Ebay Shark - Make auctions that bite!

So you want some free ebay auction templates?

2009-08-31T09:01:00.001-07:00

We all know just jotting down a simple 3 sentence description of whatever your selling isn't gonna cut it. That may work for craigslist but the average ebay bidder needs to see something more. Creating a template for your auctions to use in everything you try to sell is a great way of increasing potential bids. Sometimes a nice eye catching template is what you need. With so many auction listings you want yours to look professional so people think you do this all the time. I know when I see an auction listing and all the seller did was write down a few sentences it makes me wonder if he knows how to sell things on ebay at all! You may ask yourself "I have no idea how to add a template" or "Doesn't that require HTML?."

We're going to show you just how simple it can be to add a simple yet more attractive template to your auctions. Don't have a clue about HTML? That's ok this is basically a simple copy and paste job here. First we're gonna take a look at a few free templates you can find on the internet.

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http://www.template-o-matic.com/ - This is for making some seriously basic templates, but if thats all your looking for is a quick fix I reccomend this website. Simply fill in your Title, add your item photos, (you can use photobucket to upload them), add your description and you're off.

http://www.ebay-template.com/ - Straight forward decent looking templates.

http://www.auctionsupplies.com/templates/ - Another free copy and paste template site/

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Okay, so you got your template filled out and have this huge mess of HTML code. Now what?

Basic Instructions (may vary based on which eBay site you use):

Highlight all the code and copy it (click on the white box w/ all the HTML code in it...hit the ctrl key on your keyboard and c (ctrl+c) to copy the code; OR right-click copy)
Login to your account at ebay.com (or whatever eBay site you sell on) and click Sell
Everyone (image 1): Then make sure the HTML tab is selected (by default, standard will be selected - See Image 1)...you'll get to the description after entering the title, subtitle, uploading your first image, etc...
Paste your code (ctrl+v; or right-click paste) into the ebay in the HTML box and click "Preview" link below the description area (See Image 2) and NOT the Standard Tab (See Image 2). The Standard tab is only for typing in standard description information. It will not preview your template correctly.

It should look something like this:

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Take sometime and experiment with editing the template yourself. The best site for learning HTML code for newbies is http://www.htmlgoodies.com/

This is the site I learned from many years ago, clear and easy to understand. I still refer to it to this day. Using that site you can build your own templates in time, start with learning how tables work.

If your looking for a complete way of making some amazing looking polished templates you can check out this book. Before I got the book I thought my templates looked good, but this book helped them look even better.

eBay Auction Templates Starter Kit is a combination book/CD designed to help all levels of eBay sellers create better-looking eBay auction listings as quickly and easily as possible. The text describes how to use HTML to create sophisticated auction templates; the CD includes dozens of pre-designed templates that can be used as-is. If you're a little more ambitious, you'll also learn how to create great-looking auction listings using HTML.

Another great book that focuses on the HTML side of ebay:

eBay sellers, like yourself, understand that creating a professional looking auction page and a professional looking "me" page is key to your business. You are constantly looking for new tips and tricks that will help you deliver a more powerful, effective ad. With competition growing you need to use HTML to pull in prospective buyers. Easy HTML for eBay was developed with input from eBay Power Sellers and provides the foundation that you need and want to make the most of your business, including information on:

Creating an Auction Listing
Creating a Simple Description
Adding Pictures
Arranging the Page
Decorating the Page
Styling the Text
Creating Links
Adding Sound, Video, and Animation
About Me Pages and eBay Stores
Making Your Listings Stand Out

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Did this guide help you at all? Still have questions? Send them to Ebaysharks@gmail.com

The Ebay Effect

2009-08-31T00:15:00.000-07:00

Reported from Forbes.com

How the company's online auctions have influenced the way we do business.

BURLINGAME, Calif. -- Welcome to eBay world. Don't make yourself comfortable.

The Internet auction giant, beset by years of competition, bad customer relationand general fatigue, may rank a solid "eh, whatever" from Wall Street analysts, but with little notice the core of its sensibility now dominates our business lives. Everything is an auction now. The rules of contracts, pricing and planning may never be the same.

Over the past several months, I have asked a dozen businesses what length of time might define a long-term contract, buying or selling, today. Answers ranged from "six months" (for a publicity firm) to "five years" (telecommunications company). Then I asked, how long was "long term" five or 10 years ago? Typically the old contract length was at least twice as long as the new one--in the telecommunications sector, the executive told me with nostalgia, contracts "used to be for life." Only one group I talked to, which was involved in health care, said its contracts had lengthened modestly (see below for why).

No matter what the curt duration of the new "long-term" relationship, everybody agreed on one thing: During the contract, each side seemed to quietly acknowledge, the prices and terms of service would likely come up for review and renegotiation. In other words, the "long term" part of the deal was to have a relationship. Specific terms might shift.

What is going on here? It is easy to ascribe it to the credit crunch and recession. If you lose your loans or your customer demand, obviously you have to readjust. Many companies took advantage of this, pressing for lower prices even if their businesses were OK, just because they could. But some executives noted that prices did not always move downward. They can move up too. More than anything, they just … change.

What has happened to contracts is awareness. Thanks to the burgeoning nature of Internet connectivity and communication--someone else is always out there, with a new product or service or lower price--suppliers, customers and consumers have assumed a real-time market sensibility around all commercial relations. Renegotiation has always been with us, of course, but usually to the shock and consternation of one or another side of the deal. Now it is implicitly acceptable to both sides, since we live by eBay rules.

In many cases, both parties would like to have more stable relations, but they cannot assume conditions will stay the same. Who can say what a competitor will be in a couple of years, in a world where Apple ( AAPL - news - people ) is a dominant force in music, Wal-Mart ( WMT - news - people ) is a doctor's office and Amazon is your source for supercomputing? In a global market with portable factories, who knows what the cheapest source will be?

The auction world sensibility affects company workings too; for instance, job definitions can be in constant renegotiation. Some years ago Intel ( INTC - news - people ) determined that most of its executives had at least three entirely different roles at the company. Cisco ( CSCO - news - people ) puts its execs on a number of different development panels, so they work in, say, marketing, product design and supply chain at the same time. Google ( GOOG - news - people ), which makes money by selling ads on a continuous auction basis, hires people with an expectation that a year later they could be doing something entirely different.

Some years back, I knew a group of engineers who were developing a real-time global telephone billing system. Until then, worldwide bills worked off a standard, usually Greenwich Mean Time, which established a 24-hour clock to the billing cycle. For various reasons, this practice would not work for this new satellite-based system, so one of the billing engineers' big issues was answering the question "What time is it?" The answer, it turned out, was "yes," all bills would be calculated for that moment, not against any other standard. We're all heading there now.

The issue becomes one of figuring out how to keep prices steady to higher, or even grow the length of the contract. Usually the answer is to find a way to improve service, or redefine what is being sold in a way that narrows the competition. On many news Web sites now, content providers avoid the mass auctions of display ads by creating specially-themed pages of information, like "Tour de France background," instead of "sports." With luck, your definition makes you a scarce supplier, who gets a single sponsor or just a couple of keen bidders.

Another tactic is to sell that scarcest of commodities in this world beset by change: Peace of mind. The health care company that had lengthened its contracts had done so thanks to the increasing number of regulations hitting its customers. It handled the hassles and sold customers the prospect of more time to plan.

Brands, with their promise of fewer defects and better customer service, are another beneficiary. That is, if they can avoid the onslaught of awareness aimed at their customers from good competitors.

Determine what sells best on eBay

2009-08-30T23:40:00.000-07:00

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