posted on March 31, 2003 10:02:27 AM new
I always have a hard time getting everything I think I need into the title of my auctions, and this one has me stumped, I don't know what to put in and leave out. The item is a blue and white collector plate, made by Wood & Sons, England showing the Bluenose 2 fishing schooner in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada.
posted on March 31, 2003 10:07:09 AM new
Hi amber ... I think I would use Blue + White Wood & Sons England Collector Plate ... I think that all would fit?
I think there are more collectors of blue and white plates, and English plates than there are collectors of Bluenose fishermens' boats just my humble opinion though.
posted on March 31, 2003 11:56:57 PM new
I agree here. But of course be very sure to get the rest of the information into your description so the key words grab someone looking for, say, the schooner or for Nova Scotia stuff. You might want to double list this so you can sell it in collectible transportation category under boats or whatever they call it there. At least that's what I do a lot. That way if someone is looking at that category the auction would show up and he might be curious enough to see why it's there, by reading the description. . . .
posted on April 1, 2003 08:56:05 AM new
You're welcome. I double-list a lot. Always with a collectible that has a subject matter, if you're not sure about the second category, do a word search for that subject matter and on the left-hand side of search results you'll see all the categories. Pick one of the more popular ones--or the most specialized one--and investigate the completed items to see how things listed in that category have sold.
Perhaps you know all this already!
I can't tell you how many times a collectible with a known mark on the back has sold to someone looking for the subject matter on the front.
In fact, you might abbreviate your title, leave out the "collector" in front of plate if you're listing in a collector plate category anyway, abbreviate England to Eng. and you might have room in the title (for all those lazy searchers who just look for title information) to add Nova Scotia or Schooner! You can also do what some do, run all the words together but capitalize the first letter of each word to "separate" the words and get even more on the line. I don't do this but have seen it done in desperate situations.
posted on April 1, 2003 09:47:30 AM new
Another suggestion to increase the hits on your item - At the end of my descriptions I usually type a string of every word that comes to mind about the item-seperated by comma's. The itmes that I have done it to vs those I have not always seem to do better!
I also shrink the type size as small as I can -so that the words are there but not in a way that distracts from the item overall
posted on April 1, 2003 01:57:20 PM new
I appreciate all the help. Another problem I am running into is that it is made by Wood & Sons, but when I put an ampersand in my titles, it keeps appearing with a #38 behind it, but I can't think of any other way to write it. Can someone help me, and I am sure a lot of other people with what punctuations etc, interfere with searches? Is an apostrophe o.k. I have found that it often comes up missing in the title so it comes out Girl s instead of Girl's.
Roadsmith -I do use double listing quite often on my craft books that contain more than one craft, hadn't thought of it for this particular plate.
just my humble opinion though.