How not to advertise a T-shirt on Ebay

  

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Always lay it out flat and ironed and clean!

Any Bumps and wrinkles will only distract buyers. Quite distracting Eh?

2.Take a Good Photograph

• Take a Good Photograph (or a few).
  This is important, as it the only wayt that a prospective customer can imagine exactly what he or she is going to get if they buy the item from you.You MUST include photo's on your ebay listing.
• Take your photo's with a decent digital camera, there is no substitute, normal photography and a scanner will not cut it.You can pick up a perfectly reasonable one for £40 these days ,but obviously you can spend anything you want on a camera.
  Just make sure that it has the resolution needed to take a large clear photograph of your product.
• Many people set up a home studio and have a tripod with a camera on it permanently,but I think this is going over the top.
  
• Either way make sure the background of the photo's will not be distracting or messy, it really puts buyers off.Neat is good,but plain colour backgrounds with no distractions at all is really good.
• Make sure your product is well lit.
  If possible don't use your flash,as it leaves a harsh light that can give a wrongly coloured pallour to your item.
  Light the item from more than one direction as a fill in lighting will make shadows go away and you will see more of the item.
• Personally I prefer to set up on my dining table after I have returned from my suppliers. I can put two lights on in that room and can use a table lamp for extra lighting if required.
  I take one of each of the lines that I have bought and proceed to take lots of photo's of each item
  from different directions (above ,side ,straight on,the back of the item,out of the box, photo's on the box,If there are any special points a close up is in order),so that when I get back to the computer to edit the photo's I can choose from virtually everything I could imagine.
  
  
• Editing is an artform, but the photo's don't have to be artistic, just very, very clear , in focus, and easy to look at.I would also suggest to make fairly large photo's .Ebay will upload one photo for each listing for free upto 60k and you will see that the free one's are pretty small.
• I prefer 2 or 3 of about 450-500 pixels wide so that a buyer can get a good look at the item.
• There are plenty of good Photo hosting sites,just stick "free photo hosting" in the google search box for several hundred ,so there is no excuse for not having enough webspace for large photo's.
  
  
• I also like to add a logo and copyright to my photo's as t is also a way to get the message across about other websites you may have that also sell items away from ebay.Ebay has a strict "no outlinks" policy for listings but pictures are not included in this, as it will not be a live link ,just one someone will havew to type into the address bar of their browser.
• You can also serve larger photos with a link out to an image page or gallery page of your own website.this can have what ebay call a "discrete link" to the hosting site of the image,that's great for free hosting websites, but if you serve these pages of your own website you can link to the homepage of your sales site(as it is the hosting for your images).

Cheers Pete

1. Write A Good Title.

1.Write A Good Title:


This is the first thing anyone looking on ebay sees about your product,your title and thumbnail of your product(if you have a gallery picture,see No2).
Your title will be searched for by item and by category,lots of people browse the categories just seeing what takes their fancy going down example:
Home ,Buy,Clothes, Shoes & Accessories,Men's Shoes,Athletic Shoes,
seeing every trainer available on ebay,another person will search for:
"mens trainers",
and get a list of all trainers(training shoes),AND ALSO,training equipment for men such as weightlifting gear,(unintentional,but for those selling weightlifting training gear very welcome extra publicity).
Yet other people will use ebays serach engine to find exactly what they want first time by putting in:
"NIKE JET STREAM III , SIZE 8"
and get straight to the product they want if it is there.

We can use this search engine to our advantge if you write your title correctly, to help some one looking for your product to find it.
Include EXACTLY what your product is and the make or model number plus put "NEW" if people are also selling second hand items in the same catergory.(A pet hate of mine is looking up something I think is very reasonably priced to find it is 15 years old and only available for collection in channel islands,(U.S. equivalent Hawaii)). If you have any space left over(unlikely as ebay are a bit stingy on title size 55 characters),don't just waste it ,think about what people may be searching for that these are and include it as a keyword,such as "trainers ,boxed,low shipping" etc..

A few don'ts...

