The first thing to understand is how eBay users find things to bid on and buy.

For the most part, users just use the search bar to type in general terms.

Rarely do buyers check the “Search Title and Description” checkbox , which gives much more specific results. The checkbox isn’t even an option on the front page so it takes a savvy buyer/bidder to even know about it

Which just brings us to the fact that your title keywords are super important. A few buyers browse categories rather than search, but you’ll want to focus on what the majority does.

What this means is that most searches are only checking the title of your auction and not the words in your description and if you know this you’ll be ahead of the curve.

Here is a priority list for precisely picking the right ones for each of your ads:

Most of these rules apply most of the time, but there are exceptions. You have 55-70 characters for your title so do your best to get as many of these in as you can.

1. Obvious keywords that are specific to the product, spelled correctly.

2. A misspellings (or two) of the obvious keywords from the last rule.

3. One or two eBay keywords such as NR, OOP, Free S&H. A lot of experienced buyers search for these.

4. Other general keywords like NEW, NIB, MIB, NWT, Wholesale, Lot, etc. You can only use ones that are relevant to what you’re selling but they are very powerful.

Take this list and refer to it each time you list. You usually won’t be able to fit them all but try to do as many as you can. Once your listing is done with relevant stuff, start adding the misspell and the keywords and fit what you can into the 55-70 character limit.

If you intend to list multiple copies of the same item don’t do dutch auctions. Instead do different listing with different titles for each. This will increase traffic to your items and will attract different types of bidder and searchers.

Go make money,

Timothy Black