E-Bay Guidance
If you are considering selling some kind of Lord of the Rings, Hobbit, Middle-Earth or Tolkien collectible on E-Bay I would like to offer some guidance; If you are selling something else, then use the guidance generically, but do not keyword spam just to get listed on this site, as you run the risk of being reported and having your items removed from E-Bay. A link is now in place for your spam to be easily reported.
Put the most relevant of the following words IN THE TITLE: Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Tolkien or Middle-Earth. Be specific. While you can certainly use ROTK, FOTR, TTT, using only one of these without the "Lord of the Rings" prefix means very few people will see it. Soon, the use of LOTR and description searches will be phased out by this site, so your title is going to be even more important.
Put the name of the maker of the item/collectible IN THE TITLE if you know the name of the company.
Put the main character name on the item or item name IN THE TITLE (not the description) - if applicable.
Put the name of the item / collectible type IN THE TITLE. Poster, sword, mug, bust, etc.
So lets look at some examples:
Lets say you are selling a Toy Biz Bilbo Baggins figure related to the recent Lord of the Rings movie Trilogy. Using the four guidelines above you could use any of the following titles;
"LOTR FOTR Toy Biz Gandalf Action Figure" - notice both the LOTR & FOTR designation to meet the first guideline. All four guidelines are met with this title. Update - use of LOTR is not recommended any longer. "Lord of the Rings" is far better. LORE is spammed heavily and is not going to be searched for on this site for much longer.
"Lord of the Rings Toy Biz Gandalf Figure" - While this uses fewer keywords, still meets the four guidelines and more people will see it. Actually, the use of "ord of the Rings" as opposed to "LOTR" makes it even better than the first example. Omitting the word "Action" just means that a search for "action figures" will not list your item.
"LOTR Two Towers Toy Biz Gandalf" - While this uses fewer keywords and only meets three of the four guidelines, the use of the words "Toy Biz" does a lot to narrow down the item type. Toy Biz mostly made action figures for the LOTR movies.
"ROTK Gandalf from Toy Biz" - This is the least acceptable title that still meets three of the four criteria. While "ROTK" says much about the item, fewer people are going to do searches in those terms than say if you had put both "LOTR" & "ROTK" in the title.
A less useful, but still reasonable title example could be as follows;
"Toy Biz Gandalf" - While this title only meets two of the above guidelines, it is still somewhat acceptable as a good title. While the title does not say what the item specifically is (Action Figure/Toy/Figure), it says who makes it, and that can often define what it is. If I included the words "United Cutlery" in the title most LOTR collectors would have some idea of the product type (Swords, axes, helmets, etc).
Some nearly useless titles are;
"Gandalf Figure" - While this meets two of the above guidelines, it is too broad a description to be useful. It leaves too much unsaid about your item / collectible.
"Gandalf Toy" - While this meets two of the above guidelines, it is too broad a description to be useful. It leaves too much unsaid about your item / collectible.
"LOTR Gandalf" - While this meets two of the above guidelines, it is too broad a description to be useful. It leaves too much unsaid about your item / collectible.
"Lord of the Rings Gandalf" - While this meets two of the above guidelines, it is too broad a description to be useful. It leaves too much unsaid about your item / collectible.
To clarify why these are far less useful titles, consider example #4 directly above. Is it a poster? A photo? A bust? A figure? Who makes it? Just too much left unsaid about the item. In general all of those examples use only two of the recommended guidelines.
If you list an item with a title that meets only one of the above guidelines.....may your ship never reach the undying West.