• don't repeat yourself ,it doesn't help
• don't copy someone else's title,even if they are selling the same item. Ebay have strict rules against it and you will find yourself reprimanded and on a 3 strikes and your out rule,by the time you find out,if your listing a lot you could be thrown off ebay for 3-6 months.
• don't put L@@K or "SUPER VALUE" or"WOW!" in the title,it marks you as an amateur and people will not take you seriously.
• don't use lots of ****and>>>>and(((()))),these are gimmicky and as above.
• don't use abbreviation except in specialist auctions.ie:Collectors know "BINB"(brand New in Box",but DVD buyers won't (put un-opened).
• don't use loads of underlines "_____"to space out your title this wastes space you could be using to bring in sales!

a few do's

• do include the make and model No. of your product
• do put in "new" if people are selling second hand in the same category
• do include special selling points, such as "free shipping" or "plus extras" or "no reserve"
• do include general terms such as "trainers, mens ,footwear" which will bring a wider audience for your listing (only do this if you have space left(ebay are a bit miserly over this you only get 55 characters)).

One other thing. Some people tend to think you should list everything in capitals too make it easy to read or make your advert (That it is what the title is...a one line advert for the advert.)stand out.This is unnecessary as ebay's search engine does not distinguish between cases, and it is often easier to read the normal lettering among all the standing out capitals from other Sellers.
The same goes for Highlighting and Bold characters ,yes they will make your ad seen, but they are no substitute for a well written title, which is probably worth a lot more than the extra money ebay will charge you!
More in this series later. Cheers Peter

Listing Items On Ebay - Tips you may not know!

Firstly, my apologies to anyone waiting to hear about my listing techniques.
tomorrow became today, came and went, then became yesterday!
Sorry , I've been flat out with wrapping and delivering goods for posting and buying new stuff from my suppliers.
Got to keep the stock churning, and the cash rolling in.
However I am now going to tell you about a few thing that are really important when it comes to Listing Items On Ebay.
Heres a list a pointers and then I'll go into each one separately.

1. Write A Good Title
2. Take a Good Photograph (or a few)
3. Be Complete and Honest in Your Copy
4. Include your Terms and Conditions
5. Make all Costs such as Postage+Packing (Shipping and Handling) Clear In Advance.
6. Include Contact Details For Enquiries.

Take a couple of minutes to think about each of those while I go and make a coffee,(why don't you do the same?Go on treat yourself!)

Preparing to Sell High Volume

Low Volume High Price or High Volume Low Price ?
You're the only person who can decide on this one.

With high price items you must spend more time preparing each sale,making a new advert up for each new listing,this can be time consuming,taking new photos,writing copy,finding the right price to sell at (pricing a product tutorial in about a week -bookmark this page and check back then) but you will not need so much admin after the sale and can give each buyer your personal attention,making them feel special.
This has got to be for high ticket price items like cars, boats, furniture,antiques etc, where the buyer cannot get the same item elsewhere.If they can you will be undercut and your margin (profit , livelihood ) will go down the tubes.

With low price items the margin is still important but what you're really bothered about is volume,sales are generally easy to get and they come thick and fast if you're selling in-demand items.You will need to sell lots of the same item over and over again,luckily your only need to make up your ads once then review them every so often, or if a problem comes up,such as someone else undercutting you on price, or providing a better product at the same price.
Make a time every so often ,weekly is about right to review what's selling in the categories your selling in and search up other people selling the same lines,eBay has generously given you a tool for this.(again another article next week,"Spying on the opposition"this ones a long winded one so It gets its own ).

Either way here are some steps to take in advance.

1. Buy all the wrapping materials you will need in advance.Tape,boxes,bubble wrap,bags,envelopes,document enclosed slips,etc...so you're not running out when you need it.
2. Get a payment scheme in place, you of course will accept cheques and postal orders (money orders if you're American),but I mean paypal,nochex,pppay.payhound,(there are lots) if you don't have a card accepting plan you might as well forget selling on ebay.Only about 5% of my customers pay with anything other then Paypal.
3. Phone up the local courier firms and post office for prices of deliveries.U.K. sellers, go and see the local postmaster and ask when is best time of day to post large volumes of parcels, I don't know what I would do without the cooperation of my local posties.Once you have built a volume of sales you can get them picked up but at first its a trip down the post office once your sales items are wrapped.
4. It may be in order to prewrap some of your goods so that a fast service can be given.My customers rave about the fact that they can buy at lunchtime from me and recieve the product next day - No one beats that! Rave feedbacks saying things like "Bought at 1pm arrived at 7Am -Great Product and Lightning Fast 10/10 " or "Excellent ebayer. Fast delivery of well packaged well priced goods. A++++" or"as described- superfast delivery - well packaged- highly recommended"(all real and from last week) are like printing your own money and taking it to the bank in wheelbarrows.
5. START LISTING! GOOD LUCK.

Tips on listing tomorrow.

Toodlepip, Pete