Taking Back eBay: Promoting Your Listings

January 17, 2011

In an attempt to take back eBay as a good place to find hand made, artist and collective sold goods, I’m going to make a few posts on how to promote your eBay listings.  There’s plenty out there already, but much of it is outdated and/or geared for high volume sellers.  My posts are going to be for artists and groups of artists who may find it difficult to stand out in the crowd.

Establish a Web Presence

Free information and discussion rules on the internet.  If you’re an artist, then you certainly have something to say about how to make things.  So say something.  Build a blog, and start posting in it.  Post photos of your works.  Talk about what you do.  Even write about your feelings.  If it’s there, someone’s going to read it.

Discuss

In the past, forums were one of the best ways to get into discussions about your interests, but now, commenting on blogs is the way to go.

Comment on posts made by artists, poets, and other people you like in general.  This is a good way to get in some targetted advertising because you’ll expose yourself to people who are into the same things that you are.

Just one thing: do NOT post a link in your actual posts or listing unless you are answering a question specifically on where to find something.  In most blogs, there’s a space where you can put the URL to your website.  That’s where you link to your blog, and that’s it.

RSS Feeds

Your blog should have the RSS feed to your eBay store or listings in the sidebar.  To find your RSS feed to your listings if you didn’t do the eBay Stores thing, go to any of your items, and click where it says, “See other items,”  in the, “Seller info,” block.  When you get to the page that shows your listings, scroll down to near the bottom.  You’ll see a little orange rectangle that says, “RSS.”  Right click, and then click, “Copy shortcut,” and then paste that in your favorite text program.  That URL is the address to your listings’ RSS feed.

If you’re using WordPress, your widgets settings will have provisions for inserting an RSS feed into your sidebar.  If you’re using Blogger, you’ll need to edit your blog layout, “add a gadget”, and one of the things on the menu will be to insert an RSS feed.

Use the Promotional Opportunities Available

There are free classified ads, picture posts, galleries, and the like.  Use them.

Avoid Promotional Traps

There are many mistakes that people make in promoting their websites.  Among them are spamming the crap out of everyplace you can find, posting multiple instances of the same link in posts, and discussing nothing but how great your  business is every dang where.  Don’t annoy people.  This will not promote your business, and may even reduce your Google ranking. 

There should be no time that you have a duplicate article anywhere unless you are being promoted by other people who like you.  That’s not going to happen if you piss people off.

…and that’s about it.  If you follow these steps, you’ll gain visibility “organically”.  Be aware that it may take a month or two before you are somewhat known, and a year or more before you’re a household name in your genre.  Things could however move considerably faster if people like your work.  This brings me to the last step:

Prepare for Success

No really, prepare for it, because it might come all of a sudden.  You’ll need to know how you’re going to handle a higher load of requests and orders.  You’ll also need to figure out which things you want to keep rare, and which you don’t mind becoming the latest fad. 

More than anything else, especially if you make jewelry, figurines, dolls, and the like, you’ll also need to figure out how you’re going to compete if some large company gets ahold of your idea and mass produces it.  It happens more often than you think.  Be ready.

Good luck with your artistic ventures, and don’t forget to post your works on Hand Made at Money’s Mama!

Posted in eBay, Selling Online | Tags: ebay, get more traffic on ebay, how to sell on ebay, make money with ebay, promote ebay listings, promote ebay store, promote your ebay, selling on ebay