Ambitious Sales Drive

[Rednosty]

It's a sort of cube of white translucent material with a wire frame. You put your auction item inside it and some special photographic lighting outside. The material 'spreads out' the light as it passes through, plus it bounces around inside the cube. It just means you get good lighting without strong shadows. You can get the whole setup including lights for relatively little cost.

Perhaps you should sell them on Ebid! I would buy one!

Talking of which I went on a search and found this......Spot the mistake

http://uk.three.ebid.net/perl/auctio...7-0&mo=auction

[nykmedia]

What nobody else interested? Not even if I say I've had 33 sales since last Saturday! I'll get my coat!

Very interested and congratulations on improved sales
I'll be updating all my listings to include a short paragraph in each with links to all my other stores and the buddy link... just as soon as I am completed house moves and got a phoneline in the new one.
I'm not sure how or why, but someone told me that the more links to within the same site, the faster the spidering process was completed. Anyone know if this is true? I know that it spiders at least one third of the description page, so every word contained within that (possibly the entire description) will be found via the search engines. As much relevance to what buyers may key in to search is, I think, the best thing. I know I have a tendancy to search for the obscure, just in the hope of finding a bargain that everyone else may have missed LOL The more often these searches lead to eBid, the more exposure this site gets and it can only follow that many more people will come to look. I hope

[artlandish]

"but someone told me that the more links to within the same site, the faster the spidering process was completed. " I read that somewhere as well. If you don't have inbound(?) links within your website, the homepage will be indexed but the pages within the website won't be indexed cos the spiders stop at the homepage. They have nothing to "latch" onto to take them to the other pages.

[kedo]

So just to summarise

On the 'technical' side we should make sure to have:-
- As many key words in the title as possible (obvious).
- Repeat the title with key words in the auction description.
- A named photograph using the same key words.
- A link to our buddy points sign-up page.
- 4 more links to our other free shops (assuming we have platinum membership). It also follows that we should have the full five shops if we can.

On the sales side:-
- A message beside, or as part of, the link to our buddy points sign-up page to counter the obvious sales objections which will be things like - it's going to be too complicated, it's going to take too much time, it will cost money etc.

I have a feeling I've missed something out?

The next question is - should we avoid outgoing links, I sometimes link to Wikepedia for instance?

The question after that is - how important is it that the cross-promotion thingy isn't working? I'ts four, or is it five, more links on each auction page.

[nykmedia]

Refarding trhe links:

One other simple way to avoid having to list all the store links is a single link to your 'About' page, which lists all your stores. It does mean, however, that your store name should have an instantly recogniseable description so that buyers can see what, exactly, you sell from there if the name doesn't give any clues.

I would avoid outgoing links if possible but believe that when a site is being spidered, only the base URL links are followed, anything leading offsite would be missed out and just included as text. Something else to remember when writing anything anywhere about eBid. Instead of just saying eBid, say 'eBid online auctions' or include the complete url as http://www.ebid.net or whatever.
I'm now off to check my own 'About' page, just to make sure I have everything covered there too.

[Gothicina]

Interesting set of articles, although written about websites, much of the information is relevant to auction listings as well.

http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167961
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2168021

[kedo]

Refarding trhe links:

One other simple way to avoid having to list all the store links is a single link to your 'About' page, which lists all your stores. It does mean, however, that your store name should have an instantly recogniseable description so that buyers can see what, exactly, you sell from there if the name doesn't give any clues.

Yes, it's a possibility but I think I prefer the links on auction page approach. More chance of additional sales. Just got another sale by the way. Best week on ebid to date. No NPB's so far either.

[*artsbanquet*]

So just to summarise

On the 'technical' side we should make sure to have:-
- As many key words in the title as possible (obvious).
- Repeat the title with key words in the auction description.
- A named photograph using the same key words.
- A link to our buddy points sign-up page.
- 4 more links to our other free shops (assuming we have platinum membership). It also follows that we should have the full five shops if we can.

On the sales side:-
- A message beside, or as part of, the link to our buddy points sign-up page to counter the obvious sales objections which will be things like - it's going to be too complicated, it's going to take too much time, it will cost money etc.

I have a feeling I've missed something out?

The next question is - should we avoid outgoing links, I sometimes link to Wikepedia for instance?

The question after that is - how important is it that the cross-promotion thingy isn't working? I'ts four, or is it five, more links on each auction page.

To add to your list, Damian also mentioned - I have also linked each auction for books in the same series to the other auctions for other books in the same series. This cross-promotion increases the chances of both human and search engine views.

[kedo]

Right, link similar items together.

Three more sales (one buyer)! What's going on. Could this be because the link to Googlebase, or whatever it's called, has been fixed?

[Gothicina]

link similar items together.

Maybe if you've got too many similar items to list to, link to the relevant category in your store instead.