Hi folks,

I am presently selling this sorta special puppet that I created on eBay. It is not your usual kind of puppet found on ebay, so it should be very interesting.
I wanted to share some of my tactics on how to give an ebay listing maximum exposure. I am implementing all of these right now and I thought it would be beneficial to share some of these here

and hopefully some of you guys could give me some other ideas related to promoting puppets for sale.

So here's what I have done so far...

Created the usual eBay listing making sure to include lots of pics and defiantly video. (video really improves an eBay listing especially with something as visual as a puppet.

The controversial thing that I have done (that is a bit risky) is start it's bidding price at the $0.99, with no Reserve Price. The idea is that at this low bidding starting price it should create more interest.

Now it comes to promoting the listing to give it maximum exposure.

First thing I have done is created a separate website where I have tracking installed so I can see where the visitors are coming from, then they idea is to promote that website where people will click on to see the ebay ad.

I then create Facebook ad
Promote it in Face book marketplace.
Classified ads on craiglist.org and similar ad sites
I have uploaded pics to flickr.com. with links to my site
I should also create a blogger blog to help get it clicking with googles search

I'm doing work on promoting the each day whilst the listing is live.

I'm hoping all this works as I'm sharing it with you guys live. lets hope this doesn't blow up in my face. You never know if you never try.

Hope me sharing this stuff is useful to you.

I need to submit some sort of Press Release some where and was wondering if you guys could suggest any good puppet related press release submission sites. 

I would say that the one thing you forgot was to list it here. You can do that two ways.  You can post just the link to the auction and or you can past the item id for it between the ebay tags and then the auction shows up live.

Click To View
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150463942654

Thought I would help you out here.   Also checked out your site.  You should embed the auction there also.  I actually had to hunt for the link to the ebay auction.

Cheers Shawn.

I was actually looking for some sort of widget like this.
I'll defiantly be trying to embed this auction on my site.

Thanks again

[itemid=]

I think when you are logged into your ebay account it has an option for showing the embed code but just in case it doesn't, here is the code for this auction.

Code:

<object height="300" width="355"><param name="movie" value="http://togo.ebay.com/togo/togo.swf"><param name="flashvars" value="base=http://togo.ebay.com/togo/&amp;lang=en&amp;mode=normal&amp;itemid=150463942654&amp;query=Puppets">
<embed src="http://togo.ebay.com/togo/togo.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="base=http://togo.ebay.com/togo/&amp;lang=en&amp;mode=normal&amp;itemid=150463942654&amp;query=Puppets" height="300" width="355">
</object>

The code actually stays the same all the time except for the part that comes after itemid=.  This appears twice in the code.  So actually once you know this base code you can alter it manually.  That is what the site here does.  It takes the base code and inserts the itemid you supply in the correct place.  Depending on what you are using to build your site, you can there may be a plugin or that would automate the process like here.

It worked great, I slotted it in easy at the bottom of this page AtomicPuppet.com

I plan to use this handy bit of code in a few other places also.

You didn't mention this but thought I would.  I noticed that you are using a free web site company.  Pretty good idea for this approach.  That would mean that for the price of registration of a domain name which is not much you could easily afford it for each puppet you wanted to sell.  Good strategy!   For those who don't know, you can register a domain name for as little as $4.00 a year depending on who you register through.

Hey AtomicNinjaMonkey,

   I am curious to see how the experiment turns out.  Just my two cents, I would have liked the video to focus more on the cable control system and how it works,what it does.  The video (although a nice idea), seems to move quickly and doesn't give me a good sense of how I could use the puppet to show a character, or how it all actually works.  Best of luck to you, you seem to have a good PR and promotional brain and I have a great deal of respect for that.

Cheers. 

Update Time,

For those of you following this little experiment I thought I should give you all an update.

So it sorta blew up in my face.

failed and succeeded.

So in the end this cable controlled puppet after being on ebay for 10 days and with loads of promotion ended up selling for alot less than I wanted.

I did actually mess up one important factor. no reserve price. So let this be the one main lesson here.

There are actually complications with the transaction at the moment so I maybe (hopefully) be able to relist it. Can't talk to much about it just now but I let you guys know what happens if your interested.

This time I would list it with a reserve and tweak a couple of things.

This 10 day listing did succeed in one part of the experiment, I think I managed to get the listing the most views possible by using a selection of different methods to get more views.

I think a reserve price is a really good idea. It is good to hear that the methods you used to promote the sale worked though. Actually the ending bid you got, is not too bad for ebay I think. The puppet is worth much more bot one draw back of ebay is that you often don't get what something is worth.

Ultimately, I think ebay is best for factory-made items or bulk buy (ie. things you can make a huge profit margin on). The issue is when you get to custom-made and handmade stuff, which have a smaller profit of margin. Ebay buyers are looking at the price, more than they look at quality, and are looking for bargains or, as you've found out, easy bidding.

The site is also rife with problems, from bid rigging, to false bidding (ie. payment avoidance), and fraudulent items.

This is why I prefer Etsy, there's much more focus on handmade quality rather than scouring for bargains. It's more about getting a cool item than getting the item for the lowest price possible. Which means people are more willing to shell out for what the item is actually worth. I won't say there aren't issues of payment avoidance and so on, but it seems less obvious to me.

I think what you've done in terms of marketing the listing could easily be transferred to other sites; why limit yourself to only selling on Ebay? As the next step of your experiment, you could see which does better - Ebay, another site, or test a number at once.

Hey,
I agree. I often have had to sell puppets for much less than they are worth. I think ebay is a good platform for custom puppets to get your name out there. From recieving more custom orders, I am starting to move away from using ebay, but I still think it is good for advertising.

Cheers,
Daniel