posted on March 14, 2003 08:44:50 AM new
Would someone please look at my auction #2621151189 and tell me if I'm going to be punished in some way by Ebay? I'm selling a celery dish, and, separately, 5 salts. Just learned that they match! So I went into the salts auction and added a note at the top about the matching celery dish at #_____. Then I went into the celery dish auction and added "Salts Available" in the title, with a note in that auction about the matching salts at #_______.
Will someone at ebay think "salts available" is fee avoidance? What's the worst that can happen?
I didn't want to end both auctions and begin again, so this seemed the best route to take. It's okay to refer to other auctions in an auction description, isn't it???
posted on March 14, 2003 08:57:43 AM new
Nothing wrong with what you did, as long as you don't sell any of it off Ebay. I refer to matching items all the time in my listings that are listed under another auction number. Any bidder wanting both sets of items must just bid and win on both auctions.
From a marketing standpoint I would have place it between the next two paragraphs, but what you did is perfectly "legal".
posted on March 14, 2003 09:01:23 AM new
I sold some real nice wine glasses about 3 or 4 weeks ago and had the matching tall mixed drink glass ,the short mixed drink glasses,shrimp icers,martini glasses ect ect .I put in each ad make sure you check sellers other items for the matching set of blah blah blah ...just incase 1 buyer wanted all 48 glasses ..the whole set...I even had a picture with all 7 glasses and would type the auction is for the wine glasses only...e-bay didn't seem to have a problem with it.I didn't put the item number ...just make sure you click on sellers other item...but I put that in every ad ...because I gladly combine shipping...your not in fee avoidance your just doing good advertising
[ edited by toasted36 on Mar 14, 2003 09:02 AM ]
posted on March 14, 2003 10:22:48 AM new
Thanks, pals. My main concern was "salts available" in a TITLE, worrying that someone at ebay may not see that I have the auction number for the salts further along.
If you all think I'm not going to be hung or shot for this by the ebay weirdies, I'll leave it.
Funny thing is, I just discovered these are matching this morning and it caused a Major Flurry of activity at my computer, I must say, trying to rectify it right away. I don't know where my head was when I listed these items!
posted on March 15, 2003 07:39:44 PM new
This is not keyword spamming.
I have seen listings with keyword spamming and this doesn't even begin to qualify. Keywords spamming involves putting many brand names or item names that have nothing to do with the item on hand, or the brand on hand. The salts DO have something to do with this auction since they match this item.
Imagine a high fashion item for sale that says "not Versace, not Calvin Klein, not... and on with many other desinger names in the listing. The seller is trying to get his item in front of people looking for those specific items and thinks he can get them to look at his item(s).
Or you search for a specific item and get results that includes something completely unrelated to the search and does not even seem to contain the search words in the text or title.
If you look at the source code for one of those, you will likley find hundreds or even thousands of words, in a font color that matches the background of the auction so they are not visible. The words will represent thousands of item names people search for. Like "dress, garden, ink, computer, pants, shoes, jewelry, car, battery, medical, fabric, money, CD, VHS, tape, box, ...
Any way, you get the idea. The word spammer's idea is that anyone searching for most anything will have his items show up to be seen. When a lot of people use this "trick", it makes searching useless. You could end up with thousands of results that have nothing to do with what one is looking for.
Your few words neither violates the letter or the spirit of anti word-spamming. In fact, a buyer might be quite pleased when searching for "salts" he finds this piece to match salts already offered by the seller.
But I agree the word "salts" belongs in the description, not in the title for the other piece, per Ebay guidelines.
