| Despite being on eBay for a while and watching the auctions whenever I can, there always seems to be new types of auctions and products sold at auctions popping up every day. I recently purchased a cable modem after using a phone connection. All I've got to say is that I was stupid to wait that long. One thing my new high speed connection allowed me to do is run Hotbid searches on eBay a lot quicker. So I did and its unbelievable what I came up with.
One thing I found was another programmer who wrote a program real similar to mine and guess the name: "Hotbidz." Oh, the power of trademarks.
I found one seller selling those "Become a Powerseller Now" packages that we always see. I had been considering these a lost cause and not a way to make real money because the market seemed so full of people selling similar packages, but after looking over his stats, I came to a different conclusion. The seller was making an average of $200 an auction with one auction going over $400.
What is the point I am trying to get to here? The necessity of building an auction ad swipe file. When you see a new market emerging on eBay or an ad that just seems to blow the competition out of the water, save the page to your hard drive until you can explore it further.
This has been the secret of copywriter's for the longest time and there is no reason why you shouldn't apply it to online auction ads. The best way to learn anything is through examples. You can read a book on the subject, but unless you see ad copy in action, you really have no point of reference. An at eBay, you not only can see the ads in action, you can also see them tested in the amount of bids and page views each auction receives.
Now you can't take each ad and copy it word for word to use in your auction, but you can take them apart later and see what makes them tick. Look for triggers that would make you buy from that ad. And after a while of studying good auction ads, writing your own will become natural.
So what else did I find in my searches:
- An auction that was used to bind a contract.
- One printing program marketed three different ways, making the seller about $300 a week.
- Someone who sold his interest in another auction that he had already won. Think of this. He made a profit off of something he never received. If you know how to promote, you can make money easy.
- And a few that I am not going to list here.
Stephan Miller is an ebay seller, freelance programmer, writer, and webmaster at www.profit-ware.com, home of Hotbid Auction Market Analyzer. | 
