Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Attracting the Buyers on eBay


I have just listed another one of my Father in laws Treasures ( see previous posting )

Its a very good example of a porcelain plate from a famous Danish maker ...The problem is that it has a very limited market firstly because it's a niche market collectable plate and secondly because it commemorates an Australian university ..

My problem is attracting the type of people who would be interested ...former students of La Trobe University Melbourne would lap it up ...but they have to see it first.

Anyone got any ideas on how to get the Australian ebayers to take a look ???

Comments please ... My Father in Law is expecting great things from me :-)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rob, I think this plate has a universal appeal because I believe there is a specific eBay category for Bing and Grondahl...if that's so, you should probably change your category to this...Collectibles/Decorative Collectibles/Bing & Grondal Plates.

When eBay develops a specific category, that usually means there's a large enough market, across the board, that is interested in these particular items.

Linda

Rob. said...

Linda ...as ever I am indebted to you

Rob

Anonymous said...

Rob, something else occurred to me. This might be one of those times when, if space permits, you can target an audience in the title by adding something like Australia Coll. Or, to be more exact, something like: Copenhagen Bing & Grondahl Australia Plate.

I wish eBay would give us more space for the titles, but it's a marketing strategy on their part. They know that if you have dual target markets, the limited title space will force you to double your listing fees by assigning a second category.

eBay is second only to MicroSoft in marketing strategy. They might even be first by now.

Linda

Pamela said...

Hi Rob!
Funny thing! I just blogged about Listing Titles last night! I did a quick search on eBay for Copenhagen Bing & Grondahl and then just Bing & Grondahl. I learned something new about title searches - they ignore the & (or at least they separate it even if it isn't separate in the title like yours) That is space-saving knowledge because sometimes it is one space that makes the difference between including a prime keyword and not.

Anyway, the first search for all three terms returned only 8 items. The second returned 127. The question to answer is this: Will more people search all three terms simultaneously or is using just two adequate?" You can get an idea of this here: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

When I ran both options through this tool, the results told me that NOBODY searches all three but that about 1,500 searched some variation of Bing & Grondahl.

Based on that, I'd get rid of Copenhagen and add the College name. Yes, people do search colleges by title. They are looking for memorabilia. Old school yearbooks can do quite well for this reason, too. In fact, when I ran La Trobe in this tool, over 1,000 searches were returned. I don't think this tool is eBay specific but I do think it can give a decent indicator of what terms to include or exclude.

You also have the word plate in your title twice. Deleting the second "Plate" will give you more space to work with.

So, instead of "Copenhagen Bing &Grondahl Plate Australia Plate Mint" the title I would use is this: Bing &Grondahl Plate Australia La Trobe University Mint. This is exacly 55 spaces. I'd normally separate the & from Grondahl but doing so here will not give me enough room for everything. Since it won't change the search results, leave it as is.

Good luck!
Pamela

Rob. said...

Pamela

You and Linda ought to team up ...you are both top drawer ebay guru's ...thanks I will change my listing ...

Rob

Anonymous said...

Hello Rob,

You might see if there is an alumni group for the particular university at one of the yahoo sites, if there is you might be able to send a link to your auction for this particular plate...who knows???

At the very least there should be a Bing & Grondal Plates group where a link would be very useful

Just one man's idea to generate more traffic...Good Luck!!

Stephen B.
eBay PowerSeller: a-deal-4-u-2