Description: In this workshop, Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was, an eBay Certified Services Provider, will discuss recent eBay changes, and how sellers should adjust listing strategies to save on fees and show up higher in search results. The workshop will also include tips on how to stay on top of eBay's announcements and deadlines. Founded in 1995, As Was is a full-service consulting firm specializing in branding, design, sales and marketing strategies, operations management, and training. As Was has been working with eBay sellers since 2001.
Visit http://certifiedprovider.ebay.com/ to learn more about eBay Certified Providers and the services and solutions they offer to help eBay sellers.
I'm Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was, eBay's first Certified Service Provider. We specialize in helping eBay sellers start and grow their businesses through marketing, design, and strategy services such as custom and unique listing templates and eBay Stores, personalized listing strategies, training and instruction, and design of printed marketing materials.
Today, we have an all-new workshop about strategies. But first, an important word about the new "View Item" page!
Ever since eBay has been showing people screen shots of the coming "View Item" page, we found that there is a lot of confusion. People are convinced that since the screen shot shows a sample eBay listing with no design or template, this must mean that eBay is going to stop allowing sellers to have listing designs or templates.
THIS IS NOT THE CASE! The new View Item page happily accepts templates and designs, though with certain new limitations for the width of the template. Our templates are compliant, so make sure that your designer knows current and coming eBay rules!
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
Please join us for an online workshop hosted by the eBay Certified Provider team. eBay Certified Provider Workshops are hosted by 3rd party companies with extensive expertise on the topic of their workshop. They are independent companies qualified by eBay to have demonstrated experience and expertise in growing eBay seller businesses.
A note from our Legal Department: The statements and opinions made in this discussion board are those of the workshop host only and do not reflect eBay policy or eBay's opinion with respect to such statements.
Strategy Tip 1: Auction or Fixed Price? eBay made a number of changes last year to how Best Match shows items. You may already know that Best Match is taking things like DSRs into consideration when ordering your items among search results. However, choosing auction or fixed price can matter also!
Currently, the strategy goes like this:
If you have multiple, identical quantity in an item, it's best to use the Good 'Til Cancelled Fixed Price format, aka FP GTC. For $0.35 per 30 day period, your item can be up on eBay. You can keep it up until you end it or it sells out. Our clients (with great DSRs) noticed that using FP GTC with a multiple quantity made their items move up in search results. The higher you are, the more likely you are to make those sales!
If you have only one of an item, or the item has a value that might vary because it's popular or rare, then an auction is the way to go. If you have only one, and you know your shopper prefers the fixed price format, just run it as an auction with a Buy It Now.
These are the strategies eBay is suggesting, and they are fine tuning how Best Match shows things to reflect what they're suggesting. That means these aren't just suggestions. These are the ways to show up high in search! But wait, there are more!
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
I noticed a big bump in my sales of a certain item (video cable) when I started selling a lot more. I heard that this is called a "Recent Sales" Best Match ranking factor. Things were great, until I realized I was losing money (incorrect cost info keyed into my system). I wanted to make changes to my item, either to the sale price or the shipping -- can I modify either of those and still retain my "Recent Sales Boost"?
Hi Ginger, I am not new to e-Bay as a buyer or seller however I am a new learner in respect to realizing there are providers such as yourself and others for e-marketing success. I don't want to ask questions that I can find in general information as I embarq on this new approach to business however I did come here today to pay attention and learn. Question: If there is attendance in this forum today will there be a record of it or a place I can go to review what transpired today in discussion?
Strategy Tip 2: Recent Sales Want to see that fixed price, multiple quantity item rise up even higher in search results and get more visibility? eBay's "Recent Sales" strategy means that as your item sells some of its quantity, it will be pushed even higher in search. Why? eBay's idea is that if somebody wanted this, others will want this too, so let's give it more attention.
Keeping the momentum of your Recent Sales is really important. There are things you need to do to make sure that eBay doesn't erase your sales history for a listing.
Do not change the title, category, or item specifics of the item, while it's running or when relisting.
Do not raise the price of the item. You can lower the price and keep your Recent Sales, but once you raise it, you lose your Recent Sales momentum.
Revise your item to raise your quantity if it gets low. The idea is to keep this item on eBay and take advantage of good strategies and purchases. So keep the quantity there!
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
Strategy Tip 3: Free Shipping Once upon a time, people thought that shoppers preferred free shipping. They don't like to sit and do math, and free shipping just makes it all much easier to digest. If you offered free shipping, shoppers might be happy, but eBay didn't reward you for it.
Now, eBay rewards you for it. Items offering free shipping often show up higher in search results. So if you can make the pricing work, offering free shipping is another way to get your item nudged up in search results.
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
Strategy Tip 4: Great Reputation Once upon a time, a seller with great feedback who met some other criteria got a PowerSeller logo. That was nice, but it didn't mean as much as it could mean!
Now, eBay rewards you for getting high ratings from buyers. DSRs play very heavily into where you show up in Best Match. Check your Seller Dashboard to see if your search status is Raised, Standard, or Lowered. Also make sure that you know eBay rules, and are completely compliant. Sellers who have items taken down or get suspensions might see that affect their search placement for up to six months.
If you're not sure about rules or what is allowed, join our weekly live internet talk radio show at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/aswas. Most of our shows are focused on explaining rules so that you can stay out of trouble. We can even look at something in your listings, eBay Store, or About Me page. We're not eBay, but we know the rules and policies, and can help you stay complaint! All radio shows are available for downloading later, so you can even send in a question ahead of time, miss the live broadcast, but download and listen later.
