Small steps to building more sales

This was posted on the PS board and thought some may find it usefull To make sales on eBay, people have to find your items! Search engine optimization is the process of getting your items "out there" so they can be found. Search engines constantly scan the internet for "new" content. If you want to be found, you've gotta be new. Here are a few easy steps to getting "found". Step One: Change the Links to Store Pages. Start in my eBay (click) Manage My Store (click)Listing Frame. Under links to store pages, just change the order of your categories or change to different ones. Step Two: Get Rid of Stale Listings. Go through your store and pick out a few items that haven't sold for a long time. End them and relist them. This is a good time to "spiffy" up any tired listings. This will re-sort your listings in the ebay system. I often have sales on items the following day, even if I haven't sold them in years. Step Three: Check Your Item Titles Make sure you use these spaces wisely! Titles with duplicate words get sorted out. "New In Box Diamond Earrings Includes Gift Box" would be dumped because the word box is in the title twice. Use every word you can think of to describe your item: color; size; shape; theme; brand. Step Four: Sign Up for RSS Feeds This is important. If you do nothing else, do this one. Start in My eBay (click) marketing tools (click) Listing Feeds (under RSS feeds for ebay buyers) (select) Activate your Store Inventory listings via RSS. (select) Make a file of your Store Inventory listings available (APPLY!) Step Five: Use Your Extra Store Pages (click) Manage My Store (click) Custom Pages (click) Create a New Page. This is the place to load up on keywords (which actually describe the products you sell). Step Six: Sign Up For (and use) Google Base Store Connector. Link This free service exports your listings to google search and several other search engines. (Hint: if you're getting a lot of errors, try sending your items in smaller batches.) These need to be reloaded monthly and they won't remind you. I think I get about 10% of my business from this service. Step Seven: Change Your Store Description Start in My eBay (click) Store Design (click) Store Description. Make small changes or large to make your content new! Step Eight: Utilize eBay's FREE Promotional Mailings Start in my eBay (click) Marketing Tools. I send an email newsletter about four times per year. Any more than that and people ignore it. Step Nine: Put Items on Sale Start in My eBay (click) Manage My Store (click) Markdown Manager. This sends the sale items to the top of seach and also, unless you opt out, ebay sends emails to your subscribers with your sale items. Step Ten: Change Your Key Words Start in my eBay (click)Manage My Store (click) Search Engine Keywords found in the column on the right under store design (EDIT) Step Eleven: Write a Guide This one is hard to find so start here Link Writing a guide helps in a couple of ways. First, it identifies you as someone who knows what they are selling. Second it give you an opportunity to create tags for the products you sell and drive in traffic. I know there are many other great suggestions for driving traffic to your store or listing. Please feel free to add to the list and ask questions. I hope this helps you! Happy Sales to You! Lucy

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