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Selling Coals to Newcastle...
publication date: Mar 21, 2007
*****
- Editorial
- Selling Coals to Newcastle, Selling Ice to the Eskimos
- Blogging Arrives In the UK
- eBay Feedback Transfer
- Search Engine Optimisation for eBay Shops
*****
Hi,
Oh wow, once in a while something really big happens on eBay,
sometimes good, sometimes bad (or at least that's how it looks at
first glance). Oftentimes something you never thought to happen
takes place overnight.
Two great things have recently happened on eBay that really will
increase your business turnover.
Read on and all will be revealed...
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Selling Coals to Newcastle, Selling Ice to the Eskimos
***
A few weeks back PowerSellers were bemoaning the fact that
eBay had altered the way that individual eBay site listings would
appear in searches made on other country sites. Officially they
said:
"As you may be aware, we have recently removed items that are
listed on eBay.co.uk from default search results on eBay.com in
the US.
Over the coming months, we will be testing different ways of
displaying international listings on various eBay sites worldwide,
with the aim of appropriately balancing the needs of domestic
sellers in each market with those of exporting sellers from other
countries."
You can read the entire message at:
The upshot was that UK listings of items that might interest a
worldwide audience, such as collectibles and eBooks, would no
longer show up in eBay searches made by potential buyers
outside the UK.
It seemed, I still think it seems, the new system is designed to
predominantly benefit US sellers, maybe to catapult America's
export sales and reduce imports. Or something equally sinister!
Actually I found the entire message mostly confusing,
unnecessary and immensely detrimental to UK sellers especially
those with a high US buying audience. People like me, for
instance, who sell postcards and other small collectibles and find
most of our sales come from buyers searching on eBay.com.
Now my items won't even show up on eBay.com, so that's a huge
chunk of my audience completely oblivious to my listings.
The first I heard of this new system was when a top eBay.uk
eBook seller emailed his buyers' list to say, from now on, he
would be listing everything on eBay.com, not just to avoid losing
his American buying public but also because his US listings will
continue to show up in searches made by his UK buyers on
ebay.co.uk.
That's when I decided to test drive eBay.com for items I normally
list on ebay.co.uk which typically fetch higher prices across the
Pond. At the same time I listed postcards depicting French towns
and cities on France's eBay site, Australian topographical items
on the Australian site, and so on, and so on.
The best thing of all is that you don't have to open an eBay
account on every country site, you can list anywhere in the world
from a single eBay account regardless of the country in which you
actually opened that account.
While I was doing all of this I noticed that other people selling
items similar to mine had also started listing outside the UK.
Desperation, I thought, until auction listings began to close and I
found my own items and many of my competitors' where actually
fetching higher than expected prices from this new listing practice.
Some went for way more than expected, such as a postcard I
don't think would fetch 10 pence on ebay.co.uk which fetched the
Euro equivalent of £370 on the French eBay site.
There's no real moral to this tale and no special advice either, just
a recommendation that you at least have a go at listing on non-UK
sites, just to see what happens. For me and many others selling
smaller collectibles, what looked like a problem has actually
worked in our favour.
In fact, dare I say it, this new idea has forced me and lots of other
people to rethink our eBay ventures, something we should be
doing daily, but don't, until we are pushed!
On to other matters...
***
eBay Blogs Have Finally Arrived in the UK
***
You may recall a few months ago I moaned about American eBay
sellers having access to a great blogging platform on eBay which
they could use to promote their items, get their eBay listings
ranked higher in outside eBay search engines, and to help them
communicate with customers and potential buyers for their
products. Well now eBay Blogging - called 'My World' - is
available in the UK and it's by far the best thing that's happened to
eBay sellers in a long time.
Like your 'About Me' page and 'eBay Shop' you can customise the
layout and content of your blogs (okay, 'My World' Pages) and
you can even include your photograph and personal details. This
photograph idea works wonders in developing confidence in
sellers and although buyers always know there's another person
on the other side of the buyer-seller relationship, many like to
know and see who they are doing business with. So that photo
helps. But it isn't essential and eBay offers a large range of icons
and graphics for shy sellers to slot into the photo template.
eBay says 'My World is an updated profile page that complements
your About Me page. It brings together many features already
available on eBay to help you build a page that reflects you and
your interests'.
You can even talk about whatever you are currently selling and
include articles and advice that gets you recognised as an expert
in your field which in turn makes people more inclined to buy from
you than less knowledgeable sellers.
