eBay: The Missing Manual

Build a Better Auction

Chapter 5 took you through the basics of creating a great auction listing. This section gives you tips for making your auctions even harder to resist.

Tempting Titles

The title of your auction is critical because buyers will—or won't—find your auction by searching titles for a particular keyword. For example, if you're selling a Canon EOS Rebel XT and you title your auction "Digital Camera", people using "Canon" or "Rebel" as keywords won't find it. So don't just slap your title together. Do some research to get your auction in more shoppers' search results.

One good place to do that research is through eBay Pulse, a section of the site that keeps track of trends and hot items. You can find it by typing pulse.ebay.com into your Web browser's address bar or, from the eBay home page, selecting Buy → eBay Pulse. One of the things eBay Pulse tracks is the most commonly used search terms. On the eBay Pulse main page, you can see what the most popular searches are for the whole site. Or you can choose a category from the Category drop-down list to see the most popular search terms and most-watched items in that category (Figure 6-4). See which of these hot search terms you can work into your title—but make sure you're not violating eBay's policy against keyword spamming, using inappropriate keywords merely to attract attention to your auction (Section 6.5.1).

Figure 6-4. eBay Pulse's Popular Searches list shows you the most searched-for keywords in your category. ...