This is the most important part of your auction. If your title doesn’t interest anyone no-one will read your ad.

You could have written the most compelling auction description ever written. But unless anyone reads it you’ll get no sales.

All professional ad writers agree that the title is 9x more important than the ad itself. Before you read a newspaper article, what’s the first thing you read?

That’s right. The headlines. Only when a headline interests you will you attempt to read the actual article.

The most effective way of coming up with the best title

The best way is follow the 100-1 rule. First write 100 titles then pick the best one. Why?

Professional writers do this because 100 seems to exhaust all possible titles. You’ll find when you’ve finished that the best one jumps off the page at you.

Try it! It works. It takes time but nothing comes without effort. And the results will outweigh the work.

There is however a better way that I stumbled across. This method is used by one of the most successful writers on the web.

He simple asks a special question that just gets headlines flooding from your fingers. I must say, it works like magic. He always gets his headline in less than 5 minutes. And what’s more, always gets amazing results. Everytime!

Sorry I’m not going to reveal that question here, because I’ve included it in my best-selling ebook about ad writing. And it would result in less sales, because that would be one of the main reasons people are buying it. Amongst others.

How to write the auction description.

Your description is the part that needs to get the person to place a bid. So you better make sure it’s persuasive.

Just about everyone reads the first paragraph. If this doesn’t grab em, then they’ll quickly leave and look for other auctions.

The best first paragraph is always the one that grabs the imagination. When they read it they should see themselves with your item. A bit like the car salesman who gets you to sit in the vehicle.

Hopefully you’ve done a good job of that so now they begin reading the rest of your ad.

People want to see the benefits of owning your item. So you need to show all the benefits of having your offering.

You also need to present the benefits in a certain way. The best way I’ve found for presentation is shown in my book. It always gets the best response whenever I do this in my auctions.

If possible you should always use a photo. When people see what your offering they’re much more happy to buy.

So to summarise…

Get the auction title right. This is the most important part by far.

Use a powerful opening paragraph.

Present all the benefits of your item.

1. Currently available consumers goods. This is a price-
driven model, and although smart sellers can earn above-
average prices, buyers are there looking for a bargain and
price is the #1 consideration.

2. Other buyers are collectors, looking for one-of-a-kind
unique items that they can’t locate elsewhere. Here, price
isn’t as important as it is with consumer goods. The power
of this market is obvious because, before eBay and the
Internet, most collectors were confined to a local market.

Dolls have always been big sellers as eBay collectibles and
eight of them are especially strong sellers:

1. The Cabbage Patch Kids began in 1978 and are never
“sold”. They are ‘born’ at Babyland General Hospital in
Cleveland, Georgia and proud parents pay an ‘adoption fee’.
The Cabbage Patch Kids were one of the greatest toy
phenomenons of the later 20th century. At one time, it was a
common sight to see grown women shopping and lunching with
their babies in hand. In restaurants, the Kids had their own
chairs and were always appropriately dressed for the
weather.

2. Precious Moments began in the early 1970s when creator
Sam Butcher began drawing the endearing teardrop-eye
children as gifts for family and friends. Today Sam’s
Precious Moments artwork is among the most recognized in the
world, and eBay prices reflect this popularity.

3. Madame Alexander dolls were created in 1923. These
beloved dolls range from Charlie Brown to babies and
children to elegant dressed women to glamorous and famous
women like Greta Garbo and Judy Garland. With all the
varieties of costumes, a single doll can be a 1920s flapper
as easily as a member of the court of Louis XIV.

4. Lee Middleton dolls, according to legend, are so real in
appearance that grown men sent for a rescue squad to save
“the baby” from a locked car! Mistaken identity is
supposedly a frequent occurrence and the dolls have been
counted as “passengers” on airplanes and rescued from store
countertops to prevent the ‘baby’ from falling. As one happy
owner says, “These dolls are so lifelike it’s uncanny.”

5. American Girl dolls are loved by millions of little girls
(and grown ups, too!) They are not only from different times
and places, but are ethnically diverse: Felicity from
colonial Virginia; Josephina from the 1830’s in New Mexico;
Kirsten is “a pioneer girl of strength and spirit growing up
in Minnesota in 1854″; Addy is alive in the 186o’s, having
escaped from slavery with her mother; Samantha is “a bright
Victorian girl living with her wealthy grandmother in 1904″;
Kit is growing up in 193os, during America’s Great
Depression; Molly lives in the 1940’s while her dad is away
at war; Kaya is a Nez Perce Indian living in the northwest.

6. Hasbro dolls are one of the products of the gigantic
Hasbro company, who claim to have been making toys for eight
generations, including famous games like Monopoly, Scrabble
and Clue.

7. Bratz dolls, unlike older dolls like Madame Alexander and
Cabbage Patch Kids, have no long history as favorite toys or
collectibles. Nevertheless, their price has astonished eBay
sellers and the Bratz collection was one of the ’super hits’
of the 2003 holiday season and sales have been strong ever
since.

8. And, no surprise, Barbie is the best-selling doll on
eBay. Since Mattel has recently announced that Ken and
Barbie will no longer be an “item”, dolls from the ‘good old
days’ when the name “Barbie” was rarely heard without ‘Ken’,
will inevitably become more valuable.

However, before that dream can become a reality, you need to do many important things while running an auction business.

One of these important things to do is to pick the right products to sell. The right products to sell are the ones that people on eBay want or will buy.

eBay tells you what people actually want and what people actually will buy in four areas of its website.

“In Demand”

One of these four areas on eBay’s site is the “In Demand” section. There is an “In Demand” link for each of the main categories on eBay. Listed in these areas are the previous month’s top ten products that people wanted and the top ten searches for each subcategory. To see the data in these areas follow the link below and when you reach the page, scroll down and click on the link “In Demand” under any of the categories shown.

http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/sellbycategory.html

“Hot Categories Report”

The next area containing information on finding what to sell on eBay is the “Hot Categories Report.” This report lists the “fastest growing” categories on eBay for the previous month. The explanation for what eBay considers “hot” can be hard to understand on your first reading. Nevertheless, the important thing to know is that the categories listed are the ones were buyer demand for the items under those categories are growing faster than the seller supply. This report is a PDF file so you will need Adobe® Reader® to open it. Here is the link:

http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf

“eBay Pulse”

“eBay Pulse” is another area where you can figure out what people are looking for on “The World’s Online Marketplace®.” It contains a category’s daily snapshot of the ten most popular searches and the stores with the most active listings. A subsection on “eBay Pulse,” known as “Most Watched Items,” reveals the ten auctions that are getting the most attention. Visit this page and select a category to study from the drop-down menu.

http://pulse.ebay.com

“Merchandising Calendar”

The last area with information on what to sell on eBay is the “Merchandising Calendar.” Here, eBay shows you the categories they will promote on their homepage each month. This is where eBay “tells” you what to sell. You can ignore their calendar and sell anything you choose, but wouldn’t it be easier to make sales if you took advantage of eBay’s promotional influence? Look at this page and use the calendar as a guide in planning your inventory and listings.

http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/calendar.html

Last Thoughts