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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
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