Thursday, August 5, 2010

BEGINNERS GUIDE TO SELLING CLOTHING/TEXTILES

This is a quick guide to help you stand out from the hundreds of thousands of items on ebay, and to boost your sales. There are five areas you need to address when selling any item of clothing on ebay. Although this guide is mainly for clothing, it can relate to almost all items sold on ebay.1. A TRAFFIC GRABBING TITLE2. GOOD ITEM DETAILS3. DECENT PHOTOGRAPHY4. DE-CLUTTER YOUR LISTING5. HONESTY1. THE TITLEA huge mistake new sellers make when listing is to use decribing words or what they think are attention grabbing words like 'L@@K' or 'SEXY' or 'BARGAIN' or punctuation. Nobody searches for these terms, and punctuation is a waste of space. Celebrity names are also usually a waste of space. You need to make sure that your listing has as many search engine submitted words as possible to make sure that your item comes up in any many searches as possible. In your title all you need is : Condition, Fabric, Brand, Size (In numbers and letter), Colour. If you have space, you may now put season, item style, occasion and patterns if there are any. Remember you only have 55 characters to work with. For example if you are selling an old lipsy dress, you can say 'LIPSY CHIFFON BLUE MINI DRESS SIZE 10 M LAYERED SUMMER'. This is better than 'Only worn once stunning lipsy dress size 10 or medium'. The second example only conatins three popular searches '10' and 'lipsy' and 'dress', whereas every word in the first example is a popular keyword.Just think about what you search for when looking for items. Do you search for exclamation marks or 'stunning' or 'fantastic'? No, You don't. 2. A great description-Make sure you use the drop down menus and fill them up with information. This is also submitted to the search engines so you can grab even more traffic by filling these in correctly. -Use bullet points wherever possible as most people are just skimming and don't want to read a 1000 word essay on your old jeans. All you need in the description is: 'Welcome to my auction', A quick snappy description, what the item will go well with, and NEVER FORGET TO SAY 'have a look at my other items'. Most people forget to explore buyers items, and this little reminder could double your traffic. 3. Decent photographyThis is where most new buyers lose sales. The biggest mistakes are cluttered backgrounds and blurred photographs. You wouldn't buy an item you can't see, or one from a person with cigarette butts scattered around next to the item (it's been done).Take the photo on a plain background. Avoid using flash for cd's, dvd's, and shiny/sequinned clothing, and instead use natural lighting. This is because the flash usually obscures and blurs the picture on these items. With smaller items, you can use a sheet of white paper, but for larger clothing items you can use a plain bedsheet or take a photo against a wall.Although it is usually best to use a model as it gives a better idea of the clothing, if your model is out of shape and the clothing sheer, revealing or tight, it won't make people want to buy it. Just use your judgement. If you think it looks good, most people will too, but if it's showing lumps and bumps, take a photo of the item laid flat.4. DE-CLUTTER- You need a Clean, clear layout. Resist the urge to use silly layouts
with flashing lights, slides and music. These take ages to load and not only are they
offputting, they also make you look like an inexperienced, unreliable
seller and people will be less trusting of you. Black text on a white background is best.5. HONESTY- Resist the urge to describe a used item as 'new without tags', as you will get caught out, and recieve bad feedback- Try not to keyword spam i.e. saying an item is from topshop when it isn't. Not only will your buyer be annoyed when they recieve it, but ebay will give you a violation and reduce your visibility in the searches.I hope this guide helped you get started. If so, please remember to give me a thumbs up.

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