Want To Make More Sales & Gain More Exposure?

Since Best Match was introduced in 09, we’ve been inundated
with questions asking how this new search filter actually
works and how you can use it to your advantage to blow your
competition out of the water.

So today we’re going to reveal the secrets step by step so
you understand what it all means and how you can gain more
exposure to your listings.

In the past items ending soonest would simply be at the top
of the search results, which has now been replaced with Best
Match. This new search filter is made up 7x variables that
affect your search standing when selling.

As a business owner, you need to understand these variables
to make them work in your favour because the truth is that
most sellers don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan.

Auctions -

Listing End Time – the listing end time will play a very
small part of the Best Match search, so if Terapeak tells
you that you can sell 3x items every week, spread them out
every couple of days rather than all on one day.

Customer Satisfaction Ratings – are broken down into
different customer service areas:

Detailed Seller Ratings (DSR) – When your buyers leave you
feedback, they also rate you out of 5x stars that make up
your DSR for the following performances:

Item as described
Communication
Postage time
Postage and handling charges

To view what your DSR score is you can go into your
feedback profile or seller dashboard on the My eBay
summary page.

The score is averaged from the amount of buyers that leave
feedback and you can see your score out of 5 when you scroll
over the rating bars. If your competition has better DSRs,
they can rate higher than you in the searches and you’ll
need to improve your DSRs.

If you notice that your DSRs are lower than 4.8 – 5 stars,
these are areas that you need to improve. (You won’t see
this info if you have less than 10 feedback)

Another great tip is to educate your buyers what the 5x
stars mean to your business and encourage them to leave
5x stars in the parcel.

Item Not Received– If you have multiple disputes from buyers
that they haven’t received their items or the item is

Significantly Not As Described – your search standings
will also be strongly affected, so make sure your listings
are honest and described accurately.

Postage Costs – Have you ever seen the sellers selling a 99c
item with $50 postage? Whilst they’re saving a few cents on
their listings fees, their doing themselves no favours!

When your postage costs are a lot higher than other sellers
in your category, your listings will be pushed down to the
bottom of the search pages, loosing you more money that it
would be to list them the item with a slightly higher starting
bid and lower postage cost.

Buy It Now Listings -

The BIN listings have a few of the same variables as the
auctions above including:

Customer Service Ratings
Detailed Seller Ratings
Items Not Received
Items Significantly Not As Described
Postage Costs

Plus a couple more:

Relevance – eBay display the items that closely match what
the buyer is looking for, in other words items they feel
are relevant to what the buyer wants.

Item Title -To improve your relevance, the item title is
the first factor to consider. Use all 55x characters up
with words that describe your listing in different ways.
For example a pair of bikinis for the beach could be togs,
swimmers, swim suit, bathers etc – just because you call
them one word, doesn’t mean that your buyers will.

Category – The next factor is the category, so don’t follow
the masses because they list in a particular category; list
your items in accurate categories.

Item specifics – When you list your items, use the item
specifics to describe your item’s features, attributes
and condition. eBay use these item specifics to help
determine which items are most relevant to the buyer’s
search, so add as many as possible. For example if your
item is new but you don’t specify its new in your item
specifics, buyers who narrow their search results to
look for new items won’t see your listing.

Recent Sales or History – eBay want to see a history of sales
from the products you’re selling to ensure you’re a long term
trustworthy member of the community.

It can be harder to create a history if you’re selling one
off items, however once you have ongoing products, sell
some as cheap as you can go (if not cost price) just to
build your history up. Then you can adjust your prices
accordingly afterwards.

Also “Relist” the items directly through eBay after you have
listed the initial one through Auctiva because using the same
item number over and over again will increase your history
dramatically.

Multiple Quantity Listings – By increasing your “Available
To List’’ amount in your listings, your history will stay
on eBay for longer. Just remember that you don’t want your
buyer to know you have a never ending supply of stock or
you want create an urgency for them to buy.

If you did have a never ending supply (or a lot) of items
available, set your quantity to 5x or so available and then
set up the automation rules through eBay to continue to
relist it over and over again continually having 5x as the
quantity until you run out of stock.

Well there you have it, everything you need to know about
Best Match and how to use it to your advantage. Remember
you need work with the eBay changes to make them
work for you and stay one step ahead!

Until next time…

Matt & Amanda Clarkson
Bidding Buzz Ltd