Adding color to pages or listings

Color charts for HTML codes http://www.origins.tv/htmlataglance/contents.htm http://www.annabella.net/netscape.html http://www.angelfire.com/in/jimsac/hexcolors.html http://xample.net/htmlcolors.htm These can all be used to insert a color in the tag < color="red"> instead of the word red or to put in a background color < background="paste your background URL here"> Use caps where I have, then close the ends < > at the beginning and end of the tags. For nested tables as background here are great tutorials http://xample.net/html1.htm

Search Engines and how to get listed + signatures

I would say it takes less than a month to start catching some searches, but you can speed things along by submitting your URL to search engines. Here is a site that will submit your store URL to 20+ search engines for free. http://www.submitexpress.com/

This link will submit your URL just to Google http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

What NOT to do when submitting to Google http://www.stevenforsyth.com/google/google-donts.htm

As to how it appears, I'm not real sure I can explain except to say that if you put in a specific item to search on (like I keep finding my Avon items) it brings it up because of the keywords in each category of your store and the item title and description. It's not bringing up the store itself but the item because of the store.

You all know about Froogle? That is the 5th link over on the top of the Google page and when clicked will take you to only shopping links (including EBAY) but not other types of websites. Froogle is a great place to research items that are out there on other sites, books, records, vintage, Avon, and antiques.

Outgoing mail and signature files - My signature looks like this:
Please visit my webstore for silver jewelry, vintage items and collectibles! Please tell your friends too! http://stores.ebay.com/Jewelry-Avon-and-all-that-Jazz

It goes on every email automatically. I use web based mail and to install this I went to Mail Settings and the Signature.

In Outlook you go to Tools, Options, Mail Format, and then click the button labled Signature near the bottom to add the signature. Make sure you ask them to visit soon!

Generating free templates

Here is a free site to generate templates http://www.auctioninsights.info/templates/

Try a few and see if they meet your needs or if they need to be more complex, you may have to break down and learn some HTML. A great place for that is on this site with its step by step approach. http://www.eobcards.com/tutorial3.htm

or if you just need the HTML tags and understand the basics this site is really helpful http://www.web-source.net/html_codes_chart.htm

You can practice or just to check how it looks here: http://www.practiceboard.com/

Google Suggest

Google Suggest guesses what you are typing and offers suggestions in real time. Why Google suggest? It offers real time suggestion as well the number of results for each of the suggestions. It also offers more refined searched up front. This feature can give you a good insight about what everyone is searching for, on Google http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

Free Trial - Create Professional-Quality eBay Listings

I have created some of my own backgrounds, learned a little bit of HTML and had some success with it. Still looking for a way to look more professional so this looks like the next thing to try. . .

One way to create impressive, eye catching and feature rich listings with ease is to try AlienFiles. http://www.alienfiles.net/:

The Features::

• Large selection of text fonts and text sizes
• Use bold, Italic and Underlined
• Change text color
• Add images
• Add links to websites
• Show bulleted lists
• Align text (left, middle, right)
• Change backgrounds
• Select a presentation theme - from Over 400 themes and backgrounds available
• Add a TV-Style blurb of scrolling words - Paste Word files & websites into this area
• Preview exactly how your listing will appear on eBay:

AlienFiles has an image upload section so you can add your images with ease. This means you don't have to use eBay picture upload - your images will appear in your listing as usual, but without incurring eBay image fees!

• Add 30 images (eBay only allows 12)
• Add a text description of your images
• Your images will appear in eBay as normal
• No eBay picture fees to pay
• People viewing your listings can zoom in and out of the images
• You can protect your images from theft
• Images appear in an attractive format

AlienFiles will set your listings out from the crowd. If you sell heavy or large items add maps and directions. Buyers like to see positive feedback so add some or all of your eBay feedback in to your listing with the click of a button! More useful features too:

• Add a Map of your location
• Include a distance calculator
• Add your previous eBay feedback
• Add useful features:
• 'Print this page' button
• 'Bookmark this page' button
• 'Tell a Friend' button
• Add unit conversions, for example KM vs Miles
• Add Audio, Sound, Music Files
• Add Video, Movie Files
• Add Office files: Word-Excel-PowerPoint
• Add PDF Files
• Insert a Flash banner

Ideas for Promoting Your Store

As I mentioned back in February Share Your Wares events can increase your exposure on ebay http://bluesandmore.blogspot.com/2006/02/share-your-wares-groups-and-discussion.html Use a signature file on email and any groups you post to regularly, add links to your blog(s) and websites. Here are even more ideas for increasing your store traffic http://reviews.ebay.com/How-to-Promote-Your-eBay-Store_W0QQugidZ10000000000077591

Keyword selector

The title of your auction contains keywords. Avoid the cliche' L@@K or words like cute or pretty. Use words the buyer might search on. To find out how many times a certain keyword was searched for in a given month try a keyword selector tool. It shows all related searches for the entered keyword. To find a keyword selector tool, put the words keyword selector in a search engine or just try these http://inventory.overture.com/ or https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox

Best Offer

Earlier this year EBAY started accept best offer and many of my store items offer that option. I am ok with it most of the time BUT I had an incident where someone who sells Avon Vintage (read discontinued) fragrance made a low ball offer of $4.00 when I had offered a full bottle for $7.99. Now the reason this did not agree was she was already selling a bottle for $35.00! I was not amused so I declined the offer, upped the price on my bottle, and am still aggravated. The thing is she could have paid my asking and still made a profit, but wanted to take advantage. Now I have sold many buy it now items but never saw another quite like this. What do you think I should have done?