AuctionLink Goes International!
Filed Under Auction Tools, Best Match | 4 Comments
I’ve spent the past couple of weeks tweaking AuctionLink for use by international eBay sellers. Besides eBay.com, AuctionLink now works for people or businesses who sell on the Canadian, Australian, and UK eBay sites.
What is AuctionLink and Why Should I Care?
AuctionLink is shortened, easy-to-remember web address that returns your current eBay listings. It makes it easy to include a link to all of your current listings in your e-mail sig files and Twitter tweets.
Here’s an example of an AuctionLink:
http://AuctionLink.to/whistonjohn
Even more significant is AuctionLink’s potential to help your Listing Performance Score – a key factor in getting to the front page of the Best Match search results.
A Listing Performance Score is calculated by dividing the number of sales generated for a particular listing by the number of times that listing has appeared (impressions) in the eBay search results. Listings appearing on AuctionLink are not considered as generating an impression. So, the more sales you can generate while keeping your impressions to a minimum will help your rankings in the Best Match search and sort calculations.
Visit http://AuctionLink.to today to get your own AuctionLink right now.
I’ve just completed the third edition of my free eBook, Best Match Made Simple. This edition includes everything eBay sellers need to know about the significant changes to Best Match introduced last month. This edition has grown to 131 pages in length.
Download your copy now at http://auctioninsights.info/bestmatchbook.
Free Shipping & Best Match: An Advantage for Fixed Price Listings Only
Filed Under Best Match | Leave a Comment
With the roll out of the Fall 2009 changes to Best Match, eBay has provided more transparency than ever before into the inner workings of that algorythim. One of the aspects eBay has clarified pertains to the advantages of offering free shipping when competing for visibility and placement in the Best Match search result pages.
From information available on eBay’s site, we now know that only fixed-price listings get an advantage in the Best Match search results by offering free shipping. However, both fixed-price and auction style listings are penalized in the search results for “excessive” shipping and handling fees.
From eBay.com:
Fixed Price listings with free shipping will continue to receive added exposure. Auction-style and Fixed Price listings with excessive shipping will be demoted.
One of the many changes to Best Match that eBay rolled out in the Fall of 2009 includes something termed the “Listing Performance Score.” This is a ratio of sales to impressions that will impact your Fixed-Price listing’s visibility in the Best Match search results. The higher your Listing Performance Score, the closer to the top of the search results you will appear.
How Listing Performance Score is Calculated
First, remember that this only applies to fixed-price listings offering multiple quantities of items for sale.
Newly posted fixed price listings get an initial boost in visibility under eBay’s revised Best Match search and sort algorithm. Every time a listing is presented to an eBay visitor in the search results counts as an impression.
For the Listing Performance Score, eBay calculates a ratio of sales to impressions. So, if the circled Guitar Hero listing makes one sale for every 50 impressions, its Listing Performance Score is 2%.
All other factors being equal, fixed-price listings with a score above 2% will rank higher in the search results than the listing in my example while those with a lower score will appear after.
Listing Performance Score Tactics
Specific and Relevant Titles
Specific and relevant titles are more important than ever. If your title is too broad, it will show up (initially at least) in a lot of search results for a variety of queries. Many of those potential bidders might not be looking for what you are selling – generating numerous impressions without many corresponding sales. For example, while the title below may show up frequently in the results for “new iPod Nano” searches, it probably won’t be generating many sales — at least not for those buyers who actually wanted a new iPod Nano.
Like NEW MP3 PLAYER better than IPOD NANO
However, if the listing title were more accurate and included something like “used Sansa Clip MP3 Player,” I would generate fewer impressions (due to a lower number of searches for that item), but I would probably have an excellent ratio of sales per impression and a higher Listing Performance Score.
While casting a wide net used to be a good strategy to garner bids, sellers who want to perform well in the Listing Performance Score now need to be more focused.
Increase Sales While Keeping Impressions Low
As explained above, the Listing Performance Score is a ratio calculated by your sales divided by impressions. There are two ways of increasing this ratio:
- Increase the numerator (sales)
- Decrease the denominator (impressions)
Of course, you can combine the two (OK, that makes three ways of increasing the Listing Performance Score!).
But how do you garner sales without increasing impressions?
- By bypassing the eBay search results completely!
Send potential bidders straight to your auction listings. How? Get your free AuctionLink at http://www.auctionlink.to. It’s a short web address that links to a page of your current eBay.com listings.
- There’s no registration required
- It’s not on eBay’s server, so the listings don’t count as impressions served under the Listing Performance Score.
- It’s just your listings – no worries about competing sellers.
- It’s free!