There's so much more you can do with this new blogging platform,
give it a go and you'll see what I mean. You'll find all the details
A few months back we did a special feature in our monthly printed
newsletter about blogging and how it benefits your eBay business.
I don't have it to hand right now but I will sort it out later today and
if you'd like to see it email me at avril@clippingsfactory.com and
I'll give you the download link.
Happy eBaying (and blogging)!
Until next time,
Avril
***
Blogging Challenge
***
The UK's top Business Opportunity Expert Seeks
Volunteers for Online Money Making Challenge...
My Publisher Nick Laight is looking for a select
group of volunteers to help set up and run their
own profitable BLOGGING BUSINESS while he
shoulders ALL the risk for the next 90 days.
Click here for more info:
****
eBay Feedback Transfer by Mark Kenny
***
eBay Feedback Transfer is a growing trend. Many new and
competing auction sites to eBay offer to import your eBay
feedback so you don't have to start afresh when you either sell or
buy on these alternative sites. For both sellers and buyers, this is
overall a good development as it helps establish credibility.
Obviously you'd only want to transfer your feedback if it was
mostly positive, in the event it contains some negative comments
you'd rather others didn't see then it would be best to start
rebuilding it.
Feedback instantly allows other parties who you may do business
with to see if your trustworthy, a prompt payer, and gives detailed
information on the type of transactions your involved with. This is
why it's so important to maintain your feedback and keep it
positive.
So, on the whole feedback transfer is a good idea and will save
you weeks or months of establishing credibility on every site you
trade on.
However, there is one main worrying issue about eBay feedback
transfer.
When you register with eBay you agree to the eBay user
agreement. Part of this agreement, which is a legally binding
document mentions feedback.
"While using the Site, you will not take any action that may
undermine the feedback or ratings systems (such as displaying
feedback information on, or exporting feedback information to,
non-eBay sites, or using it for purposes unrelated to eBay or
transfer your eBay account (including feedback) and User ID to
another party without our express consent".
So, it seems if you do transfer your feedback to another site you
will be breaking the user agreement. This means that eBay has
the option of terminating your account if they should ever enforce
this agreement.
The decision is yours, whether to transfer your feedback or not.
Just be aware of the possible consequences.
Written by Mark Kenny. Join http://www.AuctionCUT.com - the
online auctions and ebay forum.
***
Search Engine Optimisation for eBay Shops by Dan Buys
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Despite 50 percent of online purchases being found via a search
engine, most eBay sellers ignore the potential of search engines
to drive traffic to their listings. By optimising your eBay Store, your
products could improve their rankings in the search results on
major search engines and boost your sales.
High rankings can drive huge amounts of traffic to your products,
and even with limited resources, it is still possible to apply
techniques that will increase the rankings of your eBay Store and
listings.
How Search Engines Work
When looking for a product, a customer visits a search engine and
enters a search term or keyword, for which the search engine
produces a list of results that it considers most relevant. It is by
understanding how this list of results is produced that your eBay
page can be optimised. The ranking of a web page for a keyword
depends on three things:
* The position and frequency of the keyword on the web page:
When producing results for a search term, search engines will
rank your pages based on the keywords they contain and their
prominence on the page.
* The content of the page's HTML tags: The search engine also
looks at the content of the title and meta tags of the page's HTML
code. Humans don't read "meta tags" - they are included on a web
page to help search engines understand what the page is about,
so having good meta tags that describe your website pages is
important. An article from Search Engine Watch explains how to
use meta tags if you want to dig into this topic in more depth
* The links going to that web page: Search engines consider an
inbound link as a vote of popularity. Google, for example, gives
each web page a score of 1 to 10 (called a PageRank) depending
on the number and origin of inbound links. For a given search, the
page with the higher PageRank will appear higher in the list of
search results. Here's how Google explains its PageRank
technology (http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html).
When listing on eBay you have direct control over the content -
and hence the keywords - you include. However, you can only
access the page meta tags indirectly, through configuring your
Store and listings.
Step 1: Choose Your Keywords
The first stage of search engine optimisation is to choose effective
keywords. To select keywords, put yourself in the shoes of your
customers and consider what keywords you would enter if you
were looking for your products online.
eBay Store traffic reports are useful as they contain the search
terms that users are entering in order to find your listings
You can also use Yahoo's keyword tool
(http://inventory.overture.com) for popular web search keywords
and eBay Pulse (http://pulse.ebay.com) to find popular eBay
searches. Choose more general keywords for your eBay Store,
and choose product-specific keywords for your individual listings.
