eBay Selling Tips

Tip #1 - Create “smart” titles

The first item of importance in this list of eBay selling tips is creating a “smart” item title. I’m amazed at how many eBay sellers don’t realize how important a good title is.   You can have the lowest price, the best shipping, and the most beautiful description in the world, and it won’t matter if no one can find your listing.  This makes creating a good title one of the most crucial eBay selling tips.

The vast majority of buyers search only by keywords, so it’s crucial that you pack your title as full of popular, relevant keywords as you can.  Try to use as many of the 55 allotted characters as possible. To determine which keywords to include, pretend you’re a buyer looking for that item.  What would you type into a search field?  Would you type in “WOW”, “L@@K”, or “$$$”? Probably not, so don’t include those terms in your title. 

Once you’ve come up with some great keywords for your title, here are other important considerations:

·         Separate each keyword in your title with just a space.

·         Avoid punctuation unless absolutely necessary.

·         Avoid any other special characters (*, $, &, %, #, -), as they can confuse eBay’s search system and prevent your listing from appearing properly in search results.  Many of these characters are advanced Boolean search commands, which can affect the search results, so it’s better to stay away from them. Plus, very few buyers include special characters in their keyword searches, so using them can prevent your listing from appearing in search results.

·         Capitalize the first letter of every word -- after all, this is a proper TITLE.

·         Look at other listings for your product.  If most of them use lower-case letters, or a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, use all caps for your title, and vice-versa.  That will make your title stand out in the search results.

·         Your title doesn’t have to be catchy, clever, or even grammatically correct.  The best titles are long strings of popular, relevant keywords. 

Tip #2 - Appearance Matters

Another important addition to a list of eBay selling tips is that appearance matters.  To create a successful listing, factors like pricing, shipping cost, and title are very important.  But you also can’t get away with incomplete, haphazard, or unprofessional-looking descriptions.  Your description might be what separates your listing from all of the others with similar prices, and could make the difference in whether or not you have a successful sale.

An eBay listing is an advertisement, pure and simple.   An item description that is too short, poorly-written, too plain, or otherwise unattractive, can do nothing to help you sell the item, but only hurt your chances of selling it successfully.  Please take this very seriously; this is one of the most effective eBay selling tips you can employ.

Tip #3 - Be Original

Leading into the next important item in this list of eBay Selling Tips, although eBay has made some effort to provide sellers with visual “helps” like Listing Designer and Store Themes, these have been so widely-used that most of them are now so common, they often seem trite and unoriginal.  One of the best things you can do to make your listings and/or eBay store stand out from most of the others is to refrain from using these eBay default features.   There are many other options at your disposal, and most of them are just as easy to use and implement.   This is yet another wise addition to any good list of eBay selling tips.