Last week I asked you, my readers, to submit questions that want answered or topics they would like to see on This Mama Works It! Well you gave me some great challenging questions that I look forward to answering in the next week or so.
The first question I am going to anwser comes from Frantic Mommy. Some of you may remember that I interviewed Frantic Mommy for my Ebay Seller Spotlight back in April. You can read the interview here.
Frantic Mommy actually had two questions, one of them on record keeping, and the other on how I got that cute eBay social icon in the right corner of my blog. I will answer the icon question first (because that is an easy one) and the record keeping one later in the week (that takes a bit more time).
Before I talk about how I got the icon and put it on my site I want to mention the importance of advertising your eBay items. This post is going to be the first of many posts on advertising your eBay store and/or items. A lot of sellers only depend on eBay as a venue and source for advertising. And while you will get some buyers this way you are missing out on a huge amount of potential customers by not advertising on "non eBay" sites.
If you have a blog, and sell on eBay, you definitely should let your readers know. People feel more comfortable purchasing from a seller they can trust. And if you have a following then it is a win win situation to offer your eBay items to your readers. Now your blog may not be about your eBay selling and that is fine it doesn't need to be. And having a small eBay icon, on your blog, is a non-intrusive way to let your readers know that you sell on eBay.
This is how I got my Ebay social icon.
I actually first came across the eBay icon when I was introduced to The Unemployed Mom's blog. She has one on her blog as well. And I personally like all social icons because they look neat, professional, and do not clutter up your blog.
My social media icons come from the website iconspedia. It is a free website that lets you download all social media icons for use on your blog. You can find the eBay icon here.
Steps to getting the icon on your blog.
Step 1: Download the icon to your computer.You have 3 different sizes to choose from. I have the 64 x 64px size. If for some reason it does not download then just right click it and save it to your computer.
Step 2: Upload to a picture manager, like www.photobucket.com or if you use WordPress upload to your media library.
Step 3. Plug in the code. I use the same code that you would use for a "grab a button"
Here is an example:
</center>
<center><textarea id="code-source" rows="3" name="code-source"><center><a href="THIS WOULD BE THE LINK TO YOUR EBAY ITEMS"><img border="0" src="AND THIS WOULD BE THE LINK TO WHERE YOUR EBAY IMAGE IS HOSTED"/></a></center></textarea></center> **the quotation marks stay. Your links go in between them.
If you don't want it centered you can just take away the center code.
Then I use a WordPress widget to the plug my HTML code in. Blogger has the same concept.
If you want to put in more than one social icon. Then you are going to need a bit more HTML to create tables. I absolutely love the website 2 create a website which offers a free HTML table generator. So you just plug in how many rows/columns you want then plug in the code above changed up with all the different social media icons/links you want. It will generate a complete code for you that you again just plug in to a widget. That is how I made the one I have on my blog. I hope this makes sense. I am by no means a computer wiz but I am able to figure things out so I don't have to pay people big bucks to do it for me.
This is just one way to start advertising your eBay items/or store to your readers. I will be posting more ways down the road so stay tuned.
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I sell very infrequently on eBay. These are good tips if I ever decide to step it up.
Just stopping by to say THANKS for visiting me on my sits day and making me feel special!
SUPER! thanks for answering my question! I am still struggling with how to try to figure it out (I’m not very techie), but I’ll git ‘er done!
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