Why Every eBay Seller Needs an About Me Page

Your page can be very beneficial for drawing traffic to your listings or to your eBay Store if you own one. If you have an off eBay website, you can also include a link to your website from your page... the only page on eBay where you are allowed to do so.

Your page is also crawled by the major search engine bots, so if you include the Special About Me Tag to display your listings on your page, those will get crawled and will help to increase your page ranking in the major search engines.

To insert your listings on your page, type the following...

<eBayItemList> - Displays the items you currently have for sale.
<eBayItemList BIDS> - Displays the items you are currently bidding on.

<eBayItemList SORT="n"> - Sorts your items list using a numeric code n to specify method.

• 8 - Sort by date, newest first.
  
• 2 - Sort by date, oldest first.
  
• 3 - Sort by end date of auction, newest first.
  
• 4 - Sort by price, ascending.

<eBayItemList CATEGORY="n"> - Lists items in the referenced category and its sub-categories.

• 353 - Antiques
  
• 266 - Books, Movies, Music
  
• 866 - Coins & Stamps
  
• 1 - Collectibles
  
• 160 - Computers
  
• 237 - Dolls, Figures
  
• 281 - Jewelry, Gemstones
  
• 1047 - Photo & Electronics
  
• 870 - Pottery & Glass
  
• 888 - Sports Memorabilia
  
• 220 - Toys, Bean Bag Plush
  
• 99 - Miscellaneous

<eBayItemList SINCE="n"> - Sets the number of days ended auctions stay in list. If n is set to -1 (the default), only current auctions will display.
<eBayItemList BORDER="n"> - Sets the thickness of the surrounding border to n. The default is 0.
<eBayItemList CAPTION="specified text"> - Displays your the specified caption at the top of your Items table.
<eBayItemList TABLEWIDTH="n"> - Sets the width of the Items table to n, where n is the width of the Items table as a percentage of the available space.
<eBayItemList CELLPADDING="n"> - Sets the space in the cells to n. The default is 0.

To see all the special HTML tags you can use on your 'about me' page, go to http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/html-tags.html and read all about it.

So what else should you include on your page? That's not easy to answer because it's your page and you should express yourself! Some folks like to keep it purely business. They list their contact information such as phone number, email address and mailing address. You can also include your terms and conditions, as well as some information on how long you have been in business, what your specialty is and talk about your customer service.

If you want to make your page more personal, that's perfectly acceptable as well. Lots of sellers include pics of themselves, their families and their family pets. They introduce themselves and write up a short biography, include information about how long they have been on eBay and what brought them to eBay. Just use your imagination and let your personality shine through.

Still other buyers and sellers like to use their page to publish lots of great information for other eBay users. And there are some marvelous funny and entertaining pages out there as well.

Whether you decide to keep it business or personal or a combination of the two, just put a bit of yourself into it and it will help make buyers more confident when it comes time to purchase from you.

Be sure to check out the eBay Community About Me Page Board as there are lots of great tips tacked to the top of the forum that will help you to design a great 'about me' page. There is a thread titled 10 Design Basics from ShipScript that is a must read... lots of wonderful design tips. And another must read thread tacked to the top of the Board is from MerryGoCats titled Picture-perfect ME page? Here's how....

If you need help, there are also several other regulars besides ShipScript and MerryGoCats that love to tweak 'about me' pages and offer design suggestions. They are also happy to design your page for you free of charge if you ask nicely and need the extra bit of help.

And feel free to check out my page as well. I have quite a few helpful tips for eBay sellers and a few other miscellaneous links to amuse you. That's about it for now. Later...
Lesley