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How To Make Your eBay Listing ATTRACTIVE To Your Target Market

By Martyn Boaden in Featured

Your eBay listing is your salesperson. Most sales people look smart and professional. Your eBay listing must also look smart and professional and give the appearance of a legitimate business. This will instil confidence in your buyers.

If you are selling the same item as someone else on eBay, but your listing is more professional and gives the impression of a legitimate business (whereas your competitor’s does not) then people will be more likely to buy from you. They may even be willing to pay more to buy the same item from you than from your competitor – because they have more confidence in you.

Make your eBay listing attractive and professional but avoid flashy gimmicks that distract. Just because you can add blinking images and flash video and music doesn’t mean you should. Whilst clever, they won’t increase your sales. They will just distract. If it doesn’t directly help you to sell your item, don’t use it.

A simple audio or video message in your eBay listing WILL increase sales.

Make your eBay listing EASY ON THE EYE. Some of your potential buyers may have poor eyesight. You don’t want to lose them because they can’t read your listing. But even if they have 20:20 vision, you are more likely to grab and hold their attention if reading your eBay listing is EFFORTLESS.

Dark text on a light background is the easiest to read. Black text on a white background is best and should be used in most cases. Different coloured text can be used sparingly to draw attention to a few key words and phrases.

Use a font that is appropriate to what you are selling. If you are selling children’s toys, “Comic Sans MS” might be an appropriate font to use. But this would create the wrong impression if you were selling something more “high-brow” such as a business course for which “Times New Roman” would be more appropriate. If in doubt, use an easy to read font such as “Verdana”, “Calibri” or “Arial”. Avoid difficult to read fancy fonts such as “Monotype Corsiva.”

SOME PEOPLE WRITE THEIR LISTINGS USING JUST CAPITALS. THIS IS A MISTAKE. IT IS ACTUALLY HARDER TO READ THAN LOWER CASE TEXT.

Capitals can be used SPARINGLY to draw attention to a few KEY WORDS and PHRASES.

Most people will skim through your listing to see if it’s of interest before they decide whether to read it fully or move on to the next listing. You want them to notice the most important words and phrases – the ones that describe your product’s major benefits – as they skim read.

So emphasise these important words and phrases by using a combination of CAPITALS, bold text, underlined text, high-lighted text or by using different font colours. But don’t over-use these as your listing will look messy and what you want to emphasise will no longer stand out.

These emphasised words and phrases must build sufficient interest in the skim-reader to encourage them to read your eBay listing properly.

A big block of un-broken text, many lines deep, is daunting. Break it up into several smaller paragraphs that are only a few rows deep. Don’t worry if this grammatically in-correct.

You are NOT writing a piece of prose for your English exam. You are writing a sales letter. Your style should be CONVERSATIONAL and EASY TO READ. Use SHORT sentences and SHORT paragraphs with SPACE between each paragraph. This breaks your text into small bite sized pieces which are easier to digest.

Whilst you don’t need perfect grammar (because you are using a conversational style), you DO need perfect spelling. Poor spelling is VERY unprofessional. Compose your listing in a word processing software program such as Microsoft Word with the spellchecker on and correct any errors. If spelling isn’t your strongpoint, get someone else to proof-read your eBay listing.

Write everything in a logical order such as headline, description, guarantee, shipping terms, payment terms. Break up the text with sub-headings such as Guarantee, Shipping Terms, Payment Terms, etc so that it is easy to follow.

You can use brand awareness to enhance your credibility on eBay. If all your eBay listings look the same, people who haven’t bought from you yet will soon become familiar with your listings. They may eventually buy from you instead of a competitor because this familiarity breeds confidence.

Consider having a logo made and used in all your listings to make you look more professional, differentiate you from your competitors and help build brand awareness.

Most salespeople dress conservatively, i.e. a business suit and sensible shoes. They don’t dress to “express themselves” and stand out. This would distract from their sales message. They just want to look professional so that customers will have confidence in them. Your logo and your listing design should do the same.

You can make your listings completely bespoke and unique by using HTML (which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and is the code used to design webpages) even if you don’t know how to use HTML! You can use “What You See Is What You Get” (“WYSIWYG”) software such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver.

The way this software works is you design your webpage in a similar way that you would write a Word document, without using any HTML code. The program automatically converts your design into HTML for you. You then copy and paste the HTML code into eBay’s Sell Your Item or Turbo Lister templates. You can download a FREE WYSIWYG software program called NVu.

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Martyn Boaden is the Founder of The Online Auction Resource Centre where you will find more information and all the resources you’ll ever need to set up and run your successful and profitable eBay business. And for a limited time only you can get instant access to his popular eBay Business Box (worth $164 + $17 pm) for FREE by clicking this link: http://www.TheOnlineAuctionResourceCentre.com

How To Use As Many Photos As You Like In Your eBay Listing WITHOUT Paying Additional Listing Fees

By Martyn Boaden in Featured

If you’ve listed products on eBay without a photo and successfully sold them – don’t be fooled into thinking you don’t need a photo. You would almost certainly have got more bidders, and therefore probably a higher selling price, with a photo.

