EBay has over 200m buyers, so with that massive customer base, there really should be almost no reason at all why an item does not get snapped up by somebody, and yet nearly half of eBay listings end up without a bid, and some of those listings do not even get a single visit, and it is usually for any combination of six reasons...

The first thing to check is the amount of visits your auction is getting. Listings tend to get the most attention in the first 24 hrs of going on and in the last twelve hours before it ends. This is important to monitor this first period because if nobody is looking at your item, obviously nobody can bid, watch or eventually buy your item.

This is easy to monitor - go to your listing and look at the counter. If your auction has been going more than a couple of days, and you've got less than about 10 hits, be a bit concerned. Less than 6, be worried. If it’s 3 or less, there is something fundamental wrong with your listing.   However, in all cases please look through the list below to see if there are any easy changes you can make to your listing title

1. Has your item got a photo?   No – then get one taken and get it up. Even something from your phone is better than nothing at all. Ebayers have lots of choice, and statistically will not bother to look at listings without a gallery image photo. It’s the number one mistake to make and will almost certainly lead to your item going for a fraction of the potential price or not selling at all.

2. Is your item, especially the brand name, spelt correctly in the item description? - i.e. if you're selling a Sony Walkman and you've had a bit of a finger fumble and typed 'Soney' then hardly anybody will find it. It’s a really easy one to get right, after all the brand name is usually written on the item itself, but so many people get it wrong.

3. Is your item title too vague? - i.e. if you are selling Tomb Raider for the Playstation 1, and you've listed it as simply 'playstation game', not only will anybody searching for 'Tomb Raider' not find it, most people seeing it in a long line of listings won't bother to look. Remember you have 55 characters in the item title – use as many as you can.

4. Have you got enough keywords in? - i.e. if you're selling a DVD of 'Gilbert Grape', make sure you get the actors names in the description. In this instance   Johnny Depp and Leonardo Di Caprio. Lots people who came across these actors in their respective blockbuster movies have not heard of this much smaller film and would not search for it, whereas they would almost certainly search eBay using the actor’s names.

5. Does your description look individual enough? - And I don't mean using the eBay 'featured' or 'bold' upgrades. What I mean is - if you're selling a ‘Titanic’ or 'Pirates of the Caribbean' DVD, and I think we can safely assume you would not be the only person doing so at any given moment - how do you get the attention of one of the seven people on the planet who do not already own it and get them to look at yours?

There are two ways of doing this: with the words in your title or your with your picture.

Put yourself in the position of your buyer, they see a big long list of items all with exactly the same title, which one catches the eye? By simply adding something like VGC (if it is in Very Good Condition obviously) to the item title you can break the pattern and get the browsers attention.

It's the same with the photo. Nearly everybody will have used the same 'stock image' gallery picture, but if you actually photograph your DVD, not only does it break the pattern, but it grabs the attention by not being a stock image.

6. Inappropriate start price. If your start price is too high, it will not draw the right amount of attention. Ebay buyers usually want a bargain, or to have it now, so there is no point in putting your start price at what you would like it to sell for. ‘But what if it only gets one bid?’   is then the obvious question – well, if your start is correct and your item gets only one bid then it’s usually because there are problems with the other areas of your listing, not because of the start price.

There you are - six things to look at if your auction is not to end in obscurity. Some of them minor, some of them major and to be honest blindingly obvious, but all of them easily solvable. The other handy and practical upshot of a bit of   'auction diagnosis' is that the same problem could be true of all your listings, and just one change will fix several in one go.

Thanks for reading.

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