Writing An Auction Page That Sells!

by Craig Meyer

Published on this site: March 11th, 2004

Writing a successful auction page on any Online Auction site is the key to getting more bids and higher profits. Whatever you sell, you will need to make sure your items' ads are the best they can be.

The first step is the auction's headline. Try to make a clear promise to your potential bidder. Remember that your auction is only one of many and a bidder is more likely to click on someone else's headline if it sounds more interesting. If you make a promise to them, you will draw them into your own auction instead.

For instance: you are selling Chinese Meditation Balls. If the headline for your auction reads "Chinese Meditation Balls" you will get mediocre response. If it instead reads "Chinese Meditation Balls - PROVEN To Reduce Stress!" you will get a much higher response. This can also be one-upped by doing a little research.
Looking in the New England Journal of Medicine, you find a great quote that includes "50% reduction in stress levels among patients who meditate…" Now your headline will read "Chinese Meditation Balls - Reduce Stress by 50%!" In your auction's ad, you include the quote from the Journal as proof. Read those three headlines. Which would you, as a potential customer, be most inclined to look into?

Key Words are also very important - the words you use to describe your product are going to assist in driving traffic to your auction.

Use words that are likely to get searched and are also relevant to your product. For example when I was selling the Evolution Golf clubs. Not many people were familiar with the Evolution Golf Brand. However, these golf clubs were from a bankruptcy. I know that golf, bankruptcy and sale are all words that generate a lot of search activity - trefore the headline of my ad read "Evolution Golf - Bankruptcy Sale." I typically get twice as many hits on my auctions as my competition.

I also had knowledge that the same manufacturer that makes golf clubs for Orlimar, Yonex and Macgregor also manufactured the Evolution Golf line of golf clubs. For those of you that are not familiar with golf equipment these are some of the top names in golf. What I did in this example is I used these major manufacturers in the text or body of my ad. That way anyone that conducts an advanced search and uses any of those names will see my auctions. These are simple ideas and will help drive more traffic to your auctions. Remember traffic drives bidding, bidding drives price and price drives profit. In this one example I had a competitor that sold an identical set of golf clubs with half of the visitors. Why? Because they did not use key words in the title or the description.

The next step is your auction's ad page itself. The first paragraph should not be more than two or three sentences long and should have a further "draw" to pull your customer into the rest of the ad. If there is nothing there to entice them to read further, they're likely to hit the "Back" button and leave your ad.

Tell the potential buyer why he or she needs to own this item. What will it do for them? How will it improve their life? What benefits will they receive from owning this item? Don't waste time on gritty details--that will come later. First answer those questions.

The third step is the main body of your ad itself. Include photos or graphics in every auction, no matter what. Photos and graphics not only serve to catch the eye, but they help to break up the monotony of a lot of text on the screen.

The main body of your auction should include as much information as you can provide. If the article has bad points, be sure to mix them in with the good points. ALWAYS end the description with a GOOD point. Leave out shipping and other information until the bottom (see next step)...unless, of course, you are giving away shipping for free.

Now read and re-read your ad. Does it make sense? Does it have a flow? Are there any typos so far? Good.

Finally, you should end with a quick description of shipping requirements, your return policy, and other details. Be professional with this section and keep it simple.

Now, at the very end of your ad listing, put in one more punch to get the "potential" out of the equation and turn that person into a bidder. Repeat your headline with a slight modification to "move" the buyer. "Chinese Meditation Balls - Reduce Stress by 50%! GET YOURS NOW!"

Now, before you finally submit your ad, READ IT TWICE through and make sure it looks right, has no typos, grammatical mistakes, etc. Read it aloud one of those times to see how it sounds to you.

Now submit that ad and watch the bids come pouring in!

Craig Meyer is the founder of the Online Auction Academy, which trains people not only to sell online and at online auction, but to run a successful business utilizing multiple streams of income. To find out more about the OAA, sign up for a FREE online seminar featuring Craig Meyer himself! http://www.awwstore.com/oaa/.