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eBay PowerSeller Nick Sevino (a pseudonym) answers questions about buying and selling on eBay.
Hello Nick,
I know how important it is to have a good headline. I have been told there is software you can buy that will create your headline and the software is supposed to be real easy to use. Will you please give me your input on this, it will be appreciated. Once again thank you.
Warm Regards,
John
Dear John,
What a dream! Just plug the name of a product and presto-whammo: an ideal auction title is generated. I regret to say there is no quick fix when one wants to create the best title possible.
Most sellers begin with the copycat method, which is to search eBay for your item, examine the competition, and copy the best performing titles. The line between plagiarizing and copying can be quite thin, but let's face it: we're not in business to win popularity contests. It's ironic that we are discussing this strategy: one of the reasons why I write anonymously is I don't want to attract attention from copycats.
It's better to concentrate on Completed Auctions and at the end do a cautionary check on Active Auctions to make sure nothing has changed. After all, Completed Auctions are the true benchmark of performance, and the true litmus test of success or failure is the final bid received.
If you have a program like Deep Analysis, you can click on the "amount sold" column and find the top 5 sellers of your item, and see the sell-through rate (percentage of items sold compared to items posted). Otherwise you have to manually examine the eBay search-results page and look for who is getting the highest price, highest sell-through and most hits.
Nick Tip: Since the Time and Day of week that the Auction closes greatly influences the final price of an auction, be sure to factor this in to your analysis. Examining the amount of hits can gauge the effectiveness of the listing strategy.
The next important factor for creating an auction title is the tradeoff between making it juicy to attract people to click on it for its interest versus listing as many effective keywords as possible. Buyers looking for the item will do a search using certain keywords, and if they are searching the title only, you want to make sure those keywords are in the title. You can come up with a great auction title, but if the right keywords aren't in it, then no one will find it.
Tricky Nick Tip:
Overture has a section that tells you the most popular search terms for the previous month relating to any word you put in.
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion
That can be very helpful, since eBay searches often mirror search-engine searches. Let's say you are selling a cream that reconditions lamp shades. Type in the word lamp and Overture will tell you all the searches with the word lamp that were done in the previous month. The popular searches are Lamp Shade, floor lamp, Tiffany Lamp, Table Lamp, Lava Lamp. How's this for a description:
Cream Shade Floor/Table/Tiffany lava Lamp shade
An ad like this would guarantee a lot of exposure. The tradeoff is that there is nothing very compelling to make someone click on it.
My rule of thumb is to always change the auction description because it's the fair thing to do and because it's an eBay VeRO Violation if you don't. (If you've ever had hundreds of Auctions taken down, you know it's not fun!) I don't advocate copying descriptions word for word. But ask any third-grade teacher how many rehashed versions of the World Book Encyclopedia students submit in reports, and you'll understand eBay auction descriptions.
To comment on this letter, post a message in the forums at
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=4817
If you have a question you'd like Nick to consider for a future issue of "Dear Nick," send it to nick@auctionbytes.com.
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