How to Make Your Selling Attractive

People will buy anything. The old adage "one person's trash is another's treasure" has never been more true than on eBay. And for this reason, you'll find that people will sell just about anything. From antique pottery to broken pieces of the Berlin Wall, from computers to cell phone batteries, from collectible dolls to human organs, you'll find a rich assortment of junk and jewels at the world's largest flea market.

Selling on eBay is a piece of cake. Just click the Sell button at the top of any eBay page and follow the prompts. When you're done, your auction will start, and other eBay users can bid on it.

The hard part, however, is the stuff eBay doesn't tell you, such as how to get more bids and more money for your items, how to get the most bang for your buck when using the extra-cost listing upgrades, how to hide search keywords in your auctions, how to make deals with bidders, and how to customize your auction descriptions with JavaScript, HTML, forms, and other goodies. The hacks in this chapter are designed to help you get more money for your items, communicate more effectively with your customers, and have more fun while you're at it.

Putting Keywords in Your Auction

eBay goes to great lengths to help sellers describe their auctions. If you're not familiar with a certain category, check out eBay's seller's guide for the section. For instance, eBay's Art Seller's Guide (pages.ebay.com/artsellersguide) suggests that the word art is consistently one of the top five search terms.

Start by including the full manufacturer name, product name, and model number, like this:

Nikon F100
If you were to put only "Nikon" in the title, any searches for the model name ("F100" in this case) wouldn't bring up your item. Next, make sure to state what the item actually is:

Nikon F100 35mm Camera
One of the more common mistakes sellers make is not actually stating what the item is in the title or even the description. Think about it: without the word "camera" in the title, searches for "nikon camera" wouldn't bring up your item.

Next, you'll want to compensate for common variations by including them right in the title:

Nikon F100 F-100 35mm Camera 35 mm
Note that I expanded out the model number to cover both "F100" and "F-100", as well as "35mm" and "35 mm" (with the space), all of which are different in eBay searches. Note, however, that I placed "35 mm" (with the space) after "camera", because I wanted to maintain the order of the words "35mm Camera" to accommodate phrase searches in quotes. For the same reason, you wouldn't want to type something like "F100 Nikon".

Next, if the manufacturer is known by other names (or other spellings), include them as well:

Nikon F100 F-100 35mm Camera 35 mm Nikkor
Finally, if there's room, think about other things your bidders might be looking for. Remember, the title not only seeds search results; it must also compel bidders to view your item when it's shown in search results and category listings. For instance, if it comes with extras or is brand new, say so:

Nikon F100 F-100 35mm Camera 35 mm TWO Nikkor Lenses Lens BRAND NEW
As before, I included variants of important words. I used "Lenses" to make it clear that multiple lenses were included, and "Lens" to catch any searches for "Nikon Lens" or "Nikkor Lens". (Note that including plurals of your search terms may or may not be necessary, depending on the particular terms you're using.

Be judicious with your use of capital letters. In most cases, putting the entire title in ALL CAPS is unnecessary, and will just seem obnoxious to your bidders. But a few choice words in all capitals will not only emphasize those words, but will help separate them from other words in the description without having to resort to unnecessary punctuation and prepositions like "with." A good mix of upper- and lowercase will stand out better than an otherwise homogeneous title.

In this last example I used the word "TWO", although I could've instead used the number 2 and had two more characters for other keywords. I did it because I had the space to spare and I wanted to emphasize that I'm including multiple accessories. But, depending on your needs, you might make a different decision.

Naturally, your ability to squeeze more words into the title will vary with the item being sold and which words you think people are likely to use in searches. If you run out of room, you'll have to start prioritizing. Remove the less common words, phrases, and monikers and embed them in the description, discussed later in this hack.