No Comments Written by Robert on August 12, 2008 – 6:27 pm

eBay is the number-one name in online auctions. eBay allows users to compete to buy and sell new and used items. Some people have made a full-time job out of this practice. If you know how to get exposure for your products on eBay, you are well on your way to becoming one of those people that count the auction site as a never-ending source of revenue.

EBay.com is the most popular online auction site on the Web. Online auction sites facilitate the process of listing goods, bidding on items, and paying for them. The first thing you can do when optimizing your eBay auction is to make the most of your auction’s title.

Use as many keywords in the title as possible to make your auction relevant to the most user searches possible. eBay allows you to use 55 characters for the title, and you should take advantage of every one. Next, be sure to keep your description short.

Even today, not everyone has a blazing fast Internet connection. Allowing the auction to load in a timely manner increases the number of people that will see what you have to offer. When you post your auction is also important. Most people use eBay between 8:00 PM and 10:00 PM. Posting your auction at this time ensures that the most people will see what you have to offer.

Keep in mind that Sunday is also a high-traffic day for eBay. Finally, the photos you post of your auction item are probably the most important aspect of your eBay auction. These are what eBay users are looking for when they browse the listings; in fact, most people filter the search results to show only items that include images.

Produce Sales with eBay Auctions

Again, make sure the image is the right size. Large, detailed images take too long to load and deter users with slower connection speeds. It is also faster to host your photos off of the eBay site. Web sites like Photobucket allow you to host your photos for free and even provide you with the proper code to cut and paste right into your auction.

One of the easiest things you can do to optimize your eBay auctions along with any other content you post on the Web is to use proper spelling and grammar. People associate poor spelling and grammar with ignorance, and this is the last thing they want to deal with when making purchases on the Internet. Be sure you spell-check everything you post online; you may even want to have someone else proofread your material. Another rule of etiquette is to avoid using CAPS as much as possible.

People associate all capital letters with spam and laziness and will likely look elsewhere when blasted with them. Create a profile and keep it up-to-date. If you purchase items from other eBayers, be sure to leave them feedback. If customers are happy with the service you have provided, be sure to ask them to post feedback about their experience.

Comparison shopping engines have been around about as long as the Internet itself. Most of the current comparison shopping engines accept product feeds from online retailers and allow users to search and sort these lists by various criteria.

A product feed is a file, typically in a CSV or Excel format, that contains information about the products listed on your site. Some of the most popular engines today are Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Shogging.com, and PriceGrabber. Also, some search engines have added a separate vertical to their engines that allows shoppers to only search products;

Submit your products through Google Base

Google’s is named Base, located at base.google.com. The pricing structure allows retailers to submit and list products for free and then charge advertisers either by the click or by taking a commission of every sale made through the engine. The first thing you should do to optimize your product list for comparison engines is to fill in every product attribute that you can.

Most shopping engines provide you with these attributes when you download their product feed template. By filling out all the fields provided you increase your click-to-purchase ratio. You should also optimize your product list by removing low inventory items and products with poor sales. Not all comparison engines provide product feed templates.

For example, Google Base only provides a list of attributes to include in your product feed file. Also, note that although you submit your products through Google Base, shoppers use Google Product Search to view your products. Be sure to investigate the categories that the comparison engine uses to organize its site, and make an effort to filter your products into these categories.

The easier your products are for the engine to organize and the customer to find, the more sales you can achieve. You should have proper tracking in place so that you can evaluate the success or failure of your comparison shopping campaigns. Make sure that the information in your product feed is always up-to-date.

Out-of-date product feeds are one of the primary reasons why some merchants fail with comparison shopping. Lastly, make sure that you have at least 50 words or more of text to describe each of your products. You can provide both a short and long description of each product in your feed; tailor your descriptions to the unique file specifications of each comparison engine.

An example of a Web 2.0 engine is Shogging, located at www.shogging.com, which combines shopping and blogging. On Shogging, users can read and write product blogs, compare prices, and shop for products, all within the same user experience.

Similarly, another engine called ShopWiki combines shopping comparison sites with the popularity of completely user-generated sites like Wikipedia. Buying guides can be written or edited by any user who visits the site. Guides are even created by occasion such as Anniversary Gifts and Gifts for Babies.

Some comparison engines have paid placement pricing models that allow merchants to bid for priority in the search results rather than the product results being sorted exclusively by relevance or price. In this way, you can influence whether your products show up first or third when a user types in a keyword that relates to multiple Web sites. Shopping.com uses the bidding model; Google’s Product Search uses sorting.