If you’re not averaging 4.7 across the board, it should be.

It’s never been more important you score top stars in all of the four areas related to an eBay transaction: "item description," "communication,""shipping times," and "shipping charges." Otherwise your listings just won’t get the exposure they deserve under eBay’s Best Match Search.

Most eBay sellers score high in the first two areas, but fall short in shipping. Shipping time can be especially difficult because some buyers transfer dissatisfaction with the post office to your DSR score!

But there are steps you can take to prevent this from happening.

Here’s our top four eBay selling strategies for taking charge of your Shipping Time DSR:

1. Get your item in the mail fast. To help you speed up the process, create a streamlined shipping area. All you really need is a table and shelving unit to drastically cut down on the time it takes to package your items.
2. Give your buyer a postal "play by play." Be generous with your shipping time estimates. Then when their item arrives early, they’ll be pleasantly surprised. Then let your buyer know where their item is at every stage during the shipping process: when you’re going to ship, after you do ship, and during if you know where it is! Follow up with them after a few days to see if they’ve received their item yet.
3. Ship with a service that offers tracking. Depending on the item, you may want to ship through a service that allows you to track the item’s whereabouts. Then you can let the buyer know where their item is at any time.
4. Get delivery confirmation. Some shipping services will let you know when the package has arrived; for example, when using a PayPal label with the US Postal Service for Priority Mail and Express Mail packages. Just look into your local shipping services to see if they offer this option.

Use these eBay selling strategies to ensure top marks on your eBay shipping time DSR… and get the extra exposure your business needs to be a success.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been talking a LOT about the positive impact change can have on your business, and encouraging you all to look at areas where a quick (or not-so-quick) "tweak" can help your bottom line.

Well, apparently some of you remain unconvinced that change is always good, because I’ve been getting feedback from people who are quaking in their boots at the thought of touching a THING.

So today, I’d like to make my point (and reassure you ALL) with a pretty darn good example…

I’m talking about eBay: a company who already had a clear track record of success, but recently made some BIG changes anyway!

With over 84 MILLION active users spending almost $2,000 a second (that’s $60 BILLION a year, folks!), eBay is one of the true success stories in the short history of the Internet.

Clearly, eBay wasn’t broken. So why fix it??

Well, they’re smart enough to know that resting on their laurels isn’t the way to keep growing, or reacting to the needs of their customers.

So over the past few months, they’ve been making some pretty radical changes.

The biggest change?

They’ve revamped the way their customer feedback system works… and if you know anything about eBay, you know that having an impeccable customer rating is like GOLD, so it was a pretty risky change for eBay, right?

But that’s just the beginning!

They’ve also changed the way some listings get ranked during a search, played around with minimum bid amounts, changed the way you qualify for coveted "Power Seller" status, and a bunch of other things.

And to be perfectly honest, there was a bit of an outcry at first from regular eBay sellers, who accused eBay of no longer caring about the "little guy" who made them successful in the first place.

But here’s the thing about all of this change…

We have a team of in-house experts who provide personal, one-on-one eBay mentoring for people who want to start full-time eBay businesses, and what our mentors have been noticing lately is that these major changes that seem to have upset so many people are turning out to be HUGE WINS for everyone!

We’ve seen that, by fine-tuning their system, eBay is slowly discouraging the mountains of "hobby" sellers who list one lousy, two-buck item once in a blue moon just for kicks…

… and making it MUCH easier for serious professionals who want to use eBay to build a solid, full-time business.

It’s a SMART move on eBay’s part, because they know it’s these pro’s who make them the most money!

(Oh, and just as a side note, this is ALSO an excellent lesson about the value of focusing your efforts on your best customers!

So if you’ve been thinking about making changes to your business, but you’ve been afraid of any negative fallout, remember that change (even change that ruffles a few feathers at first), can usually bring opportunity for you AND your customers!

To your success,

Derek Gehl

P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about these changes at eBay, I’ve just finished putting together a FREE video that walks you through the biggest ones, and explains how to use them to your advantage.

It’s part of a brand-new series of three free training videos I’ve created to help everyone cash in on the $60 BILLION that exchanges hands on eBay every year!

You can access all three videos here: http://www.auctiontips.com/

It was easy to do — buyers would get instant product — you would quickly get established as a seller and boost your feedback scores.

eBay changed the rules and now electronic products can only be listed using eBay’s Classified Ads, which cost $9.95/month and don’t qualify for feedback.

But there is a way you can still selling digital products on eBay… converting them to a CD and selling them as physical products.

Of course you lose many of the advantages of selling downloadable products (such as no shipping fees, no inventory to handle, etc.), but this strategy is still a great way to boost your detailed seller ratings and get started on eBay.

Plus, now that there are way fewer digital products available on eBay, so it’s likely you can command a higher price for things like eBooks on CD.

This strategy isn’t likely to make you loads of money — in fact, you might only break even or perhaps make a small loss. But it can be a great way to generate leads, establish relationships with customers, and keep them coming back for more… so you’ll be much more profitable in the long run!

