The Internet has a wealth of information and products on it. The trick is finding that special card that your looking for.
Step one - Decide where to search:
There are many great places to buy postcards online (we'll talk about offline later). They range from dealers websites to eccommerce giants like eBay.
EBay is arguably one of the better places to start as it has the larges selection at the time of writing there are over 150,000 items in the Postcard and Paper section on eBay.com which are being auctioned off and over 1 million more in eBay Stores which can be bought right now. EBay maintains a number of different sites as well so you need to choose the one appropriate to your country. For example eBay.com shows results from all over the world while ebay.co.uk, or eBay.ca have preferences set up for buyers from the United Kingdom and Canada respectively. There are many advantages in searching on the right site including prices shown in your local currency, only seeing results from sellers who ship to your country, different categories (ebay.co.uk breaks down UK town/city views better than eBay.com for example).
Playle's Online Auctions is specific to postcards and postal memorabilia and while it doesn't have the selection of eBay it does attract mostly serious dealers and can be a great place to find that rare treasure.
Google Base/Froogle: Both Google base and Froogle are run by the popular search engine of the same name. Google Base is like a large online classified add on which sellers from many different websites can upload there listings while Froogle works as more of an online shopping comparison site. Both are free to list on and attract a large selection of different sellers. Their advantages are that it makes it easier for you to find something rather than searching individual websites.
Websites: Many dealers have websites on which they display there product. Google vintage postcards or Arkansas postcards and tons of results should pop up. If you find one you like be sure to bookmark it as many dealers add new stock on a regular basis. You can visit my website at: www.PlethoraofPostcards.com
Word of mouth/Postcards shows + Clubs: Many towns have postcard clubs which will have an annual show they can be lots of fun and you can get some great deals and meet other nice people interested in your hobby. Word of mouth also works well over the internet. When I'm selling cards people often tell me what they're looking for and I let them know when I find it.
Step 2: Know How to Search
1. Use Categories Effectively
While this doesn't help while doing a search on google most websites have their products sorted into categories. The best thing to do is find the postcard category and then search within that.
2. Decide what keywords to use.
- IE. if you're looking for a divided back postcard of Stanley Park in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada you could type "Stanley Park Vancouver British Columbia Canada" into the search box but this probably wouldn't do you much good as the search would only return those items which had all those words in the title/description. If you are searching a dealers website or eBay and you're already in the postcard category you can leave out postcard.
The best way to search for a postcard of Stanley Park would be to put in the words Stanley Park and then narrow down your search by category if you find you get to many unrelated results. Extra words can help narrow you search but its best to start with a broad search or you may miss relevant results.
Ie. If you type in Stanley Park and get a bunch of cards from somewhere that isn't Vancouver try to narrow the category down to Canada or even British Columbia. By the time you do this you should have a small enough bunch of cards that you can only look at the ones you may be interested in.
In general the less keywords you use the better. On my site a lot of people use terms such as "Vintage Postcard Chicago" when searching Chicago in the Illinois category would yield better results. Sometimes even if a postcard is vintage there isn't enough space to list that in the title.
If there is a certain word you want excluded you can use minus before the word which you want to exclude from you search. Ie. you want postcards of Paris, Texas you could put -France to exclude postcards from Paris France.
If you want to learn more about specific search strategies try the Google help page which has some great advice on how to do a search.
Step 3: Use Advance Search Options:
While this may differ by website many searches allow you to use advanced options. Its a good idea to check these out to see if any of these will make your search easier or more efficient. Google also has a help page explaining the advance search for their site.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment