Hello all,

Since I became a fan of computer games I have collected a large number of games over the years, for the PC and for the consoles, not always with the intention of playing them but because I wanted them for my collection.
But now that urge to collect some of these games has pretty much passed and I am stuck with a load of titles I can't play and don't really have room for, and I could really use some money for future purchases and other things.

I wish to make a couple of adds for Ebay, both for the Netherlands and International but I am a bit stuck with how to make a good one.
Some of you make designs for both online and printed, can some of you give me some advice in how to make a good add I can use for the various games I wish to sell?
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Sure.

The first thing is keep it simple. Anyone looking for an item on ebay wants to see the item and the important information as soon as they go to the page. Often if they cannot find the details within seconds they will give up and look at a different item instead.

ebay now makes things a bit easier as you have some input fields for games, including the condition of the item, if it is new or second hand, the platform it works with etc and so you can include this information easily.

For the actual advert don't go too mad with different text sizes and fonts. And don't use more than four colours within the advert, and this includes the background colour of the page. Just include some basic html to format the advert and make it look nicer than just plain text. Do not use underlining. It looks horrible and you will never see a designer doing it. Instead just make your heading bigger using bold and header tags, which are <b> </b> and <h2> </h2>, placing your text inside of these. Centring the contents of the page also works well normally.

Something else that sometimes looks nice for game sales is if you can include some logos within the page. The logo of the platform the game is for and the title logo for the game itself.

And most importantly make sure you include photographs of the actual item you are selling, not images for a similar item you found online. For games take a good photograph of the case or box, the manuals and the disc or cartridge itself. Also something that can be nice is to also include a picture of the game running to show it works ok.


Finally the price and cost of postage. Make sure you work out exactly what the postage is going to cost so you can include this within the auction to speed up the completion of the auction when it ends so you receive your money faster and can send the item quicker to guarantee positive feedback. As for the price of the item, be realistic. Just because you paid a certain amount for an item doesn't mean it is still worth the same amount. Do searches on ebay and other sites to see what similar items are currently selling for and try to sell your items at a similar price. If you discover something is worth a certain amount then make sure you place a reserve on the item so you don't let it go at a lose.

I hope some of that is useful.
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Hello Harrison

So the best thing would be to make the add in HTML format.
I haven't worked much with HTML lately so I will have to brush up on that again, also no Italic right?

Regarding pictures, I have made pictures of most of the times I plan to sell; boxes, manuals, the CD/DVD, and hope to have pictures oon of the others.

Well I don't have absurd ideas about prices but a couple will be a bit more expensive as I bought them expensive on Ebay and I would like to have back what I paid for it as it is still in good condition.
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I created my ad designs in Dreamweaver, and then copied the design over to Turbo Lister. Once I did that I just added the relevant details in.

Turbo Lister is a great tool, in my opinion, as it allows you to add lots of auctions onto ebay in a short space of time, including pictures, borders and also lets you know beforehand how much your auction will cost to list.

If you do not have it already, it can be downloaded from eBay itself.

Hope this helps you.
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If you're taking loads of pictures, I find it best to host them on my own webspace and include them in the advert than to use eBay's built in-hosting as they'll charge you an extra fee for each one (you get one free).
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Good point, Alex, I forgot about that. Most of my ads have just the one pic.
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I was actually worried about that one, I also discussed it with someone else.

Do you know of any free webspaces, I don't have a credit card.
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I just made a simple layout in Notepad and then modify it with the descriptions, prices and pictures, then copy it into ebay.

I sometimes host the pictures on ImageShack, and sometimes I use other servers.
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As Steve said, http://imageshack.us should be OK - you're limited to images under 1.5MB (which should be plenty) but you can link directly to them and upload as many as you like.

I wouldn't suggest using Notepad to do the HTML though, far easier to use Dreamweaver or, should you not have it, a free equivalent such as Nvu
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I've always found dreamweaver quite complicated to use. And considering that the layout of my ebay pages is only very simple, notepad is quite sufficient for making a couple of bits of text bold, underlined, and different sizes, and for adding images at the bottom.

Also, if all you are doing is writing HTML, it is a bit pointless using any other software.
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