Linking from Other Sites to Your eBay Auctions

One of the best ways to promote your eBay auctions is to include links to your auctions on as many other websites as you can. For example, if you have a separate web storefront, you should use that site to promote all the auctions you're running on eBay. You can also promote your auctions on any personal web pages you or your family might have.

The question is, how do you promote individual auctionsparticularly when those auctions have an extremely short life? If you include a link to a specific item listing page, that link will be good only for seven days (or whatever the length of the auction is). If you're okay with constantly editing and linking URLs, that's fine. For the rest of us, however, it would be nice to have a permanent URL to link to.

Linking to Your About Me Page

The good news is that you have such a permanent URL. It's called your eBay About Me page. As we just covered, your About Me page includes a list of all your current auctions, which makes it a perfect page to link to from other sites. Just add text that mentions "My eBay Auctions" or some such, and link that text to your About Me URL, using the code previously discussed. The URL never changes, even though your About Me page is constantly updated with the auctions you're running.

Adding an eBay Button to Your Web Page

You can also add a "Shop eBay with Me" button, like the one shown in Figure 24.2, to your business or personal web pages. When visitors click this button, they'll be taken to your Items for Sale page, which lists all your current auctions.

Figure 24.2. Add a Shop eBay with Me button to any web page.

To add this button to a web page, go to the Link Your Site to eBay page, located at pages.ebay.com/services/buyandsell/link-buttons.html. Check the box next to the My Listings on eBay button, enter the URL of the page where you want to display the button, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click the I Agree button. When the next page appears, copy the generated HTML code, and paste it into the code for your web page.

Cross-Promoting with Other Sellers

eBay's Cross-Promotion Connection lets you team with other eBay sellers to market your auctions at the bottom of each other's item listings. You can work with friendly sellers you know, or request to work with other sellers whose auctions you like.

The cross-promoted items from other sellers appear at the bottom of all your active items, just like your own cross-promoted items from your eBay Store. Your own cross-promoted items will be displayed first, followed by items from connected sellers.

To form a cross-promotion connection with another seller, go to the My Account page in My eBay, click the Marketing Tools link, and then click the Cross-Promotion > Connections link. When the next page appears, click the Request New Connection button, and then enter the user ID or eBay Store name of the seller with which you want to cross-promote. If the seller accepts your request, the cross-promoting begins.