For example a PDA seller might choose Palm, Handheld and PDA
as keywords for their Store. For the listings they also use the
keywords referring to the item model number and features.
Step 2: Optimize Your eBay Presence
Repeating a keyword in a number of different places such as your
Store URL, title and item description will increase the search
engine's perception of how relevant your web page is to a
particular keyword. However, be careful not to go overboard -
"keyword spamming" is penalized by the search engines. Your
description should also be clear and readable.
Choose Your eBay Store Name
Your Store name appears in your eBay Store's URL and ideally it
should contain your most important keywords. For example, a
bike Store seller might choose "Mountain-Bikes-UK," which would
give a Store the URL http://stores.ebay.co.uk/mountain-bikes-uk.
Optimise All Store Pages
The title you give your product is very important, as it also
appears in the "title" tag of the listing web page, so you should
include your search engine keywords.
Your product descriptions should also include your keywords.
Search engines attach the most importance to words in titles and
bolded words, so ensure that you have placed you keywords
prominently. For example a good item title would be Palm T3
Handheld PDA New Boxed rather than Palm T3 New Boxed as
the latter can not be found for searches for PDA or handheld.
You should also create custom pages for your eBay Store.
Custom pages are a set of unique pages you can create or edit for
your Store to help showcase items and special promotions,
describe the history of your business, etc.
(http://pages.ebay.com/help/stores/contextual/managing-custom-
pages.html). Be sure and include effective keywords on your
custom pages too.
Every seller should have an About Me page, and this is another
good place to include your keywords and links to your eBay Store
(http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/about-me.html).
eBay now has a new feature called eBay My World that goes one
step beyond About Me pages
(http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/ebay-myworld-ov.html).
Optimize Your eBay ID
eBay includes your User ID in the "title" tag of your About Me
page and feedback pages. Your eBay User ID should reflect
something about the product you sell, preferably including your
most important keyword. Try and choose a memorable and
individual eBay ID, as this will help customers find your eBay
presence by searching. For example an eBay name like "PDA-
Wonderland" will be easier to find in Google than "Online-Deals."
Optimize Your eBay Store Keywords
In the "Manage my Store" area, eBay enables the selection of
search engine keywords. These keywords appear in the "title" tag
for your Store pages, and so it is important that you specify
relevant keywords for each page. Also make sure to include your
keywords in your Store's description, as this appears in the
description meta tag of your eBay Store pages.
Reviews and Guides
eBay Reviews and Guides (http://reviews.ebay.com) are a great
way of driving traffic to your listings, from both inside and outside
eBay. Articles you write for eBay's Reviews and Guides containing
your chosen keywords and linked to your eBay Store have the
potential to drive traffic to your listings.
Use Search Tags on Your Content Pages
eBay recommends using "search tags" in your content pages,
such as eBay My World, Blogs and Reviews & Guides. Search
tags identify topics and concepts in your content. "So if you wrote
about Pez dispensers in your blog, you could use tags like "Pez,"
"dispensers" and "collectibles" to increase your visibility in search
results" (http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/search-tags.html).
Step 3: Build Links to Stores and Listings
To improve the search-engine ranking of your eBay Store, create
as many links to your eBay Store as possible. Encourage your
business partners to link to your eBay Store. Enter your Store into
online directories such as Listmystore.com
(http://www.listmystore.com). Do not ignore the potential of links
within eBay to boost your ranking - always link to your eBay Store
from your listings and also from all of your guides or reviews.
Step 4: Track Your Performance
Once your have optimized your eBay presence, it is important to
constantly track your performance and make improvements. All
eBay Store sellers have access to traffic reports that allow you to
see the keywords used to find your listings and the search
engines that driving traffic to your Store
basics.html). If you wish to see more in depth statistics, use
Sellathon (http://www.sellathon.com), which can give you the
traffic data for individual listings and pages.
Conclusion
eBay has set up a section that describes the basics of optimizing
your eBay Store for search engines
Use eBay's tips along with this article to optimize your Store. If
your products show up in shopper's search results on Google,
Yahoo and other search engines, it's bound to help increase your
sales.
Trevor Ginn is Head of Consulting at Auctioning4u eBay Drop off
Shop (http://www.auctioning4u.co.uk/).Just bring us your stuff and
we'll sell it on eBay, No Sale No Fee.
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