Hour 20. Jazz Up Your eBay Auctions with HTML and CSS

Since its inception in 1995, eBay has grown to become one of the most recognized and heavily trafficked web sites in existence. Serving as the ultimate online marketplace, eBay allows you to buy and sell just about anything short of alcohol, tobacco, and human organs. Entire towns have been sold on eBay, not to mention a Grumman Gulfstream II jet for a mere $4.9 million. Although there are certainly unusual items listed on eBay, the vast majority of items sold consist of popular mass-market products such as sporting goods and electronics.

This hour shows you how to incorporate HTML and CSS into eBay auction listings, effectively spicing up an otherwise mundane sales pitch. You'll even learn how to create a slide show within an auction listing so that you can display multiple item photos without taking up too much screen space.

Try It Yourself

Before you can apply HTML and CSS to an auction listing, you need something to sell. It shouldn't be too difficult to rummage through your attic or closets and find something worth selling. Generally speaking, it's probably not worth the hassle if you can't get at least $5 or $10 for an item on eBay. It's a good idea to do your own "comparative market analysis" by searching eBay for products similar to what you're selling. That will help you gauge a starting price and a hoped-for closing price, not to mention possibly helping you figure out a shipping cost estimate.

After you've found a suitable item to sell, follow these steps to get prepared for listing it on eBay:

Take several pictures of the item, ideally at various angles. If it is a boxed product and the box isn't factory sealed, open it up and take pictures of what comes in the box. It's hard to provide too much information to prospective buyers.

See whether the manufacturer of the item has a web site, and visit it to see whether you can find additional information about the product. This information would make a great addition to the item description that you'll be coding in HTML and CSS.

Search eBay for similar items, paying close attention to how the items are presented, as well as their starting price and condition. Make notes if your item is a collectible and is in noticeably better condition than any of the other items currently listed.

Did you Know?

A good trick to help to determine what an item is worth on eBay is to perform a search, click Completed Listings on the left side of the screen, and then click the Show Items button below it. The search results will change to show only those auctions that have already ended. Prices in green are for items that actually sold, and prices in red are for items that did not selljust focus on the green prices to help get a feel for what price items have been selling for.

If you have a scale, go ahead and box and weigh the item. Then visit the U.S. Postal Service web site at http://www.usps.com/ to get an estimate on how much it costs to ship the item.