Favourite Trade Me tip - share and cast your vote!

My tip is about making good searchable titles. Get as much detail as possible in your auction title to help you get bumped up the search results list.

"jeans for sale" as your title won't get you much love

"Levi's men's 501 jeans indigo blue wash size 32 (NZ 82)" is far better

Search these days focuses on the title so use all the room you can to cram in what you think people might search for. Have a think about when you search for something how you would do it then copy that over to your title.

Descriptive words aren't that useful really either. Nobody really searches for "awesome jeans" so filling up your title with  "awesome, stylee, funky, cool" or other descriptive words doesn't really add much value!

When searching for something use 'All categories'.  For example:  Temuka plates can be listed under Antiques & Collectibles, Kitchen, Pottery and Glass or Business, Farming and Industry.  If you restrict your options you can miss items.  Yes it takes longer but I have found items I've wanted in the weirdest categories.  You can't trust sellers to choose the correct category and when some have a lot of listings and 'sell similar items' they don't always change the category.  Car parts show up in make up lol.

make sure your images are correctly orientated! Apparently this is sometimes difficult when using a smartphone. I have seen advice that you should hold your phone in "landscape" mode, with the shutter button under your right thumb. Sometimes you have to download the images to a third party software to turn them up the correct way. Don't ask me about resizing! I can't see why TM can't do this automatically for us?

My little tip for selling or auctioning a car on Trade Me is to do with the presentation.
Photos are great for showing your vehicle from all angles. You get to include 10 photos with the basic TM listing. However, a quick little video of the vehicle uploaded onto the listing for the same price is so much better & also you can include sound. Try this & you’ll be streets-ahead of the competition.

Agree with Tony re TM automatically resizing photos if required and Callum re as much description as you can do in the title. Makes searching so much easier if you have a preferred colour/label you like.  My other personal "thing" re buying is the postage. I never, ever bid on an item with 'postage to be arranged'. I simply cannot be bothered emailing backwards and forwards over postage or any negotiation that may eventuate. 

Thanks everyone for the tips, and congratulations Lachelle for getting the most upvotes! The comments will be turned off on this thread for now, but look out for the next one!