Selling on eBay - Part II
Jan 6th, 2008 by Kathy
Creating a template that can be re-used for all my listings was well worth the time spent designing it. There’s an area on the eBay page for a description of the item being sold. Instead of typing in a description you can paste in a page of html. I created each listing in my html editor before going to eBay. I then cut and pasted the code into the description field.
For each new listing, I did a ’save as’ in the html editor, changed the unique parts and then went back to eBay to enter the next item for sale.
I’m providing a free template that you can use as you want. You’ll need to download and edit the content of course but it provides a baseline format that you can plug your unique listing information into. You can find a lot of templates for purchase on the web but ultimately it’s all just html.
The seller forums on eBay have a lot of useful tricks and tips for creating your listings. There’s all sorts of code plug-ins for doing fancy picture tricks, too much work for me but I thought I’d mention it. I used 2 pictures per listing. The big one in my description is 600 x 400 pixels. The picture I use for the gallery photo is 400 x 400 pixels. I re-sized the photos in Photoshop.
A good hint I discovered suggested having a 400 x 400 pixel photo if you pay to have that little square image show up on a listing summary page (they’re called gallery images). If you just use a single 600 x 400 photo then eBay will re-size it automatically, putting white space around the image so it fits the square shape. The result: the image shown is really small.
I have a web hosting service for the Pink Chalk Studio website and blog. I set up a directory on my server and uploaded all the listing images to it. eBay allows one photo as part of the basic listing fee, additional photos uploaded to their server have a fee associated with them. If the photos are located on your server they don’t charge for extras.
The actual listing page the above screen shot was taken from.
I’m happy to answer any questions you have related to these posts. Please don’t comment on the quality of my html code! I’m a little embarrassed to be putting that out there because I really have no idea what I’m doing but it seems to work 
It looks really good!!!!!!! HTML can be ummm not so fun sometimes! LOL
Kathy, you rock! My hubby and I enjoy selling on ebay as well. Whenever we get a little short on money, we always come up with a few things to sell. I have never tried to make a template so I am going to try to use yours for our future listings!
Love the Karaoke story. I was once amazed to find how much one of my knitting books was going for- I sold it for about $250! I just wish I could figure out to make a ton of money off an artfully bent paper clip or a piece of toast with the madonna’s face on it!!!
I’ve noticed that the template thing is really necessary now-a-days on ebay. Yours look very nice.
Super professional looking template! I didn’t know the picture hosting thing (price wise)–although I did sign up with a service called Auctiva (I think…i have it bookmarked somewhere) and that service allows several photos as well for one price. I have yet to use it, but I’ll let you know when I do if that is worth pursuing as well.
Thanks again for sharing!
Thanks for all of the wonderful advice and help. Perfect timing too. I want to sell some of my too large fabric stash and other misc items around here. So much of this is over my head right now. I pray I’m a quick learner. I got a really nice camera for christmas so i’m ready to take some shots. How did you determine how much to charge for shipping? May seem obvious, but I didn’t know if you have your own scales or if ebay has some shipping amts.
Thanks for the tutorial. That is so sweet of you to take the time to share all of it with us. I sold themed scrapbooks on ebay several years ago and I’m clueless how I did it. This is a nice refresher.
Wisconsin hugs,
Joni
When I stopped scrap booking I sold all my Creative Memories albums in shrink wrap that were not available anymore. They sold like hotcakes and for tons of $$$. I’m actually shocked that you were able to use the designers names in the listings and they didn’t get them pulled. I know Denise Schmidt and Amy Butler try to pull all the listings than include their names, even though we have the right to sell un-used fabric that’s our personal stuff. But they say that it’s trading on their good name and people will think they are buying it from them ebay usually goes along with them, even though it’s clearly not true. Kudos to you. Maybe they stopped doing it. I mean how else can you describe the stuff other than what it is…Kaffe fabric.
Judy: At one point in time I read a lot about that issue with eBay listings. My understanding was that it related more to brand infringement for handmade goods. For example, someone made a purse using Amy Butler fabric. They could say “Custom Handbag made using Amy Butler Lotus Collection Fabric”. That statement is factual. They could not say “Amy Butler Handbag”. The latter implying that Amy designed the handbag itself and would therefore be considered an infringement on her brand.
I saw a lot of fabric from dealers on eBay and they all specify the designer’s name.
[...] Ich hatte mir vorgenommen, jede Woche fünf Links zu posten, über die ich in der Woche gestolpert bin oder die ich mir aufheben möchte, weil ich sie irgendwann einmal gebrauchen könnte … als Anleitung, als Inspiration, als Information. Jetzt gehts los. Ich muss auch mal wieder bei eBay verkaufen und darum habe ich die Erfahrungen von Kathy von Pink Chalk Studio mit großem Interesse gelesen. Selling on eBay - Part I Selling on eBay - Part II Selling on eBay - Part III Selling on eBay - Part IV Selling on eBay - Part V - show me the money Schön, dass sie ihre Erfahrungen mit uns teilt und sich die Mühe gemacht hat alles so anschaulich aufzuschreiben. Vielen Dank! — [...]
Bw’s Ebay auction template maker
http://www.bwlewis.info
its nothing snazzy but its a start…
Thank you so much for the html template, Kathy. You are always so generous with tips and information. Now I absolutely have to get on with my destash - as soon as my eyes have recovered from “html-blurry-ness” lol!