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Search eBay more effectively

Friday, December 29, 2006

If you use eBay regularly you may not be aware of how to increase the effectiveness of your searches. Here's a few tips below that may help:

1) Be specific
If you are looking for a particular item, put in more details e.g. if you want blue shoes type in 'blue shoes' rather than 'shoes'. If you are looking for a poster for your favourite band, type in 'bandname poster' rather than 'bandname'. Try also years or brands for specific results.

2) Search both titles and descriptions
The length of titles in eBay can be quite limiting - so if your search returns no results, try searching descriptions too.

3) eBay and Google search differently - use singular and plural versions
When searching in Google, your results will come back with both singular and plural variations. eBay doesn't do this so try both versions e.g. 'fish' and 'fishes'

4) eBay and Google search differently - and / or
Search engines do not use 'and' and 'or' literally - they allow you to use them to help target the results of your search e.g. 'fish and chips' will only find pages containing the words 'fish' and 'chips'. eBay on the other hand will only return results with exactly 'fish and chips' in the title / description.

5) Don't use punctuation unless it is standard
Again, eBay treats punctuation literally, so unless the item title or description uses it, you won't find any results e.g. if you want a t-shirt, search for 'tshirt', 't-shirt' and 't shirt'.

6) Searching for phrases
Typing in 'little fish' will find any results containing the words 'little' and 'fish'. Typing "little fish" (double quote marks) in the search box will find results containing words in that order only.

7) Removing a word from results
Typing in 'fish' may return results that also include sharks. What if you don't want sharks? Enter your search query as 'fish -sharks'

8) Removing multiple words from results
Typing in 'fish' may return results that also include sharks and whales. What if you don't want sharks and whales? Enter your search query as 'fish -sharks -whales'

9) Variations on words
From example 5 above, it would be time consuming to enter three different search terms, so instead enter (tshirt, t-shirt, t shirt) as your search term.

10) Wildcard searches
From example 3 above, it would be time consuming to enter different variations, so instead enter 'fis*' and any results containing 'fis' followed by anything else will be returned e.g. fish, fishing, fishes, fission etc...

11) Specific searches
If you know that you only want 'fish', type in "fish" (double quotes) to ensure that you only get results containing 'fish'. With some searches eBay automatically changes your search term to match more items. Searches using double quote marks will prevent this from happening.

Find eBay items in the UK or in the US.

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Article Directory Websites

Monday, September 25, 2006

If you have seen any Internet marketing advice or website promotion advice recently, you'll know the value of writing articles and submitting them to various directories. Doing this has many advantages including; setting yourself up as an expert in your chosen field and gaining backlinks to your website through links in the author resource box.

However, have you thought about where all those articles go? Many article directory owners make a reasonable online income through publishing these articles on their website. By placing AdSense adverts and other affiliate adverts on their site, and through proper website promotion, you can make money.

We have recently launched a range of both niche and general article directory websites on eBay. Most article directory sellers on eBay sell just the script and expect you to do it all yourself. However, the LittleFish Web Design article directory sites include a domain name, hosting and are setup for articles to be automatically added ready for you to approve.

We have made alterations to the script to encourage better search engine and visitor access. It's not the 'just out of the box' version. Our extra features include AdSense, a realtime sitemap, translation services for visitors to the site and better security than standard. Currently the search box is linked into AdSense, and there are two AdSense areas - one in the right hand navigation bar, and one in the articles. In addition, there is a favicon - that's the little icon that appears next to the web address in your browser address bar, and when you have added the website to your favorites or bookmarks - to help your site stand out.

After the auction ends, you will be given help in customising and making money from the site. If you do need to move to a larger server to accomodate the growth of your site, we will even reinstall everything for you!

There's even some fast action bonuses - If you use the 'buy it now' feature, not only will you get all the above, but an automated approval script AND an article submission script, that runs from your site and allows you to submit your articles to hundreds of other article directories all at one time. The automated approval script is setup to AUTOMATICALLY approve all submissions to your directory. This can save you literally hundreds of hours work with a busy article directory (just ask any article directory owner!). The article submission script runs from the website, and will obtain a current list of all sites that have been submitted to it's list. At the last count there were over 530 sites!

Go and have a look now!

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Find niche products on eBay for free

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

If you want to sell on eBay to make some serious money, part of your strategy should be to find what people are searching for, which of these sell at high prices, and sell those items. Luckily there are several ways to do this:

1) most popular eBay search keywords used by eBay UK users - this is exactly as it sounds

2) search completed listings - on this page, enter your search term, and tick the "completed listings" box underneath. This will show you all items that have ended in the past 15 days that match your search query.

Using these two ideas, you can quickly generate a list of possible items to sell. Happy money making!

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Ebay auctions - win more and improve your listings!

Friday, January 13, 2006

Knowing how frustrating it can be to lose an eBay auction in the last few seconds (sad but true, if it's something I really want, I'll sit there constantly hitting 'refresh', adrenalin pumping, until the end), I discovered AuctionSniper. This is a brilliant online program, that you input your eBay details, the item details and your maximum bid. At your specified time before the auction ends (around 5 seconds is normal), AuctionSniper places a bid on your behalf! It obviously can't guarantee you'll win, but does improve your chances, and is particularly good if an auction ends when you can't be at your computer. Also, you can set up 'bid groups' which means that for a particular item, you list all those items available on eBay, how many of them you want, and your maximum price, and AuctionSniper does it on your behalf - magic!

The next item I recommend if you are an eBay seller is Auctiva - it's free and gives you image hosting, scheduled listings etc...If you are bored of the eBay templates that you pay for, definitely give Auctiva a go - it'll give your auctions a better air of professionalism.

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