Free eBay Sellers Guide

I have negotiated with Tim Knox (regarded as one of the best eBay trainers around) to give my readers a free copy of his excellent eBay selling manual “Ebay Zero to Hero”.

This superb 50 page guide is packed with really useful info and normally retails for $97 but you can directly download a free copy here: http://kiosk2.com/pages?zerotohero

 David

Free eBay Miss Spelled Item Finder

If you are buying or selling on eBay I have a great free gift for you today. 

Imagine you are looking for a Nokia mobile/cell phone, most mobiles get good bids, especially Nokia ones. There are lots of sellers who, through perhaps a slip of the finger, typing too fast or just plain bad spelling may list their phone as a “Nokai” or a “Nokio”. It’s easy to do and I have been as guilty in the past as the next man, but here’s how you can benefit;

Most buyers will be searching for “Nokia” phones and those spelt correctly will get the most bids. Try searching for “Nokai” though - you’d be amazed at how many items are listed with that spelling. You will also see that those items have less bids because they are not being found in the searches that people are performing.

This is where “SpellingBee”, my new software comes in. You can key in any keyword for an item you are searching for and it will give you the results of all items for your keyword that have the letters mixed up, have letters missing, have “next key” miss-spellings (g instead of h etc.) or just the keyword as it should be. So for “Nokia” you may get items listed as “Nokai”, “Nkia” or “Mokia”.

If you dig around with this tool you are sure to find some great bargains at the sellers’ miss-spelling expense.

I did mention it was free didn’t I? It’s only for UK and US eBay users at the moment but I’ll keep you posted of other countries’ versions as they become available.

Download the US version directly at http://kiosk2.com/pages?sbeeus

Download the UK version directly at http://kiosk2.com/pages?sbeeuk

The files are zipped so you may need the trial version of WinZip to de-compress them.

I hope you enjoy and get benefit from this software and please feel free to pass a copy on to your friends as there is no charge for it’s use.

David

Using images in your eBay sales ads

A few people who are using my EZ AUCTION AD software have been asking about using the “URL” field for the picture display. I will update it soon with a better explanation but rather than reply to each email I received I have posted a basic tutorial here.

The saying goes that “a picture is worth a thousand words” and that couldn’t be truer than when selling on eBay. Pictures are very important and using EZ AUCTION AD will display your picture as well as creating a great looking sales ad. It may take extra time to get your picture there but believe me. it’s well worth the extra effort. People like to SEE what they are bidding on.

For your product picture to be displayed correctly it needs to be “uploaded” to the internet. The URL is the web address for that picture once it’s been placed on a web site. For instance, if I have a picture called image1.jpg and I place it on my site (www.kiosk2.com) in a folder called “pictures”, the URL would be http://www.kiosk2.com/pictures/image1.jpg and this is what I would place in the URL box. Sounds complicated but fear not - here are three easy ways you can do it at no extra cost:

1. Use a free image hosting service

If you search Google for “Free Image Hosting” you will find lots of sites where you can upload your pictures, direct from your PC, to the internet. My own image hosting site is at www.snapbay.com but using Google you can find lot’s of choice, just make sure they have a free option. You may find that if you need to upload a lot of pictures and your ebay auctions get lots of views (yes please!) that in time you may need to opt for a paid service but for most ebay sellers, the free image hosting services should do.

Once you have created an account, follow the instructions to upload pictures to the site and when this is done you can get the URL. Depending on the site it will either give you the address (remember, it will start http://www.) or when you can see your picture online, right click on it with the mouse and select “Properties”. Here you can see the full URL and can just copy and paste it in to your ad.

2. Pictures already on the internet.

If you have a generic product for sale and have seen a picture of it online, elsewhere (maybe one of your previous auctions) - again, just right click on the picture and select “Properties” and the URL will be displayed. Just be careful not to infringe someone else’s copyright.

3. Edit your eBay ad just before submitting it.

A fiddly way but free and easy. Create your ad in EZ AUCTION AD without the picture. Paste the code in to the eBay listing wizard and then upload your pictures in the normal way. When you get to the preview page (just before submitting it) you will see the picture that you have uploaded to ebay. Again, right click on the picture, select “Properties” and get the URL. Then click “Back” a few steps in EZ AUCTION AD and paste in the URL you just got from the preview page. Re-generate the code and in the ebay preview page, select “Edit Description”. You can now re-paste the new code with the correct URL in place, save the change and submit and your picture will now be displayed in your description.

I hope this is clear enough, if not - contact me and I will help where I can.

Remember, the picture is as important as the description and it’s worth taking the effort to increase bids/purchases.

One final tip; your picture maybe too big to display in the ad so here’s another free tool for your ebay toolkit, a photo resizer. Download it at http://snapbay.com/app/photoresizer.zip and use it to get your digital camera pictures “sized down” for the internet.

That’s all for now, until next time.

To your eBay success,

David Allen