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
Strategy Tip 5: Listing Design and Layout What if your business were the local pizza place? One someone is standing outside your store, you have two main things you need to achieve. One is to have a great-looking outside (and smell!) so that people want to come in. Once they come in, the inside has the "make the sale" by being clean, comfy, friendly, well-priced, and tasty.
The same is true for selling on eBay! Think of your listing strategies as the "outside" that we hope will bring people "in." You have to use the right listing strategies to show up in search results. Your title, gallery image, and other elements have to make it attractive enough for people to click to the View Item page.
The listing is like the inside of your pizza shop. Here, you have another chance to win that customer over, or drive him away. This is where the design, layout, organisation, order, and presentation can make or break your sale. The details of this are best left for another workshop, but listing design and layout are important!
Remember that the best strategies in the world will bring people to your listing. Similarly, if you have a great listing design, if you use poor listing strategies, shoppers will never find you to see that great listing! Strategy and design go hand in hand, and can make each other better or worse! And the eBay Store is nice to design, but is not where the sale happens. I can shop, buy, or refuse to buy your item without ever seeing your Store. So the eBay Store is not the first place to turn time, attention, and money.
If shoppers are turned off by something in the listing, then you need to focus on improving your listings. You can tell this by checking hit counters or traffic reports, and seeing how many people are seeing your items.
If you are getting very few views on an item, then strategy may be a problem. Make sure you're doing all the right things to show up well in search results, and be the listing people choose to view.
If you are getting a good number of visits to your listing, but the item isn't getting bids or purchases, then something in the listing is turning shoppers off. It's great that you're getting the visits to the item, but let's fix the listing so that we can turn shoppers into buyers!
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
Unless something has changed at eBay I am unaware of, all workshops are archived and saved on this site. So this workshop will be viewable even after the thread is closed in a read only format.
Strategy Tip 6: Stay On Top Of Changes Many eBay sellers are not sure where to get information about eBay changes, announcements, and deadlines. To help all sellers, we created a new website we call the RocketPlace Community [http://community.rocketplace.com].
As news comes out, we broadcast it, but we also explain it, and advise sellers on what they need to do and when. We also often have videos explaining eBay changes. You can access the site for free, and we have a "VIP Area," with more content and a discussion board with friendly, expert answers and advice for $7/month.
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
Do not raise the price of the item. You can lower the price and keep your Recent Sales, but once you raise it, you lose your Recent Sales momentum.
However, lets say I use Markdown manager for a sale. The sale ends and the price goes u to what it normally seslls for, will that hurt my ranking in best match?
Thanks for attending our eBay Listing Strategy workshop today. Feel free to post any questions (easy or difficult) for consulting advice from an eBay Certified Provider, As Was.
This workshop will be saved under the eBay Workshop board. Just come back to this URL to review the content at any time.
Hi, powerwheeler. I think you will be fine with that plan. I think eBay just doesn't want you revising an item to have a higher price, like smooth-auction may have to do.
Remember that Recent Sales are in a time window (that eBay doesn't tell you). So if your Recent Sales aren't REALLY recent, they may not count anyway!
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
We would like to sell most all of our items in our catalog to give our products the maximum exposure. However we have to be careful because if we sell the product on our eBay we may not have the same product available if someone purchases it on our website. Can you suggest any companies that maybe able to provide an eBay feed and inventory management system so that we can sell our products across multiple channels?
Thanks for being here today. With respect to recent sales, if a listing sells out before I can revise it to add more, can I relist it and still maintain the boost?
eBay has strict rules about not putting anything on eBay that you don't have to sell on eBay. They don't want you listing things, and then as these unique items sell in other places (off-eBay, retail store), you take them off eBay.
So you may not find a tool or system that'll help you with that since it seems to run against the rules about has around some of these things.
Do you have any inventory you can put aside that's JUST for selling on eBay?
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
Hi, smudgy! As post #9 here says, YES, relisting will keep your recent sales as long as you don't raise the price, change the title or condition, etc...
See post #9 for details.
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
Ginger is reminding me (via Skype!) that ending your item prematurely using Markdown Manager WILL affect Recent Sales. Did I say that correctly, Ginger?
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
Thank you for this timely workshop. I have had the free shipping, GTC FP, listings selling for the past several months with DSR's above 4.9 and found my listings below other sellers with lower DSR's and charging freight. I now have added 7 day listings for the same products and find they are higher in the search standings. Can you explain this?
Thanks Debbie, we do have some inventory we could set aside and dedicate for eBay auctions only. Otherwise it sounds like we should probably use the Good 'Til Cancelled Fixed Price format and then just update our inventory frequently. Thoughts?
According to our eBay Stores team, using Markdown Manager to put an item on sale will not affect your recent sales score when the sale ends and the item price goes back up. The key is that the sales needs to end "naturally". If you end a Markdown Manager sale early, then your recent sales score will be affected.
Hi, spoiler. We have heard similar things from a few clients, and we can't always explain these! I haven't looked at your listings, but with them, it was that they were not running multiple quantity items and then getting those recent sales.
This is just my opinion, but I think Best Match is currently tweaked to favour multiple qty and recent sales more than your DSRs.
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
Shoezoo, you're headed in the right direction. You'll want to put the inventory aside, use FP GTC with multiple quantity, and revise the available inventory as things sell.
As Ginger said, using some of the Certified Provider tools and software can help. We can help with design, marketing, and strategy.
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
So then it might be better to relist my 7 day listings (all my listings have multipe quanities) instead of sending new listings every 7 days with my turbo lister?
Powerwheelchairs, no, the timing does not. eBay announced that in November 2008... the number of days left doesn't affect ranking in Best Match. Best Match is not about ending times.
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
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