Everybody sells on eBay now, and chances are that your auction will compete with many others for the sale. You need to gain an edge and make your auction look better than every other auction that’s selling that same old Dukes of Hazard ash tray. Taking the time to optimize your eBay auctions can pay off at the end of the auction.

1. Make the most of the title

The #1 mistake I see eBay sellers make is with the title. What every seller should know is that you don’t make the title of your auction simply the name of the item. In fact it shouldn’t be treated as a title at all. This is where you use search terms for your item. You want to use words that people are likely to search for on eBay.

Instead of:
Super Nintendo Gaming Console

Use:
SNES Super Nintendo Video Game Console NES

This way you will gain audience from people searching for SNES, Super Nintendo or even the older NES. Who knows, maybe that person searching for an NES will decide to but your SNES.

You can even purchase a subtitle if you need more than 55 characters.

2. Get to the point

Keep your item description brief. Nobody cares to read about your business. The people that use those fancy borders and graphics are also missing out on people that only have a 56K connection which most web users are still on by the way. The more a potential bidder has to scroll down the page to read your babble, the worse off your auction is.

If you have too many terms and conditions, nobody is going to bother reading them, or bidding on your item for that matter. You lose trust if you have too many stipulations.

3. Use proper grammar

Poor grammar indicates ignorance to many people. If a problem arises with an auction, ignorance is not something buyers want to deal with. eBay has a built in spell checker you can use. It also doesn’t hurt to have somebody else proofread your auctions before you post them. If you’re one of the people that is lazy and uses ALL CAPS, you need your keyboard taken away from you.

4. Post during high volume of traffic

The more people there are on eBay, the more people to view your auction at the end of it. The end of the auction is typically when the most action will take place for bidding. You want to time your auction to end at a peak time. Aron Hsiao at About.com says in this article that the best time to post is between 8:00pm and 10:00pm PST. The best day to post is on Sunday.

5. Use your own photo storage

The included eBay photo uploader sucks. For people running higher resolution monitors, the pictures are way too small even when enlarged. Use Photobucket or your own web host to serve your photos and include them in your auctions. Photobucket allows you to upload a large, detailed file and will provide you with the HTML to include in your auction so that all bidders can see the crisp detail of the item. Don’t make the photo too large though as it will be slower to download.

eBay does allow an option to display larger photos, but it’s 75 cents more. Screw that crap!