If your eBay listing doesn’t have a photo and your competitor does, you will lose out. If you don’t have a photo, potential buyers will be sceptical or suspicious. They will think that you either don’t really have the item for sale or you have got something to hide, i.e. it’s not in very good condition. Without a photo, your listing will not look professional which will damage your business image.

Your listing MUST have a good quality digital photo of your item. If you are selling new products, the manufacturer or your supplier may have photos that you can use. But you must check that you are allowed to use them. Otherwise you could be prosecuted, or at least have your listing removed. Also, if you use the manufacturer’s photo, all your competitors may be using the same photo, so your listing won’t stand out.

Often, when people are just selling stuff from around the house, they will use any old snapshot of the item and you can see all sorts of domestic mess in the background. This is not good enough if you want to run a successful and profitable business on eBay. A good photo will increase the perceived value of your item and attract higher bids. A poor photo will cheapen your item.

You should take photos in good light with a plain background behind the item so as not to distract from it. You can use a plain bed sheet for this. Pictures must be sharp and clear. Take lots of photos from different angles and use the best – the one(s) that make the product look most valuable.

If you don’t have a digital camera and can’t afford to buy one, see if you can borrow one. Alternatively you can probably get ordinary photos put on a disc at your local photo-processing shop. You can then upload them to your computer. Or you can scan them into your computer if you have a scanner.

Digital photo files can be quite large and so should be compressed for the internet so they don’t slow down the loading of your page. People online are impatient – they won’t wait around for your page to load.

You can also improve your photos, such as adjusting the brightness and contrast, or air-brushing out unwanted distractions in the background, by using photo editing software if you have it installed on your computer.

If you don’t have software on your computer to edit photos and compress them, use irfanview dot com (it’s FREE!). You can compress them so they load faster, crop them, lighten them, darken them, add text, etc.

At the time of writing this article, upgrading to a gallery photo – where the photo appears next to your listing title in the search results – is FREE on eBay UK. If it isn’t free when you are listing your item – PAY FOR IT! If other listings on the search results page aren’t using a gallery photo – yours will stand out. If they are – yours will get over-looked if you don’t have a gallery photo.

Remember that your customers are buying without having seen what they are buying. You need to provide them with as many photos as is necessary for them to know enough about your item and its condition to be able to make an informed decision as to whether they want to bid. If you don’t provide enough photos for them to be able to make up their mind, they probably will not bid.

If two listings are selling the same item, but one just has one small, slightly blurred, photo and the other has several large, clear photos taken from every angle including close-ups, who would you feel more comfortable buying from?

If you are selling brand new ipods, one photo will probably suffice because your customers will know what they are getting. But if your item needs 10 photos to show it off properly – you should use 10 photos. Seeing everything about your item gives people the confidence that they know exactly what they are bidding on.

Take close-up photos of any defects. Then winners of your auction can’t justifiably complain that the item was not as described and return it or give you negative feedback.

If you use eBay’s photo uploader, each additional photo increases your listing fee. But you can add unlimited photos for FREE if your photos are hosted somewhere else on the internet. Your Internet Service Provider may provide you with some webspace packaged together with your email and internet access account.

You can design your listing as a webpage hosted on the internet with as many photos as you like, displayed how and where you like on the page, then copy and paste the HTML code into eBay’s List Your Item form. You need to ensure that the HTML code has the correct path to where your photos are hosted on the internet otherwise they won’t show up in your listing on eBay.

If you don’t have your own website on which you can host your photos, you can host them with Tupics dot com or Vendio dot com for a few dollars per month. Vendio also offers additional cool tools so you can add watermarks to your photos (so other people can’t use your photos) and have a zoom function added.

Alternatively, you can add multiple photos to your listing for FREE and have them displayed as a slide show on your listing, by using Slide dot com. You upload your photos to slide, design your slideshow, then copy and paste the HTML code that they give you into your listing.

Another alternative is to upload your photos to Facebook dot com. Although the photos won’t appear in your listing you can say: “To see more photos of this item, click the following link:” and then copy and paste in your listing the link to your photos that Facebook provide.

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Martyn Boaden is the Founder of The Online Auction Resource Centre where you will find more information and all the resources you will ever need to set up and run your successful and profitable eBay business. And for a limited time only you can get instant access to his popular eBay Business Box (worth $164 + $17 pm) for FREE by clicking this link: http://www.TheOnlineAuctionResourceCentre.com

On eBay, Pricing Is Key To Selling Your Items

By Vickie Sayce in Featured

Pricing your items that you want to list on eBay can be difficult for those who have never done it before. List your items too high, and you won’t receive any bidders. List your items too low, however, and you run the risk of not making money – or worse, landing yourself in the negative. If you consistently price your items incorrectly, you can find yourself with little to no business, or owing money at the end of the day. Pricing your items correctly from the get go can severely cut down on how often this happens.

When you have done your research and know what items are popular on eBay, you should know what items you are looking for and their average selling costs. If not, you need to look up the most popular items on eBay by category, narrow down the products that you are interested in selling, and figure out what the average final selling price for each item you are interested in is. When you have a general idea, then you can start looking for where to purchase the item.

Purchasing items to resell on eBay can be tricky. You don’t want to spend too much money up front and risk having overstock that doesn’t sell, but you also don’t want to spend more money on each item by buying less at a time, leaving you a smaller margin of profit. The best route to go is to find an item you want to sell going for at least half the price of what you want to sell it at. This gives you plenty of wiggle room to make money, without setting your starting bid to high.

When you list your items on eBay, list them as low as possible for you to break even. This includes your final value fee, your listing fee, and your shipping costs, along with the total price you paid for one item. If the item you are selling cost you $50, and additional costs, including eBay fees, totals $10, then the absolute lowest starting price for your item should be $60. This way, if only one person bids, you will at least break even on the transaction.

If you are feeling a bit risky, you may even want to list your item slightly lower than what your total costs for it are. Starting your bid lower than the other bids for the same item on eBay can get you more hits, and in turn, more bids. Many sellers often balk at the idea of setting their starting bid too low, but really, these are the sellers who probably see the most money for their auctions. Buyers are drawn to what they think is a deal, and once they get caught in a bidding war, there’s no telling how high the final price could soar.

Be cautious not to set your starting bid too high, or you could effectively drive away potential bidders. Bids that start close to what the final price of the item should be, or bids that are significantly higher than the starting bids for the same items from other sellers, are far more likely to be passed over with no bids.

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If you want to make money on eBay while raising the kids, visit http://AuctionPaydayKidsPlay.com to find out how. Vickie Sayce teaches others how to get started on eBay (VickieSayce.com), and has been buying and selling on eBay since 2001. She has written a very informative book on starting an eBay business to make money from home while raising the kids.

10 Tips to Help You Successfully Sell on eBay

By Clint Herman in Featured

Below you will find 10 simple tips to follow that are good for anyone who wants to sell successfully on eBay.

Tip # 1: Identify your eBay market. Come up with a list of items you are interested in and then take a look at eBay to see what’s selling and what’s not. The market research data you collect will be very useful to you later on. Analyze the market and you’ll start to see those items that always seem to sell for a good price.

Tip # 2: Check out your competition. Before investing money, take a look at what the other sellers in your category are up to. Dig in to get an idea about what their strategies are. Make a special note on anything their auctions are missing, because addressing these flaws in your own auctions is a powerful way to move in and beat them at their own game.

Tip # 3: Find a product: If you’re looking to sell the same item over and over again then get hold of a supplier for what it is you want to sell, and see what the best rates you can get are. Also, shop around to get the best deal. Every penny counts. If the eBay prices you’ve seen are higher than the supplier’s then you just might have a winner.

Tip 4: Start small: Don’t start out by throwing tons of money at your idea. Start slowly and see what works and what doesn’t; learn as you go. Remember that it doesn’t cost a lot to try out even the craziest ideas on eBay, and who knows, they might just work! Thinking outside the box is a good way to become successful.

Tip 5: Test and repeat. Keep trying different strategies on eBay until you find something that works. Then just keep doing that very same thing over and over again. The chances are that you’ve just found a good niche or a good way to sell.

Tip 6: Create your business plan: A business plan, even on eBay, is a good thing to have. It doesn’t need to be anything formal, just a few pages that outline your market opportunity, your strategy, the strengths and weaknesses of the plan and a brief budget. A business plan is more for you than it is for anyone else. If you treat your selling on eBay as a business and not like a hobby then this will push you toward success.

Tip 7: Invest and expand: Now is the time to pump money into your eBay business. Get your hands on more product and start spending more time on your business. Set a goal for the number of sales you want each week and increase it over time as you meet your goals.

Tip 8: Make it official: Once you’ve made some money from your eBay sales, you should seriously consider registering yourself as an “official” business. It’s not that expensive or hard to do and registering will go a long way toward credibility. A lawyer is the best person to help you through the process, but you can also get information online or in forums.

Tip 9: Automate: There are a lot of tasks you will find yourself doing over and over, like writing the same emails or auction item descriptions. This is the time to move some of this manual work over to automated software. You can also consider outsourcing these tasks to other people. You can automate a TON of your eBay business tasks.

Tip 10: Never give up: Even when times get bad and you think things won’t work out, don’t stop trying. Push forward until you succeed. If you keep working at it you’ll almost always find you will make a real breakthrough. Countless people give up on their eBay business right before they get their breakthrough. Don’t be one of them.

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Clint Herman is a successful eBay seller with over 6 years experience in the industry. He also loves helping people start selling on eBay. He is the author of “How to Get Started Selling on eBay,” which is a beginner’s guide to selling on eBay designed for people who are new to selling on eBay. The guide is available at http://www.beginnersauctionguide.com

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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