The Towing Path

The words you select to describe your item will have a tremendous impact on the final price it receives or if it receives any bids at all. This is because no matter how great the item is you have up at auction, if you use words that don’t lead prospective buyers to it, no one will ever see it. You have a total of 45 spaces to use for your auction headline to get people to visit your auction, so it’s extremely important that you use each space wisely.

The vast majority of buyers search through eBay listings by entering the item they are looking for into eBay’s search engine. The main auction search engine only searches for words listed in auction titles. If a person selects a word that isn’t in your auction title, your auction won’t come up as a result of their search.

This means that by far the most important task you have when composing a title for your auction is to use words that are relevant and specific to the item you are listing. While this may seem obvious, a lot of sellers don’t do it (in fact, searching for listings in which people have ineffective or mis-spelled titles can often get you some great items which you can resell for a profit).

If you are going to spend any extra time on your auctions, thinking through the best key words for your title is where you should spend that time.

With a limit of 45 spaces, writing everything you want in the title just isn’t going to be possible. For example, say you have a consignor with a complete set of four bobblehead giveaways, sponsored by Mountain Dew, that the Minnesota Twins gave away at select home games during the 2002 season.

Although accurate, that description is way too long for the allowable number of spaces. The key is to think through an accurate description that includes everything and then taking the most important words out of that and using them.

A simple title might read “Minnesota Twins Bobbleheads”. However, that title would be ineffective because it isn’t specific enough. While there are many buyers who are looking for Minnesota Twins memorabilia and bobblehead dolls, the categories are too large and your auction will be lost among all the listings. You will have a very limited number of people who will ever see your auction.

A better title might be “2002 Complete Set Minnesota Twins Bobbleheads”. This title uses every available space and gives a specific description of what you are selling. It will also now appear in results for a narrower search.

Another possible title might be 2002 Minnesota Twins Bobblehead Bobble Head”. People searching for this item type bobblehead into the search engine, while others type bobble head. A search for one will not bring up any results for the other, so at times it’s to your advantage to list two different spellings of the same word.

Take a few minutes to think about who would want the item you are selling and, if they were searching for it, what words would they be most likely to type into the search engine.

You will find many sellers using what some call Power Words. These are words such as RARE, LIMITED, VINTAGE, UNIQUE, WOW, GREAT, WONDERFUL and AWESOME. Many sellers seem to think that using words such as these will attract more bidders to their auctions.

I”ll guarantee you right now, that no one types any of these words into eBay’s search engine. The use of words such as these does nothing but take up valuable space that could be used for words buyers do search for. Avoid them like the plague.

The same applies to the symbols so many sellers use in their headlines. They try to make their headline stand out by using symbols such as $,#, %, and @ in their auction titles. A particular favorite of many is L@@K!. Once again, all of these are a complete waste of valuable title space.

The only symbols you should ever use are & or + when their use will save you valuable title space.

Acronyms and abbreviations are another matter however. Collectors of certain items have developed their own abbreviations and acronyms for certain commonly used phrases within their specific collecting specialty. It is to your advantage to learn at least some of these.

NR, for example, means “No Reserve.” To a Star Wars collector ROTJ means “Return Of The Jedi.” Becoming familiar with some of these that are common with the type of items you sell will allow you to get more key words into the limited space which will result in more people viewing your auction.

Spend some time browsing the titles that others have created for their auctions. Look for both good and bad examples of titles. Just spending a few hours doing this and thinking about where the seller could have improved their title will help you enormously in writing titles for your own auctions.

Never forget - the first step is getting buyers to your auctions because if they can’t find them, they can’t buy anything from you.

Gary Hendrickson has been making his living selling on eBay for more than six years. He’s the author of two eBay related ebooks, has a blog for eBay sellers, and is the owner of ColdItems.Com.

ColdItems.Com
The Auction Rebel Blog

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Do you ever listen to other people’s conversations? I mean when you’re standing at a bus stop, or having a drink in a café after a hard morning’s shopping. You know, those people whose voices are just a little too loud and you can’t really help listening; after all you are on your own, and other people’s lives are quite interesting.

What do they talk about? Their problems I’ll bet, with health issues being high on the list. And have you ever noticed how it’s a bit like a game of ping-pong. One party will bat a little titbit “my back’s been playing up something awful”, and the other will respond with something ‘better’ and before you know where you are, you know all about all the cancers, and the hip operations, and the chronic chest infections, that their family and friends have had in the past ten years.

Sound familiar?

So illness seems important. If it isn’t, why do we spend so much time talking about it?

Have you ever noticed how you suffer with a bad cold, or dose of ‘flu, or possibly something more serious, when life itself is becoming tedious, work is getting you down, or your husband seems to have lost interest in you. Have you ever noticed how, when you are happy and life is full of joy and excitement, you rarely experience illness? It has been known for a long time that ’stress’ has a depressant effect on the ability of your body’s immune system to fight infection. Illness is the body’s way of saying ‘you’re not looking after you’, and usually the way you are failing to look after yourself is in your mind - your emotional well-being is generally the part which is being neglected when you start to experience illness.

