Introduction

When writing a great eBay description, you are marketing.  You are trying to tell the buyer WHY they should be buying your particular item. A book by any other name is not just a book. It has color, it has flair and it has importance to someone. Or so we hope. That is why we are selling it.I sell antique books. Many book sellers would say that I am technically wrong in using the word antique and yet I have found that searchers regularly use that word within their search, so I sell antique books.

Here are some simple rules that I live by when writing up my descriptions:

Editing Your HTML to Fit

Use (/blockquote) at the beginning of your HTML, especially if you are using tables to layout your description. This will help align your information with EBay's standard information.

Delete all of this

(html)
(head)
(meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0")
(meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document")
(meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252")
(title)New Page 1(/title)
(/head)

and replace it with this

(/blockquote)

The purpose of the title is to attract your customer and get them to read the description.

Selecting Words For Your Title

Look it up first. Use a search engine for your item, using your list of keywords and see if you find it. Then once you have found it, look at the relative page and see if they have used other keywords you might not have thought about. Incorporate these key words into your description or title. It's not nice to plagiarize and in many cases is against the law, but researching your item and description is important. Know what you sell and learn how others sell it.

Think….  What would you search for if you wanted to buy that item? Make two lists of key words important to your item. Primary and secondary.

Primary: The best keywords to place in the items title.
Secondary: Additional key words that you should ensure are a part of the description.

Do not place detractors in the title. Example 2nd edition or slightly cracked. These belong within the page itself.

Using Scans and Photos

Place your pictures or scans at or near the top of the page, especially if they tell a better story than words. Remember the old adage "A picture is worth a thousand words"?

If you maintain your own domain or if the domain you use allows you to use additional uploads of pictures, keep your photo size down for faster loads. (I usually use 200 X 100 as a maximum) and then use a hyperlink to a full size shot. Also make sure you use the text tag.

Get close ups of discriptive marks, detractors to your listing, and highlights of your item.  Let the buyer see what they are buying.

Delivering Your Message

Learn basic HTML. A WYSIWYG editor is the best way to lay out your page if you know how to edit it.

Include ANY descriptive maker’s marks from the item within the description regardless of its seemingly small importance and if important enough include it in the title.

Use paragraphs to write your descriptions.  Remember your grade school days when you were taught to separate relative sentences into “paragraphs“? Well in an EBay description it is just as important. If you can get a potential buyer to your item to read it, make it easier for him/her to find the pertinate data he/she is looking for.

Put your best foot forward FIRST…Place the positives at or near the top of your description. Would a car dealer tell you the car gets only 13 miles to the gallon, before he tells you all the safety features?

.Use colored text sparingly. Color should be used only to highlight important areas. It can also cause an important keyword to be unsearchable. The word {red}Antique{/red} would search as redAntiquered and would not show up as antique in a search.

Check your spelling, layout, etc… before you post your auction. As simple as this may seem, remember that a misspelled word can cost you that customer who is looking for a specific keyword.

Closing Out Your Listing 

Use your listing to advertise other items you are selling.  Don't be afraid to say "See my other antique books. I also have a Very Fine edition of Uncle Toms Cabin listed this week." Make sure you place this away from your description (using paragraphs again) though, so as not to distract the buyer from the book they are currently looking at.

I do hope this will help you in getting that important sale.  I personally am still trying to get that $1000.00 book sold and trying to learn anything I can about listings to make that happen.  Please see my books being listed with my EBay name Troll2555.