Is eBay going to the dogs?

Earlier today I was reading some recent posts on a forum I visit regularly and started following some eBay related links. I ended up on the web site of someone who offered their own “how to succeed on eBay” product. The site also included some articles they had written and I read an article about attracting huge numbers of potential bidders to your auctions.

The entire thrust of the article was to make sure you used eBay’s Gallery feature, but with a twist.

Rather than using a picture of the product you are selling, they recommended that you use a picture of your dog as your Gallery photo. They claim this will entice more bidders to view your auctions. Now, I’ll admit I haven ‘t tested this approach to generating bidders but it brings up some interesting questions.

• What if you don’t own a dog? Are you doomed to failure as a seller on eBay?
• How many dogs must you own to insure success on eBay?
• To insure power seller status, will you need pictures of several dogs, or different poses of the same dog suffice?
• If you don’t have a dog, can you borrow one from family or friends?
• Is there an animal shelter nearby where you can adopt a dog?
• If there is how many will they let you adopt over a years period of time?
• Does the animal shelter take trade-ins?

What percentage of eBay sellers do you think own dog? Maybe fifty percent? Surely a CD containing 1500 different pictures of dogs would rocket you to power seller status overnight. Dogless sellers would be scrambling to get a copy so they could improve their sell through rate and profits.

I have to confess that I don’t really see the benefits of having a picture of one of my son’s black labs next to an auction title for a piece of pottery, an antique toy train, or a laptop computer. Neither do I see the article’s writer as someone who knows much of anything about eBay.

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