How to spend 5 minutes to get Tons more Buyers

If you want to know how to get more buyers on ebay read this article. The importance of doing a good title for your eBay listing is a deal breaker in whether or not you will have as wide an audience as possible, and therefore stand the best chance of making the most money.  In the past eBay only allowed 55 characters in which to do your title, which I always found a challenge.  Luckily they altered this and you are now allowed a maximum of 80 characters for your title.  Those extra 25 characters are a real godsend and really make it so much easier to create the best title which is super rich in keywords.

Spend 5 minutes and know how to get more buyers on ebay 

When a potential buyer types something into the eBay search box, these 80 Characters are the only place eBay looks in your listing.  If the keyword is not in there, your listing will not show.  Sure, there is an advanced search where buyers can search within a listing however this is rarely used.

For the newbies, what exactly are keywords?

Before I go on any further, let’s look at what ‘keywords’ are…  For those of you not so familiar with using eBay, the term ‘keywords’ may seem foreign.  A keyword is simply a word, or words that people type into the eBay search box when they are looking for something.  Let’s look at an example..

My wife was recently looking for a new doona cover for our little girl, so she typed in ‘doona’ ‘cover’ and ‘girl’ – of course they were not surrounded in parentheses, this is just so they stand out as keywords.  In addition, she also used keywords such as ‘bedding’ ‘girls’ (plural of the former) and ‘quilt’.    If you want to get a real bargain, you can even try typing in spelling errors, as some eBayers list their items with errors in the title.  For example, you could type in ‘dooner’ and see if anything pops up, it really will amaze you how many listings have errors that the sellers aren’t even aware of!  So this gives you an idea of six different keywords which were used to search for a particular item.  Of course you can branch out with more detail as my wife did and start adding more specific keywords such as ‘100%’, and ‘cotton’ depending on what you are looking for.

From a seller’s perspective, if you are missing a vital keyword, and the person searching has not used many keywords, then your eBay listing will not come up.  My wife obviously has keywords in mind when she is doing a search, so she does not miss any listings.  However many eBayers will not go to such an effort, or may indeed not even think of alternate words to enable them to find what they are looking for.  If you are missing out on important keywords, your listing will be lost in cyberspace and/or get very little exposure.  If it is running in an Auction format, it will have reduced traffic and therefore get a lower price.

When you are selling an item, always make it as keyword rich as possible, that way you stand the best chance at turning the highest profit for your sale.  Here is some help to do just that…

Using Google Trends

I will let you in on a little secret of mine which will be appearing in the next edition of my book “Million Dollar eBay Business from Home – A step by step guide”.  This little secret is called ‘Google Trends’   Oops… let the cat out of the bag with the heading!  This is a website whereby you can type any word into the Google Search box and it will tell you what other words people are keying into Google in relation to that word.  Not only does it provide you with other keyword ideas, it also shows you percentage wise which are being used the most, and then down the list to the least used keywords.

Let’s look at our example of the doona cover again.  Go to Google and type in ‘Google Trends’ or go there directly by typing www.google.com/trends  into your browser.  If I then type ‘Doona’ into the search box it will come up with the top 10 related search terms in order of popularity…  How handy!

This is what comes up in relation to search terms relating to ‘doona’ in Australia.  You can change the region accordingly.

Related Terms

doona covers                           100

doona bae                               95

doona cover                            95

bed doona                               40

king doona                              25

doona duvet                            20

doona covers australia           15

quilt covers                             15

King size doona                       15

Down doona                            10

By studying this list, you can see that my wife also could have used the keyword ‘duvet’ (not as popular in Australia, however still worth a shot) and even using the plural form of the key word ‘cover’ and using ‘covers’ as well and ‘bed’.  Of course from a seller’s perspective, you need to be studying these lists and including as many relevant keywords as possible.  Which leads us to the next section…

Mimic other successful eBay listings

There is a treasure trove of information in eBay already, free for the taking, so go into eBay and use other people’s ad titles for ideas.  Try and make sure they have a high number of feedbacks and therefore turnover of their product.

In eBay I typed in ‘Girls Doona Cover’ and these are two listing titles which I thought were quite keyword rich, and therefore helpful in creating our title.

Love Birds Single Size Bedding Quilt Doona Cover Set Hearts Girls Kids Butterfly

HOOT OWL Girls SINGLE DOUBLE QUEEN Bed Duvet Doona Cover & Pillowcase Set – NEW

From studying just these two listings we can see that the following are important keywords:

Bedding, Quilt, Doona, Cover, Bed, Duvet, new, any brand names and then what is relevant to your particular item… Single, size, queen, girls, kids, pillowcase, etc.  Other useful words may be cotton, 100% cotton, organic cotton, polyester blend, design aspects.  The list goes on depending on the specifics of your item.

OFFICIAL GIRLS TODDLER PEPPA PIG SINGLE DUVET QUILT COVER DONNA BEDDING AND SET

Above is an example of an error in a listing where they have mistakenly put ‘Donna’ instead of ‘Doona’, not a big deal with this particular listing as it is still key word rich.  Just goes to show that it is a commonly made error though, this seller is a top rated seller and has a feedback of 99.9% with 2926 feedbacks!

Creating our title….

Let’s give it a shot, we have 80 characters in which to utilise.

I am going to pretend that we are selling a particular brand by Shuteye kids.

New Shuteye kids girls 100% cotton Doona Cover Quilt Duvet Set single bedding

This comes to a total of 77characters, and if it was possible I would have stuck the word ‘bed’ in as well, however it would have pushed us into 81 characters. Just as a side note, if I was to be grammatically correct, I could have written it properly as ‘girl’s’ however this is not a wise move as the majority of users would not bother with an apostrophe when searching, therefore you would have wasted 6 precious characters.   If you have space left over always try and include the word ‘new’ – only if it is of course.
Well, good luck with creating your vastly successful keyword rich listing titles!  I would love to hear of your own experiences with creating successful and not so successful titles for your own listings.    In addition, I would love to hear of any buying experiences from bad titles, or any feedback on this article.

Warmest Regards

Neil Waterhouse

About the author

Neil Waterhouse is the author of “Million Dollar eBay Business from Home – A Step By Step Guide” and an eBay Multi-Million Dollar Seller.

In 2009 Neil was recognized by eBay and asked to speak on the Top Seller Panel. Through Neil’s seminars, books, articles and consulting, Neil has helped over 100,000 people grow they eBay businesses. Neil is the CEO of Waterhouse Research, a research company which finds which products on eBay are making eBay sellers over 100% profit as well as providing a list of the top 100 product suppliers. For more informtion,  see http://www.waterhouseresearch.com

For more information on Neil Waterhouse, see https://www.neilwaterhouse.com

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