The one thing that will set your auction apart from Joe Blow down the street who sells his garage sale stuff on eBay is the look and feel of your auction listing. Anyone can log into eBay and use their WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor and create a standard auction listing that is used by 99% of the world.
Your auction MUST be better!
Ok…went a little too far with that last one. But you get the idea. We want our potential bidders to IMMEDIATELY see a positive difference between our auction and the competition. We want that edge that will allow our item to sell for more, even if the competition is selling the exact same item and has acquired it from the exact same source for the exact same price.
If you know how to write HTML code, you can tightly control the look and feel of your website. If you don’t know HTML, you’ll be a bit more limited with the results you can achieve, however, there are tools available to assist you with a design that is better than the standard eBay WYSIWYG capabilities.
To come up with a professional look and feel to your website requires though and planning. I recommend that you start by laying out one or more standard auction templates. Begin by looking at the Good Design Layout examples. Once you have an idea in mind, sit down with pencil and paper sketch out the layout that represents what you feel will work best for you.
If you use a website development tool such as Microsoft’s FrontPage® or one of the other tools discussed in Step 7, lay out your auction template using that tool. Save it as a template (i.e. ebayTemplate.htm), then when you get ready to start a new auction, open the template, save it as a specific auction name (i.e. RubberDuckyAuction.htm) adding the specifics of the auction. When you get ready to list your auction, you’ll use the window on eBay that allows you to insert HTML code and paste all of the code from your auction code (i.e. RubberDuckyAuction.htm) between <body> and </body> in the HTML window of eBay’s “Sell Your Item” tool.
If you have several designs in mind, layout your templates and then try selling the same type of item on each layout with a day spread in between each auction’s end to see which design delivers the best results. Once you have a winning layout, stick with it. If you come across a design that you like better down the road, try it out against your winning design and see which performs the best for you.
If you do not have a website development tool, there is still hope for a professional look and feel to your auction. There are a number of sites that provide FREE eBay auction templates. As you consider the Good Design Layouts, also take a look at the free templates (and not free templates) for layout design ideas for your auction. Here are a few of the better FREE auction templates that are available to you: