extra charges for listings

[hotshades2see]

have bold headings and subtitles made a difference on sales for anyone?? are they worth the extra costs

[jakeeangel]

I don't find sub-titles useful at all. They're not searchable unless someone selects titles & descriptions so why bother.

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[youreinthebook]

Subtitles can be useful if you're in a competitive category and you want to set yourself apart from your competition with an offer like "Free bonus widget with every order", or "Free shipping with every XX ordered", or "includes xx day warranty". The goal is to include a statement that will get your item clicked ahead of your competitors.

I often see sellers not using the subtitles feature very efficiently, loading them up with keywords not realizing that the words won't get caught in a search.

One thing I don't see very often is the subtitle used to insert humourous statements, like "My wife will kill me for selling this!!!" or "Need beer money... buy meeeee". I think those would probably generate some clicks although I'm not certain how serious the browsers who click would be.

I'm sure the Bold feature gets some additional notice, but again it depends on how much competition your category has and whether or not the fee is a significant portion of the profit of the item.

I've seen some categories where bold was so common, the listings WITHOUT bold actually stood out more, lol.

[map.prof]

I have not used the bold yet but have used the "featured items" twice now. On both occasions the item sold, but sold either for the starting bid or a few dollars over. I can't say for certain but I think these items would have sold without the feature item.

I will think twice before spending another $19.99.

[ricarmic]

Hi! I look at the features perhaps differently. I use featureds, but more to bring people to my other lots and my store. I aim to have my listing fees = 5% of the selling prices on average. This is a combo of featureds and individual items. Using some well placed featureds with significant sized auction runs can help, at least in my category. I mentioned this elsewhere but I believe it is a mistake to think that what works in the books category also works in the clothes category or in a postage stamps category.

What I've done is run experiments where I try different features and watch what happens results wise. To make the experiments useful you have to do them more than once because every day is different on Ebay!

Good luck with any future experiments!