Now, the scientists say that disease organisms, viruses, bacteria, genes, and even your age, cause illness. They may be right. But if they are then those same ‘experts’ are your only hope for defeating illness. Yet with all the drugs and all the scientific advances over that last fifty years - shouldn’t the hospitals be emptying out by now. How easy is it to get an appointment with your doctor? How full was the waiting room last time you visited? All that science seems to be accomplishing is to change the nature of illness without actually removing it.

If illness is a necessary warning system to let you know that you need to slow down, or look at how you are living your life then this is exactly what we would expect to see with scientific advances; a change in the style of illness, but no change in the quantity or quality. Smallpox and bubonic plague have been eradicated, but doesn’t AIDS do pretty much the same sort of job.

So, how can this awareness help you?

Well it can help you if you want to feel better and be less ill. Because the first step to freeing yourself from this pattern of stress/illness is to recognise that the illness is helpful. Now, I know pain isn’t much fun, and I’m not suggesting that life-threatening problems should be ignored. In fact I’m not even suggesting that you stop visiting your doctor for treatment. I would actually strongly advise that you take all the help you can get if you have a health problem.

What I am suggesting is that if you want to be free of illness, you need to start by looking at what illness gives you, and welcome those gifts. You might get a few days off work, early retirement, forced retirement from a job you hate; illness may be the only occasion when anyone looks after you or gives you affection, if you are lonely then illness at least brings you into close contact with people (doctors and nurses) who touch you and treat you gently; if you are trying to cram too many things in your life then illness gives you break and gives your body a much needed rest.

It would be beneficial then to see what changes you could make to your life so that this ‘benefit’ was no longer needed because you already had it. If you don’t like your job then consider the possibility of doing something you enjoy instead; if you are alone then open your mind to the possibility of this being different. If you are simply too busy then build relaxation into your schedule and see it as just as important a part of life as the ‘busy’ness.

But whatever you do, don’t neglect illness, it is your mind’s way of telling you it’s time for change.

Michael J. Hadfield MBSCH is a registered clinical hypnotherapist. You can experience his unique style on a range of hypnosis CD’s and tapes at http://www.hypnosisiseasy.com. Here you can also obtain treatment for a variety of problems and explore his approach to health, healing, and hypnosis.

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You have certainly heard about blogs - unless you’ve been hiding
under a rock. They are a growing medium of communication on the
internet. A simple measure of the growing popularity of blogs is
to do a Google search of ‘blog’ which fetches around
1,400,000,000 pages. The keyword ‘wedding blog‘ fetches
just under 24 million pages. Compare this to a well known sport
brand search for their trademark word and it only fetched 84
million pages. Blog is simply short for ‘web blog’ and is simply
an online journal about anything - could be about your personal
life, your business, about products, your hobby, etc. If you are
thinking of getting engaged, are engaged and planning to get
married or had your marriage you can think about getting your
own wedding blog.

While other people may blog about their personal lives or their
hobbies you will be blogging about your full time pursuit of
your wedding planning or your wedded life - from the stresses
and strains between your partner and yourself, to the beautiful
aspects of choosing a reception location and wedding dress and
writing out your vows. You can write about your feelings and
emotions in your wedding blog as well as vent out your feelings
of anger, angst, frustration, happiness and excitement.

You may be asking ‘What would the purpose of your blog be to
other people and more importantly me?’ Well there are many
advantages - especially for the couple that is planning their
wedding. It could be used as a communication tool between the
couple to their family and friends about the progress of their
wedding. Your wedding blog can act as a guidance tool during
your planning as well as well after your wedding for other
couples that are planning their wedding in your locality and
worldwide. Imagine having your blog acting as a wedding
reference for those couples being wedded years after you have.

Finally, you do not need to be a computer nerd to be able to
setup your own blog. You can choose from a variety of free
online services to setup your wedding blog. There are many
places to find the free blog service and there are too many to
choose from to list here. However, if you want to setup a
wedding blog it would be nice to group your blog alongside with
other wedding blogs so internet visitors that are in the
business of wanting to know more about weddings can easily find
you at the same website. See details below to find out where to
get your blog grouped with other wedding blogs.

So while your busy planning your wedding or enjoying the life of
being married think about setting up a wedding blog. You would
be joining the growing number of people blogging on the internet
as well as adding knowledge and wisdom to the internet. You will
also reap fro the benefit of being able to easily communicate
your feelings and plans with your friends and family as well as
advise other couples going down the same road. Good luck!

You can signup for your free
wedding blog at BetterWeddingIdeas.com.

This article “Wedding
Blog: Getting your Thoughts and Ideas on the Internet” can
be found in our Wedding Blogs category.

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