Optional Listing Features for your eBay listing

When you’re listing an item for sale, you’ll no doubt be presented with eBay’s recommendations to improve your listing. This usually consists of recommending that you add one of the options that will improve your final selling price. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? But getting carried away with these options is easy and can lead to spending all your profits before you earn them.

In the eBay University classes, instructors quote auction success rates for the various features, but in the real life of your business, success varies from listing to listing and category to category. If you take the boldface option and then your listing appears in a category full of boldface titles, the bold just doesn’t have the punch you expected to get (and paid for). Your item would stand out more without the bold option. It’s the same with highlighting. Certain categories are loaded with sellers that go overboard in the use of this feature all the auction titles appear in a big lavender blur.

You need to weigh the pros and cons in terms of how these options affect your eBay business. Will spending a little extra money enhance your item enough to justify the cost? Will you be able to make the money back in profits? You must have a good understanding of what the options are and when and how you can use them to their fullest advantage.

For every item you put up for sale, you have to pay a minimum of two fees: an insertion fee for listing the item and a final value fee. (I discuss these two fees in the “eBay’s Cut of the Action” section, later in this article.) If you accept credit card payments through PayPal, you must also pay a fee to the payment service. Estimate your expenses from these basics before you consider spending money for advertising.

Home-page Featured auctions

A new user going to visit eBay for the first time arrives at the eBay home page, eBay.com. A Featured Items area appears in the middle of the home page; below this area are links to six home-page Featured auctions. When the user clicks the See All Featured Items link, the home-page Featured Items page appears. Most of these items are fixed-price listings that feature hundreds of items at a time. Many also feature specialty items that list for tens of thousands of dollars.

If you want the opportunity to have your listing title link occupy this very special piece of real estate, the home-page Featured auction option will set you back $39.95 for a single item. If you have two or hundreds of widgets to sell, it’ll cost $79.95. For big-ticket items, you’ve found the perfect location to draw an audience that may easily earn back your $39.95. People who are new to eBay come in through the front page; this is prime real estate. The six auctions featured on the home page rotate randomly throughout the day. There’s no guarantee that your item will be featured as one of the six home page links but it will appear in the home-page featured category linked from the home page.

Another benefit of this option is that if someone searches your keywords or browses through your category, auctions featured on the front page appear at the top of the page (along with Featured Plus auctions, which I describe next). But you must keep in mind how much you’re paying for this option. Unless your auction will bring you more than several hundred dollars, this feature probably isn’t worth the additional cost.

eBay’s special combo deals

Any restaurant that serves up a menu of tempting treats will usually offer combo deals. Surprise so does eBay. They can be a great way to save money while combining options: Value Pack: I use the Value Pack all the time. It’s only $0.65 and combines some of eBay’s best features at a bargain-basement price:

- Gallery: You have to have a Gallery picture to make your item stand out (regularly $0.35).

- Subtitle: Give your item some extra selling power with the extra information you put in your subtitle (regularly $0.50).

- Listing Designer: This can be a little iffy. Choose from one of the many colorful graphics eBay has to offer if one appeals to you. But you may have your own template, or you may just not want to use one of the kitschy graphics. That’s okay too. You don’t have to use Listing Designer to get this deal; just leave the Listing Designer box empty when you get to that part on the Sell Your Item form (regularly $0.10).

So, you actually get $0.95 worth of options for $0.65. Even if you don’t use the Listing Designer, you’re saving money. Pro Pack: Whether the Pro Pack at $29.95 is a good deal is a good question. You get several big options here:

- Featured Plus!: I’m a big fan of this (it really works), but it’s only $19.95 by itself.

- Gallery Featured: In this book, Gallery Featured doesn’t even get its own heading because I think it’s redundant. You get the same push for your item by using Featured Plus, but you get a slightly larger gallery picture and your link is laid out differently. I doubt I’d ever use these two options together; it’s an either/or proposition (regularly $19.95).

- Border: Yep, a great option, but it only costs $3.00 on its own.

- Highlight: $5.00 by itself; can be overkill when combined with the Border option.

- Bold: Yep, a good option, but it’s regularly $1.00. Because you’re not an amateur (you know the ropes of eBay), you don’t need to spend extra for this package. You can simply put together your own “pro” stand-out option package for only $24.30 by using Featured Plus!, Border, Bold, and a $0.35 gallery picture.