THE most important thing a seller can do to sell on Ebay is to promote your products through good ads and effective titles.  By “complete titles” I mean making an attempt to offer any information a potential buyer is likely to use to search for your item.  One must make that single line of 45 characters (including spaces) really count.  

Failing to provide sufficient information in the title means you fail to catch all potential customers for that product.  Spelling mistakes also make a difference in attracting every potential buyer’s interest.  When you pull in as many interested customers as are available, you get the best price possible for your goods.  Conversely, a sale to a single bidder is likely to be for a smaller sum than could be realized with a well written title.  Worst of all, those bad titles resulting in no sale after taking the time and spending the money to list the item. 

What IS an effective title?  In my example, I will use a new Ralph Lauren Sweater as my item for sale (that I got as a birthday gift and it just doesn’t fit).  I can list it in three ways as an example: 

a) PRETTY PINK SWEATER & A GREAT DEAL!!!!!!! (40 characters)
                           or
b) RALPH LAUREN SWEATER, ROSE SZ M NEW WITH TAGS (45 characters)
                           or
c) RALPH LAUREN CASHM* SWEATER MED PINK NWT $249 (45 characters optimized)

 In line a)    It is clear we are selling a sweater and (according to the seller a great deal)  This will catch only buyers specifically looking for any sweater (rare).  Additionally, we have failed to use all the spaces we have to optimise the search process.

In line b)     We now will catch buyers looking for Ralph Lauren (popular brand), those who want a rose colored sweater (rare color name), a size medium or a new item.

In line c)      We get those shopping for Ralph Lauren, Cashmere (the * is a wild card), those looking for a medium, those who want something new with tags.  Clearly the larger audience will be found with option c). 

Item c) Title is the best option because:

1. eBay's search engine favors titles that include the most information content. The sweater will turn up for many potential bidders including those looking for “Ralph Lauren;” Size Medium; Cashmere anything; a Sweater; new items (NWT); or the color “Pink.”

2. The more specific you can be, the more the search function allows for exact matches to fall into place for the customers specifically looking for what you are selling.

3. Be as specific as possible, BUT don’t waste your time with proper capitalization, punctuation including exclamation points and dashes unless you have extra spaces that cannot be used in a more productive way.  These extraneous characters are irrelevant to the eBay search engine and therefore serve no real purpose except wasting precious space.  It is far better to devote your character spaces to information the buyer (and search engine) will be looking for.

4.  What About Attention Getters such as "LOOK or MUST C!?  This is typically information in the ad, designed to get a shopper’s attention visually.  These words or phrases do not help with searches and, if used, draw attention away from critical information.  They also waste valuable space.  Never sacrifice real information in a title in favor of an attention getter.

5.  While being as specific as possible is good, it is important not to focus on proper sentences, or (as discussed above), punctuation marks such as commas, exclamation points, and dashes - they do not affect the eBay search engine and waste critical space.

6.  If you do use a second title line you might try adding common misspellings to your ads, since the searches will turn those up as well.

7.  Use “Power Words” in your headline but only use Power words that are truly relevant and true to the item you are selling (Antique, Brand Names, Vintage, Sexxy, NWT, etc.)

8.  Always Use all capital letters in your headline to make it stand out.  Search engines place a higher priority on items that are captialized bolded or otherwise formatted to stand out.  This is why eBay sells those options.

9.  Use the Bold Face and Highlight eBay option if your price-point affords you the extra fees involved in doing so.

10.  Only if you have extra space, use tildes "~ " to set off your headline. (Caution: Make sure there is space between your tilde ~ and any searchable word or eBay’s search engine will not recognize it) .  It is important that you do not have special characters located directly next to title information.  It will render the title unsearchable.

11.  Typically, customers dislike reserves.  Use them only when necessary. If you are not using a reserve price, say so with “No Reserve” or “NR”

12.  Don't add symbols such as asterisks (***) to your titles.  They may seem like great attention getters, BUT  they are problematic because they are part of HTML coding.  So, if you use asterisks in this way, they may very well interfere with the search functions in eBay.  The interference may be so bad that your auction might not show up in any searches -- so leave the asterisks (*) out.

13.  Finally (and most importantly) please make sure your headline is credible and ACCURATELY describes what you are offering.  Frustrated customers don't come back and sometimes leave negative feedback, which is a very bad thing long term..

I do hope information has been helpful to you.  If you have time -- check out my store (The Write Place Ladies Clothing) where YOU name the price you pay every day!  Please also check out my auctions (Pepper120851) for some of the best old fashioned bargains on eBay today!

Thanks so much for stopping by!!  Pepper120851