Technology Toolkit

Trying to direct your buyers to one of your auctions can prove to be a very challenging task. Most people who frequent eBay, search mainly by title, not by the description of the product, that simply means that you only have a mere 55 characters of the auction title, to cover all the possible terms that people might search one. That’s not an easy task, in this article I’ll try to give you a few pointers that you can utilise right away.

Don’t bother with eBay cliches: There are plenty of eBay auction titles that say things like “Super rare camera wow look low price”. These are stupid things to put in your title, as no-one is going to search for them.

Try to go into the mind of the buyer, think like you’re the actual buyer, if you were looking for the item that you are currently selling, what exactly would you type in on first impulse? As a good pointer, try searching for the exact same product that you’re selling, and then query you, what were the first thoughts that came to mind?

Think like other sellers: Keep an eye on which sellers are doing best with items like yours, and try to copy their title styles – if it works for them, it can work for you.

Try and be specific, make it a priority to write both the brand and model number into the title of the auction as most potential buyers will search only for this kind of information. Make sure that you are precise and as concise as you can be and say exactly what the product is.

A Few Examples

Here are a few examples of good titles. They’re real, and they’re on eBay right now, making their sellers money. So what makes them good?

“Acer Aspire Laptop P3 450MHz Notebook PC Computer”

If you have some information about the specific computer, then you will have a firm idea about what the auction is selling. It has the manufacturer (Acer) and the product model (Aspire) followed by the computers technical specifications (P3 450MHz Notebook PC Computer). Also make note of the fact that the title also includes four main keywords ‘PC’, ‘Computer’, ‘Notebook’ and ‘Laptop’, this is important as the seller of the item would want anyone who’s searching on any of these terms to see the auction.

“Nas I Am CD Album (New)”

This auction for a CD is well formatted: it gives the artist name in capital letters, followed by the album name. It then manages to include the two key words ‘CD’ and ‘album’, as well as the word ‘new’ – that means that anyone searching for ‘new oasis cd’, ‘oasis new album’ and so on will find this auction.

“1700 Penny Black stamp, certificate, four margins”

Here’s one that can be characterised only as being more obscure, from the world of stamp collecting. A penny black today is without a doubt one of the oldest and certainly most famous stamps. It utilises several vital keywords that many collectors would consider very important, these are ‘four margins’ this indicates to the buyer that the stamp has been cut out with some margins around it, this lets the buyer know it’s not damaged, ‘certificate’ tells the buyer that the same has a certificate of authenticity, that it’s a real penny black stamp. Remember to exploit every little space available to you in order to squeeze out as much important data as you can in the title.