and will only sell for $24.99. Subtitles are not worth the extra fee for lower priced items.