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Help Your Sales with eBay’s Optional Listing Features

Although eBay’s display options aren’t quite as effective as a three-story neon sign in Times Square, they do bring greater attention to your auction. Here are your options:

  • Bold: The eBay fee is $2.00 ($4.00 for a 30-day listing). Bold type does catch buyers' attention, but don’t bother using it on items that’ll bring in less than $25.00. Do use it if you’re in hot competition with similar items and you want yours to stand out.

  • Highlight: The eBay fee is $5.00 ($10.00 for a 30-day listing). Yellow highlighter is what people use to point out the high points in books they read. The eBay highlight feature is lilac, but it can really make your item shine. Check out the category in which you choose to list before selecting this feature. Some categories are overwhelmed with sellers using the highlight option, and the pages look completely shaded in lilac. In these categories, not using highlight (and using perhaps a bold title instead) makes your auction stand out more.

  • Home Page Featured: The eBay fee is $59.95 ($179.95 for a 30-day listing). As with expensive real estate, you pay a premium for location, location, location. The $59.95 gives you the highest level of visibility on eBay, and it occasionally appears smack dab in the middle of the eBay home page (although there's no guarantee that it will). The following figure shows the featured listings on eBay’s home page.

    If you're lucky, your Home Page Featured listing will rotate through the home page at a premium tim
    If you're lucky, your Home Page Featured listing will rotate through the home page at a premium time of day.

    Buyers do browse the Featured Items to see what’s there, just as you might head directly to the New Releases section of your video store. But, because the vast majority of items found on eBay are under $25.00, the average seller doesn’t use the Featured Items option.

  • Featured Plus! The eBay fee is from $9.95 to $19.95 based on your starting price. You want top billing? You can buy it here. This option puts you on the first page of your item category and search results pages. This is a good option for moving special merchandise. Often, bidders just scan the top items; if you want to be seen, you gotta be there. Ask yourself this: Is it worth $20.00 to have more people see my item? If yes, go for it. The figure below shows how items are listed in the Featured Plus! listings.

    Featured items appear at the top of a search page or at the top of the Categories lists.
    Featured items appear at the top of a search page or at the top of the Categories lists.

    Keep in mind that you need a feedback rating of at least 10 to make it to the Featured Items and Featured Plus! listings.

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