CHAPTER 4 - THE KILLER AD
This is what is all comes down to, you take everything that
you have learned, and you put it to good use. You know what you want to sell,
you know how you want to describe it, you know what your starting bid will be,
and you have a picture or two up on the Internet that you want to use in your
ad. You are primed for action!
This next step can really make or break any ad that you have
come up with. If you’ve looked around eBay™ or other auction web sites, you
couldn’t tell one from another. You know what that means? You probably are not
inclined to buy from those ads.
You did see a few ads through, that you thought "wow
that's cool." You know the ones that used different fonts, in different
sizes, with bold letters, or different colors that really caught your eye. And
they used a great photo of the product, and even some cool graphics, right? And,
those are not only the ads that people remember; they are the ads that people
BUY FROM!
If you take the extra time to make your ad look good, the
people who are bidding on the item will realize that they are dealing with
someone who cares about what they are selling. They are dealing with someone who
will go the extra mile to make sure that they are happy with their purchase!
If you are already familiar with HTML, the language that you
use to create web sites, than you can pretty much skip this section. What I’m
going to show you here is how to make your ads look like a custom web page using
simple HTML.
There are a lot of different programs out there that can help
automate this task for you. Programs like Microsoft Front Page are a full-blown
web design tool that you can use. Or you can even use the more recent browsers
from Microsoft or Netscape to create a simple web page. The programs will let
you work in a WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET environment, and will let you create
some awesome looking web pages without needing to know a whole lot about HTML.
The section on eBay™ that asks you for a description of
your item, the section that says that HTML code is accepted. What this basically
means is that you can include any of the tags that HTML understands. These tags
can do anything from make the text larger or smaller, make the text bold or
italics, center the text and graphics on the page, or even link up to another
website. The possibilities are endless.
BASIC HTML TAGS
What I’m going to give you here are the bare basic tags that
you can add to your eBay™ ads to make them look better. This is not a full
course in HTML, but you can find a web site address later in this section that
will take you to a full tutorial on HTML if you are interested in such things!
If you have placed any ads on eBay™, you have seen the
screen where you enter the ads into the system. You enter your vitl information,
like your e-mail address and your password. When you get down to the box where
you enter your description, it says something there that you may or may not
understand. It says that HTML tags are acceptable. What this is telling you is
that you can use little bits of HTML tags to help your ads look batter.
Your browser, whether it is Netscape Navigator, Internet
Explorer, or any of the other ones out there, reads HTML tags in a very special
way. The way the browser knows that what it is reading is a tag, and not normal
text is that the tag is surrounded by <>. So just typing in "b"
will show up as a "b" on the web site. Typing in <b> will tell
the computer that it is to put into bold text the words that come after the
<b>and before the </b>. What the </b> command does is turn off
the previous <b> command. So basically what you do with HTML tags is turn
special features on and off to create the look that you want. Here are some tags
that I think you will find handy in sprucing up your web sites quickly and
easily:
BOLD FACE: <B> </B>
Any words or symbols that are between the <B> and the
</B> will be in bold face. So, if you are typing you want to stress a
section with bold face here is how you would do it. Say that you are selling an
item that is brand new, and you want to emphasize that. Here’s what you would
type into the description box on eBay™.
Here is the item you have been waiting for!! <B>A Brand
New</B> whatever the item is!
When the browser reads that, it will show on your screen: A
Brand New whatever the item is!
Horizontal Rule: <HR SIZE=# WIDTH="##%">
This command will put a line, or horizontal rule, across the
screen. You replace the # after the HRSIZE= with the height of the line that you
want. You replace the ## after the WIDTH= with a percentage of the screen that
you want to cover with the horizontal rule. If you want to create a rule that
covers half of the web page, you would type in: <HR SIZE=2
WIDTH="50%">
Italic Text: <I> </I>
Works just like the bold command, but puts the text in
Italics! And it looks like this: This is in italics.
Underline Text: <U> </U>
Works like both the bold and italic commands, but this will
underline the text that it surrounds. Here is what underline looks like.
And, yes you can get fancy. If you type in
<B><I><U> This is in bold face, italics and
underlined</B></I></U> you will get:
This is in bold face, Italics and underlined
Link to another website: <A
HREF="http://www.websiteaddress.com"> TEXT TO LINK </A>
If you want people to be able to click on some text where they
will be taken to another web site, this is the command that you would use. You
would replace the
http://www.websiteaddress.com
with your own address. And you would replace the TEXT TO LINK with
whatever you want the text on the screen to say.
Link to your e-mail address: <A
HREF="mailto:your name@yourisp.com"> EMAIL ME
</A>
This will make it easy for someone to send you e-mail. You
simple change the your-name@yourisp.com
to your full e-mail address. You now have a link that says E-MAIL ME on your ad,
and when people click on it, it will automatically go into their e-mail program
and start a message to you!
Load an image: <IMG
SRC="http://www.websiteaddress.com/imagefile-name.extention>
This command will load an image from any other web site to
your eBay™ ad. So, all you have to do is type in the address of the image, and
it will load when the eBay™ ad is loaded!
Loading a background for the page:<BODY
BACKGROUND="http://www.websiteaddress.com/imagename.extention>
This command is virtually similar to the last load an
image command, except that this one calls the image to be used as a
background of the ad page! This can really set your ads apart if used
correctly. Use an image that adds class and pizzazz to the page, but do not
make it distracting for the buyer! For a background image, remember light
and faded out usually works the best!
