eBay ~ Taming the Beast

Contents
Auction Training:
What to Sell
Let's Get Selling
Creating Your Ad Misc. Thoughts
Basic HTML
Pictures
Photos in Ads
Graphics Online
Cool Ads Online
Get Organized
Email Control
Other Buy/Sell's
How to Snipe
Shipping
Final Thoughts

JUST YOUR BASIC HTML

If you are not interested in "fancying up" your ads right away, then you can skip this section for now... but you will want to get into it soon. Believe me. Fancy ads and pictures sell!

 There are many programs available that will let you design your ad right on the screen (WYSIWYG) and then automatically convert your ad to the HTML format. In fact, Microsoft Explorer 4.0 and Netscape 4.05 both include pretty good FREE page composers.You can download them for free on our "Free Stuff" page. You will eventually want to use one of these programs, but I strongly suggest that you study the following basic HTML. It will make your learning of those programs easier, and I can't tell you how many times my "basic" knowledge has gotten me out of jams when my web design software decided it was in charge instead of me.
...
 HTML stands for Hypertext Mark Up Language. This is a fairly "simple" script language your browser reads to format the text and graphics on your page. Web pages are created using HTML. You can also use it to "jazz up" your auction ads a little and get them noticed. An HTML file is basically just a text file containing special formatting elements (called "tags") that tell your browser how you would like your page or ad to be displayed, or basically to look. It is fairly easy to add these tags to your ads and you can really go wild with them if you want, but I advise against it. My beliefs are to keep it basic and simple. First, you want to post your ads pretty quickly and secondly, you want your ads read. You don't want to scare off potential customers trying to show off your HTML expertise. I'm just going to give you the basics that I recommend, and if you want to learn more and go crazy on your ads, there are full tutorials on many web sites that you can spend many hours studying if you like. If you get to that point and are starving for more, try Webmonkey. It's probably the only advanced HTML site you will ever need. Even with my basics list, you will have to experiment a little until you feel comfortable using them.

 Formatting Text - The auction sight you are using must accept HTML or you are out of luck. Many do and they will tell you so, usually near the description area. Plus, that is usually the only area they will allow the use of HTML - not in the titles (they reserve that area to sell on their own.) The way that your browser knows that it is reading a tag and not normal text is that all tags are surrounded by < >. Of course, the "tags" themselves are read, but not displayed, by the viewer's browser. Let's take "bold type" as an example. Typing "b" will only show up as "b" is your ad, but typing will make whatever type follows show up in "bold print." To end the "bold print" you need to put the ending tag or everything stays "bold." In other words, you turn on "bold" with , and you turn off "bold" with . All HTML tags work basically the same way - turning on and off special features to make your ad look the way you want. The basic tags that I recommend using occasionally are as follows:

Special Feature

Turn On

What's Displayed

Turn Off

Bold Type



Your words here



Italicized Type



Your words here



Underlined Type



Your words here



Centered Type

<center>

Your words here

</center>

Horizontal Rule

<hr>

</hr>

Colored Type



Your words here



Note: Also try other colors blue, green, etc., but stick with basic colors for now. All browsers do not read all colors and your ad may not appear the way you want it to.

Type Size



Your words here



Note: Also try using sizes 2 through 7.

Type Style



Your words here



Note: To be safe here stick with single word fonts and don't use unusual type styles. Again, all browsers do not read all fonts and you may be disappointed.

HTML does not recognize carriage returns, line feeds, tabs, or multiple spaces. They all are interpreted as a single white space. To break a line and start a new line, or to skip a line, you have to do it with HTML. Here are a couple more tags that will help out with this.

Carriage Return

 

Starts a new line

None needed

2 Carriage Returns



Creates a blank line

None needed

(Note: is the same as but saves typing.) One last feature that may be helpful to you - the <UL> tag- used to create a bulleted list, and the <LI> tag - used for each item in the list. Here is the correct way to "turn on, add items, and turn off" a bulleted list.
<UL> (This opens the list.) (Example of what you see.)
<LI>First item in the list • First item in the list
<LI>Second item in the list • Second item in the list
<LI>Third item in the list • Third item in the list
</UL> (This closes the list)

(Note: You can combine the above codes to combine the effects (like bold, colored, centered type. Remember that you must put in the "turn on" tag in front of your copy and the "turn off" tag following your copy for each feature you decide to use.)

 That turned out to be a little more HTML than I originally intended to teach you, but you will probably use it all and want more later. There are many more HTML tags that can be used, but these are plenty to spruce up your ads a little, and you should be spending your time selling more items, not writing HTML. (Later we'll tell you about a slick little way to "borrow" the HTML format on ads you like.)
...
• Previous Page • Next Page