What kind of browser are you using for online surfing?
Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Opera?? Sure, all are good
programs but I want to talk about an excellent program
called Netscape. If you use Netscape, do you know that
you also get an amazing WYSIWYG (what you see is what
you get) web design program called Netscape Composer
for free? Basically you don’t need expensive HTML
editors anymore. The list of commercially available
HTML editors software is endless – and the price
tags are enormous. Most people don’t want to spend
a lot of money to get started with their eBay business.
Fair enough, since the goal is to make money and not
to spend money. So it makes perfect sense to use a program
to design auction listings which is available for free.
And such a program is Netscape Composer.
It has the same professional features like FrontPage
or any other similar program. To design stunning and
professional looking eBay auction sites with Netscape
Composer you need to download Netscape first. If you
start up the program, select File->New Composer Page
and basically you can start immediately to design your
auction listings. You can make you letters in any colour,
bold, italics, use background colours (or even images)
etc. The options are endless. You can save this file
on your local hard drive as html file. I used to have
one file for every listing I generate. The best thing
is that once you have got a nice and professional looking
eBay auction listing, you can use it for ever. Just
open your last listing in Netscape Composer and edit
according to your new item. Amazingly, this takes only
a couple of minutes.
But how do you transfer your listing saved as a html
file on your local hard drive to eBay? The answer
is simple. Once you have logged in into your eBay
account and selected your category and starting price
you have to type in your “item description”.
Did you see that eBay allows HTML format? Have a look
when you launch your next listing. That’s the
time where you go back to your new listing you just
have created with Netscape Composer. Down the bottom
of your Netscape Composer page you’ll see a
button called: SOURCE - the source code of your listing.
Click on that and highlight and copy the entire text.
Select then the eBay site and paste this text into
the “Item description box”. Make sure
that all links are working and that all photos are
uploaded to the internet.
When you have finalised your listing you will be
surprised. A stunning and professional looking “DIY-listing”.
You can always use “ready-to-go” auction
templates and edit these according to your item. You’ll
see that with an professional auction design you can
easily attract more buyers and get higher bids. It’s
worth the effort. Keep in mind that professional web
design software is highly expensive and does the same
job. Alternatively, you can choose from a huge variety
of third party auction services doing the job for
you. But hey, there are incredibly expensive too.
Don’t you think that the eBay fees are high
enough and you can easily do it yourself without spending
any additional dollars. It’s really simple!
About the author:
Thomas Haselhorst is webmaster of http://www.auction-design-for-free
