Ebay has over 2 million
auctions organized properly in over 1600 categories. And ebay only lets you list
any given item in one category at a time and therefore how can you determine the best
place to post your items. Thus, how
do bidders navigate through this maze or categories and find your item
in the a specific category.
Certain people will naturally browse through categories and subcategories
and sub-subcategories, and so on and find the product. But many simply click on "Search" and
enter words that they'd expect to find in the titles of items they are
interested in. This is where your title plays it important role. There
are however more sophisticated bidders will change the default setting
of the search box, clicking to search for words in both titles and
descriptions. But very few will do this.
To get started as a seller, you need to
do some homework about titles. I would recommend you to decide a title
for your product, then key in the words for a search. From there you
could look for:
- what are the categories they are listed in
- what kinds of starting prices are
typical
- how they are described
- how much bidding activity they are
getting at any point of time , and whether the category or other evident factors appear to
affect the level of bidding of the item.
If you see that some individuals have
multiple items listed in the same category, you need to do another search by the user name
for that particular seller and see the range of what the seller have on sale.
Check for the categories the seller list either it is in the same
categories or different categories.
Some bidders will be bidding for many
different items, but of the same kind. Search by the bidder name and
look for the pattern why they are drawn to these items rather than
another.
New and near-new consumer goods, bidders
will most probably navigate by the category just as it is in navigating
through a department store. However, for collectibles item the category
often does not matter since collectable items often bought by specific
buyers and they usually use search to find the items.
In other words, try to pick a category
that will help your sale, but don't over-estimate the importance of
category. In some cases, buyers, using Search, will find you regardless
of where at eBay you hide your auction. Don't worry if your item does
not sell, you could always re-list your item again. Remember, it is
continues learning process.
Ebay is like a large community in
cyberspace. Over time, bidders and sellers build relationships with one another at eBay and
through email messages to one another and other online contact. Their
expectations of one another depend on their common experience. The
behavior of newcomers who is just learning about ebay is likely to
be unpredictable, while that of the veterans will be more consistent and
credibility.
For example the newcomer might misinterpret a standard description of the quality
and condition of an item, and be disappointed with a purchase even
though the seller was quite precise and accurate. On the other hand, a
newcomer might well bid far higher on an item than an old timer because
he does not know that the same item was sold in ebay many times before.
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Even with millions of potential buyer,
some people a reluctant to sell over ebay because they think their item
will get lost among millions of others posted there. Some would like to
focus on auctioning in focused auction sites that only sells the same
item as theirs. Well this should be avoided. You should grip all the
opportunity.
For example, if you are selling a old
collectable car horns you might get a bid from people who are not
initially interested in horn. But they were searching with the keyword
car (may be they were looking for other car parts), and your car horn
has the right words in the title. Since they are interested in cars,
they might have look at your items and possibly bid for it. And those
buyers, because they are unfamiliar with prices in this particular
category, arriving here tangentially, are likely to bid out of all
proportion to what you'd get from regular collectors with experience in
this sub-community of eBay and with ready access to reference books
about prices for this kind of collectible. Remember, you don't need for
millions of people to see your item. All it takes is two enthusiastic
bidders to raise the price beyond rational levels.
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This buyer behavior means that the words
in your title are probably more important than the category you choose.
Remember, that's the "title." Today eBay's search engine does not look
at words in the description but only the title.
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