The Two most important eBay Seller tips you will ever read!!

I spent this morning creating a Video Tutorial to add to my guide on how to install Google Analytics to your Word Press Blog, I will upload it later today.  In the meantime I thought I would mention the two most important aspects of eBay selling you need to know!

The two most important tips for selling on eBay I can offer is: -

1. How to create an eBay title; and
2. The duration of an Auction.

No 1 eBay Listing Tips – eBay Title

The eBay title is how your bidders find your item, it is therefore very important that you get this part of your listing right!  When I started listing on eBay back in 1998, eBay didn’t have the automatic tool built into their search engine which would suggest listings if you spelt the name wrong when you searched for something.  Back then it was up to your to get it right.  Now however, just like Google if you search for something popular and spell it wrong, the eBay search engine will list suggestions for you.  For example, I searched for “ecomerce” spelt with only one “M” and eBay suggested and listed  “ecommerce” items with two “M’s” .  This only works properly for popular items however, if you are listing something outside the norm then you may have trouble.

Ultimately you want as many people as possible to find your listing, you want to stand out from the other twenty thousand sellers listing the same type of item;  so how do you do that?

The first thing you need to do is to find out what are the Keywords in your category of product.  Lets say you want to list an ebook on the history of the monitors  (I know what your thinking, yet it was the best I could come up with).  We will use eBay US of this post. To find out the Keywords for this type of item,  I would go to eBay pulse at www.ebay.com/pulse and click the category drop down menu until I find monitors and projectors.  Here we can see that the top keywords searched in this category are:  lcd monitor, monitor, computer monitor, projector, lcd, touch screen, monitors, computer monitors, touchscreen and flat screen monitor.

Next we want to see what are the keywords used for “eBooks“.  You can either go to “Books” or “Information Products“.  We will use books, and I won’t go right down to the sub catergory of books, just keep it at the top category “books”.  As you can see by the below image, the top keywords in the books category are: twilight, computer, books, easton press, harry potter, stephen king, 1st edition, nancy drew, bible and chess. Notice that eBook is not a keyword in the books category.

So now we have our keywords.

lcd monitor, monitor, computer monitor, projector, lcd, touch screen, monitors, computer monitors, touchscreen, flat screen monitor.

twilight, computer, books, easton press, harry potter, stephen king, 1st edition, nancy drew, bible and chess

So what would our listing title be?  Now eBook are predominately .pdf files which means they will work on PC, Mac, Linux (I think) etc.  You could go back to eBay pulse and repeat the above, using these words also.  For example Mac would become Macbook, iMac, iBook, Powerbook etc.  However, I will not go nuts and for this post just stick with PC Mac and Apple.  Obviously you could continue to pulse keywords.

We are listing an eBook on the history of monitors.   eBay gives you 55 characters to use in your title, so using common abbreviations like NIB, NR etc significantly helps describe your item without using up precious characters.

MIB: Mint in box

OOP: Out of print

NIB:New in box

LN: Like new

HTF: Hard to find

LTD: Limited edition

NR: No reserve

BN:  Brand new

Also, avoid using silly wasteful words like Look, Wow, Cool etc.  Buyers don’t search for these words and they really don’t entice Buyers to click on your item.  You want to get your Buyers attention and to do that you describe your item the best you can, using as many keywords as you can squeeze in, while not appearing to just through up keywords.  Further, don’t worry above creating a grammatically pleasing Titles.  You want IMPACT and DESCRIPTION. For example if your selling an iPod don’t put iPod New for Mac Apple iBook Powerbook.  There are so many of these silly titles that Buyers just turn off.

So using the above keywords we obtained through eBay Pulse and the few simple rules I have mentioned, our title could be: -

Limited 1st edition books – History Flat Screen Computer Monitor OR

BN 1st Edition Book Bible of LCD Computer Monitors NR

And that’s it.  Remember, don’t use wasteful words, check your pulse keywords, don’t over Capitalise words, use a few abbreviations (but not too many) and don’t worry about your Grammar.

No 2 eBay Listing Tips – Listing Duration

I started listing on eBay in 1998, to get some extra money while I was at university, and after it turned it into a business I noticed that there were certain days of the week that I sold more things and I had spikes in the number is watchers on my listings.  This was very important information as it told me what days I should have my listings out there; a sort of eBay analytics.

Thursday, Saturday and Monday were the busiest days.  Now the longest duration you can list an item for on eBay is 10 days.  In order to get the most exposure, (and forget about 3 or 7 days auctions), list your items on a Thursday.  Why?  If you list your item on a Thursday, for 10 days your listing will be current for two Thursdays and two Saturdays, significantly increasing your chances of being seen and getting bids.

Also start your listing at a time when people are at home.  Don’t start it a 5pm or 6pm when people are leaving work and are going to miss the end of the auction if they wanted to drop a bid in at the last minute.  Start the auction at 8.00pm.  This is after dinner (tea, supper….whatever you call it), people are home from work, and are starting to have some free time…..perfect time to remember to hop on the Internet and place that bid.  If you start your item on a Thursday at 8.00pm it will end at 8.00pm on Saturday.

Now if your item doesn’t sell or meet the reserve, don’t just re list with the same title.  Change the title a little!!!!! Google, Yahoo, MSN love fresh new content not old content.  If you use a new title when you re list, your more likely to get picked up by the search engines again.   Also, if you check your original source code of your listing you will find that the original end date will be the same as the first time around (IE before you re-listed) and hence another reason why the search engines won’t pick your listing up.

Hope these tips works for you….more coming soon so why not subscribe to this blog…..and get a bunch of free eBooks, on SEO and eBay.  Until next time……………………..