So how do you go about putting your digital products onto CD and selling them on eBay?

1. Decide how you’ll sell digital products on CD

First you need to decide how you’re going to use digital products on CD in your eBay business.

Will they be your main product? Or will you offer them as a bonus with something else? Perhaps you could use them to generate leads for future sales. Or you could use them as an "upsell" — an extra product that you can add to an order for a few dollars.

It’s also important to research existing digital products on CD being sold on eBay. When you’re looking at what’s already out there, ask yourself these three crucial questions:

• Is the item scarce? The problem with eBay’s old policy of allowing people to sell eBooks and other digital products was that it seemed like EVERYONE did it! That meant there were thousands of similar digital products for sale, often for just a few cents each.

  But the good news now is that there aren’t many digital products on CD for sale, which means you’re likely to encounter much less competition.

• Is the item desirable? Do people want to buy your digital product on CD? Or can they easily instantly download something similar elsewhere? Desirability is linked to scarcity, because an item’s scarcity often makes it more desirable.

• Is the item in demand? Do people NEED your digital product? Are you selling authoritative information they can’t get anywhere else? Patterns, product manuals, scrapbooking templates and other unique and hard-to-find items translate well to CD, because people will overlook the slight inconvenience of waiting for a CD to get them.

Click here to find out what’s hot on eBay.

To research what’s already available for sale, click here.

2. Find a CD duplication service

Burning digital products to CD can be a tedious and time-consuming process — so why not get the job done quickly and cheaply by a professional company?

This can be well worth it if you sell a lot of CDs — because you can negotiate better rates for larger orders. Plus, some CD duplication companies can also take care of your fulfillment.

Here’s what you need to know BEFORE you select a CD duplication service:

• What format you require (audio CD, data CD, or DVD)
• How your CDs will be packaged (options include plastic cases, paper envelopes, cardboard sleeves, and clamshells)
• What text or graphics you need printed on your CDs and packaging
• How many copies you need
• Whether your order is a one-off job — or you’ll need more copies in the future
• How quickly you need your CDs produced
• Whether the duplication company complies with International (ISO) quality standards

So what can you expect to pay?

Well, prices tend to depend on the size of your order, but here’s an example of typical prices for different quantities of standard 74-minute/650MB CDs with text logos and covers with one side of printed text:

• 10 units: Total cost: $46; Cost per disc: $4.60
• 100 units: Total cost: $148; Cost per disc: $1.48
• 1,000 units: Total cost: $1,090; Cost per disc: $1.09

Duplium (http://www.duplium.com/) is a good option for North American sellers — or you can search Google for a suitable company in your area.

3. Build your own website and sell your digital items OFF eBay

If you still want to sell your digital items as downloads rather than on CD, but you’re worried you won’t sell enough using eBay’s Classified Ads, you should consider setting up your own website.

You’ll need your own domain name, such as www.mysite.com, and a web hosting package that gives you some virtual "space" on the Internet to store your website. When choosing your domain name, keep it related to your business, and consider using words that reflect your eBay user ID or eBay Store name.

Visit www.marketingtips.com/webhost to learn more about registering a domain name and purchasing web hosting for your first site. Then you have to build your site. Here are the three easiest ways to go about it:

• Bebiz: The best option for setting up a simple — but effective — money-making website is our own BeBiz program (http://www.bebiz.com/). BeBiz is an easy-to-use interactive program that guides you every step of the way as you create your own Internet business — and it’s ideal for building a website to sell digital products. It also includes full video tutorials that walk you through each step — removing every single barrier standing between you and your own successful online business. A huge advantage of BeBiz is that it goes beyond just setting up a website and shows you how to attract the search engines so you can get lots of traffic.
• Free website templates: For a simple one-page website, search Google for "free website templates" and choose something that reflects your business. Then just fill it in.
• Create a blog: Blogs are easy to create and maintain, and they can be really useful for selling and/or promoting your eBay business. Google’s Blogger service (www.blogger.com/) makes it easy to create a blog that’s simple to update with information about the products and services you offer. And it’s free!

Your own website can be great for boosting your eBay business as well as giving you an extra outlet to sell your products.

By linking to your eBay listings or eBay Store from your website, you can get more people to look at your items AND improve their search engine ranking.

Plus, if you sign up as an eBay affiliate in the eBay Partner Network, you can actually get paid by eBay for driving traffic to eBay listings!

The days of selling digital products through regular eBay listings may be long gone — but these new strategies can help you build relationships with customers, prove yourself as a reliable seller, boost your DSRs, and make you more profitable in the long run!

And digital products are still one of the most profitable things to sell on your own website — so you should definitely check out how http://www.bebiz.com/ can help you create another stream of income outside eBay!

This article appeared in our Bidding Frenzy Newsletter (subscribe to it here). You’ll get the latest information on eBay selling techniques — Free!