eBay Hacks

Framing Your Auctions

Use tables and carefully aligned images to place decorative frames around your auction descriptions.

A little extra decoration will give your customers that warm, fuzzy feeling they need to open their wallets and bid a little higher, or so the theory goes. At the very least, frames may help your auctions look a little more polished and inviting.

Tip

For a fee, eBay’s Listing Designer will do this for you. But unless you want to look like a mindless automaton by using someone else’s predesigned templates right out of the box, you’ll want to take a few minutes to design your own.

The Table

It all starts with a single table, which positions the frame across the top, bottom, and sides, holding your content snugly inside. While you’re designing the table, turn on the border so you can see more clearly what’s going on.

<table style="width:100%" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=1>
<tr>
  <td width=25>top-left</td>
  <td>top-middle</td>
  <td width=25>top-right</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td width=25>left side</td>
  <td>

Your content goes here...

<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>

  </td>
  <td width=25>right side</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td width=25>bottom-left</td>
  <td width=25>bottom-middle</td>
  <td width=25>bottom-right</td>
</tr>
</table>

The resulting table shown in Figure 4-6 is our placeholder for the eventual design. Note the width=25 parameters in the left-hand and right-hand columns, which can be changed to accommodate whatever images are eventually placed inside.

Figure 4-6. This simple ...