Section 6.1. It s All About You

6.1. It's All About You

You've probably noticed the blue-and-red word me that appears next to some eBayers' IDs. Clicking this word takes you to the eBayer's About Me page , a personal Web page within the eBay site where eBayers can talk about their families, interests, and hobbies; display photos; link to their eBay auctions, eBay Store (Section 7.3), and outside Web sites; and pretty much present whatever they want to about themselves to the rest of the eBay community.

Smart sellers use their About Me page as a marketing tool, and you can, too. When you're first starting to sell and you don't yet have a lot of feedback as a seller, a good About Me page puts a human face on your eBay ID, making buyers feel more confident about bidding on your auctions. As you build your eBay business, use your About Me page to create a professional presence on the site: direct buyers to your eBay store or your own Web site, state your auction and return policies, quote happy customers, offer a way to sign up for your newsletter, and more.

Before you start designing your About Me page, find a few sellers you admire for the volume of their sales or the way they do business. If these sellers have About Me pages, study them. What appeals to you? What doesn't work? Learn from the pros.

Tip: Because eBayers come in all sizes, shapes , and colors (not to mention nationalities, religions, belief systems, and political leanings), it's a good idea to avoid discussing contentious issues on your About Me pageunless you'd rather get into arguments than generate bids.

You can create your page with your own HTML, or you can use eBay's forms to create your page. Either way, the process requires three steps:

Note: HTML stands for hypertext markup language, the lingua franca of the Web. Although it sounds fancy, it's really just a simple coding system for presenting text and other elements on Web pages.
  1. From the eBay home page, select services "About Me page Create Your Page .

    The About Me: Choose Page Creation Option page shown in Figure 6-1 appears.

    Figure 6-1. If you know HTML and want to use it to create your own About Me page (for example, if you have a Web store and you want your About Me page to have a similar look and feel), select "Enter your own HTML code" and click Continue; then you can type or paste in your HTML code and preview the page. If you don't feel like messing around with HTML, select "Use our easy Step-by-Step process" and click Continue.


  2. Choose a page creation option .

    If you're an HTML wizard, you may want to create your About Me page using your own custom-crafted HTML code. If that's the case, select "Enter your own HTML code." If you'd rather point-and-click your way to a nice-looking page, select "Use our easy Step-by-Step process." Click Continue.

  3. On the page that opens, type in your page content .

    If you're using your own HTML, type your text and code into the text box, and then click Continue. (You can add eBay-specific HTML tags (see http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/html-tags.html) to link to your Member Profile, display how long you've been on eBay, show recent feedback comments, etc.) If you want to use eBay's step-by-step process, fill out the form shown in Figure 6-2. You can include almost anything you want in your About Me page: a photo and description of yourself, links to other sites, information about your current auctions, recent feedbackwhatever you like. When you finish, click Continue.

    Figure 6-2. This form helps you to create an organized, easy-to-read About Me page. The top part of the form has text boxes where you can type in a title and a couple of paragraphs of description. Under Show Your eBay Activity (near the bottom of the screen), you can share recent feedback and show up to 200 current auctions. About Me is the only place on eBay where you can add links to your off-eBay Web site.


    Note: Although eBay lets you link to your own Web site from your About Me page, you can't use your About Me page to promote off-eBay sales. So don't use it to advertise specials that you're running in your online store.
  4. Preview and Submit .

    The final step before you finish your About Me page is to preview the page to see how it looks. If you're using eBay's step-by-step process, you can gussy up your page by choosing one of three different layouts, as shown in Figure 6-3. After you select the button next to A, B, or C, a mock-up appears instantly at the bottom of the page (scroll down to see it). When you're satisfied, click Submit to create your About Me page.

Figure 6-3. Choose one of these layouts for your About Me page. The white rectangle shows where your current auctions and recent feedback will appear: at the bottom of the page or the right-hand side.




eBay[c] The Missing Manual
eBay[c] The Missing Manual
ISBN: 596006446
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 100

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