Changing the color of any text: <FONT
COLOR="000000">FREE DISK BONUS OFFER</FONT>
This is used anywhere in the text of your ad, simply
change the #000000 to a number that represents the RGB value of a color. See
below for more information on this. Anything that you type between the
<FONT COLOR="000000"> and the </ FONT> will be in the
color that is specified in the #000000.
Changing the background color, text color and link
color: <BODY BGCOLOR="000000" TEXT="FFFFFF"
LINK="#9690CC">
This goes at the beginning of your ad if you are going to
change the background and text colors. The above examples show where the
numbers are equal to the RGB value of the colors. You can find out all of
the different colors and their corresponding codes by visiting the web site
at: http://www.hidaho.com/colorcenter/
Again, this is by no means anywhere near a full
explanation of the types of things that you can do with HTML tags. For a
full tutorial on HTML, visit the NCSA web site at the following address:
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html
After looking at this site, you will have an even more
advanced understanding of HTML and how to use the tags of that language.
It’s really a lot of fun once you get used to it! And, it will help you
make an ad that will sell your products better!
SPRUCE UP YOUR AD WITH CLIP ART
Clip art is a great way to set yourself apart from the
pack at eBay™. It comes down to the simple principle that if your ad looks
nicer than the rest, it will indeed sell more than the rest. This may not
always make the most economic sense, but it is a fact that more people will
buy from you if they like the ad! You can use clip art of various styles to
get your points across, and to set your ads apart from the rest.
First find some clip art that you want to use. There is
plenty out there that is free for use on your website. Go into any computer
store and you will find CD-ROM's that contain 50,000 or more images of
useable clip art! Or, you can find a lot of clip art on the Internet. It’s
easy to find, simply go to your favorite search engine, like http://www.yahoo.com
and search for clip art. The sites are to numerous to list here!!
HOW TO GRAB CLIP ART AND PHOTOS OFF ANY WEB SITE!
When you find the clip art, or any photo for that matter,
that you would like to save, it’s easy. With most browsers, you simply
click the right button of your mouse, and select save image. Tell the
computer which directory that you want to save it in, and you’ve got it!!!
Remember that a lot of the images on the World Wide Web
are copyrighted, and you should always check with the image owner if there
is any doubt at all if you can copy the image for your own use!
No matter where you find the clip art, you will have to
use the same steps for acquiring photos to get the clip art to your web
space. You simply use the same steps that you used to get your pictures onto
the web!
ADDING ANIMATION TO YOUR AD
This is no problem whatsoever. If you can follow the
directions in the previous section to cut and paste clipart, you can have
animated clipart and text in your ad. If you don't already have an
animation library, a good place to start is the Animation Factory
(http://www.animfactory.com).
This site offers literally thousands of animated clipart and animated
letters that will make your page come to life. They also provide
simple instructions for downloading these files to your system.
FREE COUNTER
We can see how many people have actually bid on our
auctions, but how do we know how many people have stopped to look at our ad
for the item we're selling? You can obtain a FREE counter for your
eBay™ ad from
(http://ebaycounters.com/)
I’VE FOUND AN AD I REALLY LIKE, HOW CAN I USE THAT?
It’s bound to happen. You’re searching the web, or
looking through ads on eBay™ and you come across an ad that looks perfect
for what you want to use! How do you take that ad and simply change the text
and pictures to fit your needs? It’s simple to do if you have a browser
like Netscape or Internet Explorer. After the page has loaded in your
browser, choose "File" from the toolbar, and then select
"Save" or "Save As" and save the file to your hard disk.
You can now open it in any program like Microsoft FrontPage or Netscape
Navigator Gold, or any other HTML editor that is out there, and change what
you want! This is a great way to do as little work as possible formatting
the ad, and working on ways to make more money!
I’VE GOT MY AD ON MY COMPUTER, HOW DO I GET IT TO
eBay™?
All right, you’ve worked on your ad, and you are ready
to show it to the world. If you’ve created the ad with FrontPage, Internet
Explorer, or Netscape, you will have to click on something that says either
show source code, or show HTML. When you see the plain text HTML code, all
you have to do is cut and paste the information that you want to transfer to
your ad on eBay™ into the little box that says description on the eBay™
add an item to auction page. You usually only want to cut and paste the
HTML on the page that comes after the heading, and before the end of the
page. If you’ve got the </body> and </html> codes at the
bottom of your page, DO NOT COPY those to eBay™. Everything else is ok!
Don’t worry if you’re not sure if it worked right, you can click on
preview ad and see if everything is ok before you submit the ad.
You can, of course, simply use these simple HTML tags and
type them in as you place the ads. This is fine for an ad that you are only
going to use once. If you are planning to use an ad more than once, save it
on your hard drive first, so that you can have it the next time that you
need it!
If you don’t know how to cut and paste, here’s a
quick tutorial:
Step 1 Highlight the text you want
Step 2 Hit Control-C
Step 3 Go to eBay™ auction site, specifically the
description box.
Step 4 Put the mouse in the box and press the left
button
Step 5 Hit Control –V
That’s all there is to the magical world of cutting and
pasting. It works for just about everything on your system from text to
photos, so give it a try! It’ll make your life a whole lot easier!
There are also many other useful,
creative tools at this address
(http://www.auctionpix.com/)
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