Making money on eBay requires a little bit more than finding something to sell and posting it on the auction site. You’ve got to know how to make your listing stand out and encourage people to click on it.

With up to 19 million items listed on eBay at any given time, finding the exact item you want isn’t always easy. Sometimes you have to sift through hundreds of items before you’re able to find the exact item you’re looking for.

Because of this many buyers, particularly the experienced ones, skim over the listings, never actually clicking into an auction listing unless they know for sure it contains the item they want.

Furthermore, search results and category listings all look very much the same. You can use various listing upgrades such as bold or border, but the problem with that is that everybody else has those same options available to them as well.

As such, you want to do everything you can to make sure someone looking through the listings knows exactly what it is that you have, AND that you do what you can to make your listing stand out.

Using a Gallery Image to Make Your Listing Stand Out

Part of making your listing “pop” out at viewers is having a good descriptive auction title that reads well. But there is another, very important thing you should almost always have, and that is a gallery image.

By having a gallery image a buyer can see what it is that you’re selling and therefore leave no doubt as to whether or not that’s the item they’re looking for. That way, a buyer doesn’t have to waste time (something they aren’t likely to do) to click into your auction to make sure your item really is what they are looking for.

Be sure to use your best photo, one that shows important detail and doesn’t waste space showing unimportant things like your fuzzy carpet or trumpet case. The buyer is interested in the trumpet, not the case!

The gallery image is also a perfect opportunity to make your listing stand out from the others. Run a search on eBay for anything you want. Do you notice how all the listings look very much the same? Most of the time you’ll notice that everybody (especially in any electronics category) is using the same stock photo of the product. Use a gallery image that will stand out from the others!

Other Listing Upgrades

eBay has several listing upgrades available. These include bold, highlight, frame, and subtitles. In deciding whether or not to use any of these upgrades, remember that the idea is to make your auction stand out from the others. There are times when using a listing upgrade can actually cause your listing to be less noticeable.

If a lot of sellers are using a particular listing upgrade, and your auction listing is surrounded by these auctions, then your auction will simply blend in if you are using the same listing upgrade. You’ll actually stand out more by not using a particular listing upgrade if all the other sellers around you are.

However, the only way to know for sure whether using a particular listing upgrade is beneficial to you or not is through in other words, you’ve got to give it a try. And trying is often the hardest step for most people. Just remember, you won’t make money on eBay unless you try.

PowerSellerPros (http://www.powersellerpros.com) offers free advice about how to make money on eBay. Art Gib is a freelance writer.

Related Articles