Hello from TheLostMenagerie

thelostmenagerie · Posts: 2

I've decided to try out some new venues, and here I am! Like many, I've tired of that evil big auction site, and am sampling a few alternatives. I'm still tweaking the store out a little bit, and trying to get back into the groove. Hopefully I've found a new home! ~Mike Very Happy

tigercreekgifts · Posts: 6293

Welcome! You have some cute things for sale. So nice to see that you have your terms, about, and contact pages filled out. So many new sellers don't even bother to fill them out. Good luck!

MoonwishesStore · moderator Posts: 17389

Hello Mike and Welcome! You are doing good with setting up things in your titles try to avoid putting hyphens and those cutie symbols between words. No need for commas either. To search engines that makes

thelostmenagerie · Posts: 2

@Moonwishes You actually just gave me the single most important bit of information ANYONE has ever given me during my 17 years of online selling.. I have literally posted MILLIONS of auctions/Buy It Nows on eBay. At my peak I had 3.5 million items ON AT ONCE (I was selling for many wholesale companies and doing drop shipping). I always thought that the "~" mark was ignored when doing searches. So I just now did a quick test, and the symbol IS ignored when on eCrater and Bonanza, BUT is recognized on eBay and Etsy.

If I searched eCrater with the term "rhinestone~gold" I got the same results as "rhinestone gold". If at eBay "rhinestone~gold" gave me 16,341 results, but "rhinestone gold" gave me 236,431. So the symbol has no affect at eCrater, but huge at eBay and Etsy. AND I always used that little booger. I seriously limited my own searches. To be on the safe side, I will remove the symbol from my titles anyway. TY

Thanks for the total character count of the title. I wasn't sure how many characters. Some of the titles I carried over from another site that has a limit of 84 characters. Like I said, I'm still tweaking everything out.

AtMemoryLane · Posts: 510

Really nice store with very unique items. I wish you well.

And Welcome to eC.

thelivesandlovesofmaggiethecat · Posts: 10159

Welcome to eCRATER. I agree with Moonwishes about your titles.

I love your dog doorstops.

MoonwishesStore · moderator Posts: 17389

Hey Mike you are welcome. Amazing how some people if you told them that, would have said they have been selling for years and know what they are doing, ie. shut up! Titles and how they are structured, followed by the listing info and the two biggest factors in bringing in sales.

A lot of sellers coming on to ecrater miss the thing about 100 character titles and 10 free pictures, but with some venues those titles are always hard to fit in. I think at one point eBay only allowed 50+ characters or was that Amazon? I've been selling too long! We thought we were in heaven when they raised it a bit.

Thankfully we don't see the L@@K nonsense much any more on listings in general, but I was just visiting a store that sells what I do. They used mostly 13 character (two words) in their titles. They went on to have about 8 word descriptions as well, leaving out the most essential information on the product! Seems like some sellers think they are writing for Reader's Digest Condensed Books.

I try to change my listings as I learn new things. The hardest thing about that is carrying those changes to such a large bunch of inventory, so I started tweaking and updating listings to my newest, best layout daily after shipping off orders. It is neat to see how quick some of those items sell after being updated. The tweaking gets all my inventory looking fresher. I have just been noticing in the last month or two that my old scanner left photos rather dark and hard to see details, so I've been rescanning when needed. I sell sewing patterns and one company, Vogue, loves to dress their models in black or very dark brown/gray outfits with a black background. My new scanner helps to lighten that up and shows the garment details. So there is always something new to learn and put into practice.