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This guide focuses on devising content that earns positive ratings...
Rules of thumb
Here's what we've learned about our content:
- Specific and relevant topics attract attention - Our top performing guides (see 'Ratings per Day' below) are on rather specific topics like "NFR or Not for Resale Software - What, Why and How?" and "KVM Switches-The What, Why, & How?".
- The title is critical - One guide was titled "(NFR) Not for Resale - a Warning", and was getting lots of views but also attracted 2 'Negative' votes among 7. We considered NOT displaying it, but realized that is was nevertheless a top performer. Instead we are trying to make the title clearer, revising it to "'NFR' or Not for Resale Software - What, Why & How?" and we're hopeful that ratings, and it's 0.36 performance will improve!
- Our best performing guides tend to be short. (Note there is a 20,000 character limit)
- Age and Interest are valuable - Our oldest guides are racking up views and ratings, but not at the same rate as guides that seem to attract people's interest. So we work to generate interest, and expect to be patient too!
- Ask for Ratings - In every case we believe that we began to see more ratings votes, when we simply began in every Guide to ask for them. Now they all end as this one does!
Statistical Review (In order by Performance)
Age in Views/ Rating/ Rating/
Title Rating Authored Views Days Day Day View
==================================================== ====== ============ ===== ====== ====== ====== =======
'NFR' - A definition and warning 6 08/01/07 487 164.5 2.96 0.036 0.012
KWM Switches-The What, Why, & How? 6 07/31/07 786 165.5 4.75 0.036 0.008
Comparing entry-level Copy Machines? 5 08/10/07 844 155.5 5.43 0.032 0.006
Virtual PBXs - work anywhere with any phones 5 08/02/07 782 163.5 4.78 0.031 0.006
PowerChute Software Installation 5 07/31/07 1,250 165.5 7.55 0.030 0.004
Internet Phone Services-The Who, What, Why & How? 2 11/04/07 256 69.5 3.68 0.029 0.008
Legacy Computer - What does it mean? 4 08/19/07 1,244 146.5 8.49 0.027 0.003
PC-based Faxing & using a PC Fax/Modem card? 4 08/11/07 995 154.5 6.44 0.026 0.004
Supercomputers-The What, Why, and How? 2 10/27/07 344 77.5 4.44 0.026 0.006
Privacy, and how to help insure your's! 2 10/25/07 318 79.5 4.00 0.025 0.006
eBay Buyers - A hint for getting organized 4 08/03/07 165 162.5 1.02 0.025 0.024
Sonicwall firewall device - Can't register if used 10 10/20/06 1,306 449.5 2.91 0.022 0.008
MS Access Database Corruptions-The What, Why, & How? 3 08/19/07 674 146.5 4.60 0.020 0.004
Firewalls for Computers-The What, Why, and How? 1 11/24/07 236 49.5 4.76 0.020 0.004
Apple Mac or PC? That is the question... 3 08/08/07 446 157.5 2.83 0.019 0.007
Drives - Hard, Flash, Optical, etc. What are they? 2 09/28/07 530 106.5 4.97 0.019 0.004
Defragmentation-The What, Why, & How? 3 08/02/07 436 163.5 2.67 0.018 0.007
Installing Software? Order is important... 2 09/21/07 356 113.5 3.14 0.018 0.006
SystemWorks 2004 & 2006 - Illegitimate warning 7 10/20/06 909 449.5 2.02 0.016 0.008
Outlook (E-mail) Small-Network BackUp... 3 06/23/07 875 203.5 4.30 0.015 0.003
30+ Copies of SystemWorks 2006 and still buying... 3 06/04/07 565 222.5 2.54 0.013 0.005
Microsoft Word - Putting back the 'Calculate' command 3 05/19/07 527 238.5 2.21 0.013 0.006
Quicken - What, Why, & How? (with troubleshooting) 1 10/06/07 294 98.5 2.98 0.010 0.003
pcAnyWhere 12.0 - Upgrading from an earlier version 3 02/25/07 362 321.5 1.13 0.009 0.008
pcAnyWhere - implement on Win 2003 Server IIS Firewall 2 05/12/07 511 245.5 2.08 0.008 0.004
Windows Small Business Server 3000 Installation diary. 3 01/07/07 1,484 370.5 4.00 0.008 0.002
Windows XP - Renamed user and 'Access Denied' 2 02/25/07 591 321.5 1.84 0.006 0.000
Computer BackUp for Small Bus.-The What, Why and How? 0 12/03/07 188 40.5 4.64 0.000 0.000
OE to Outlook-The What, Why, & How? (+Oversized files) 0 11/23/07 109 50.5 2.16 0.000 0.000
==================================================== ====== ============ ===== ====== ====== ====== =======
TOTAL 96 17,870
AVERAGE 3.31 616.2 181.2 3.769 0.019 0.006
MAX 10 1484.0 449.5 8.489 0.036 0.024
MIN 0 109.0 40.5 1.015 0.000 0.000
Analysis
The measures used in this analysis included; 'Age in Days', 'Views per Day', 'Ratings per Day' and 'Ratings per View. Our key performance measure 'Ratings per Day' is the item's rating divided by the guide's age in days. You don't need to do this kind of analysis, but we hope you can benefit from our experience by applying some of the rules-of-thumb that seem to be helping us as we progress in offering guides that folks find useful, and that help to build our eBay reputation.
Links to other Guides on 'Writing Guides' that we found to be of interest:
- Reviewing Guides, Auction Template Help - The 10 Design Basics, (Good stuff and very comprehensive.)
- eBay's Picture Icons: What They Mean & Represent #2, (After 5-years on eBay, we learned from this one!)
- How to format a Pleasing Guide (PICTURES), (The mystery of full-size vs. small-sized guide pictures solved...)
- GUIDES - Retrieving Info That Ebay Lost, (A www-Google-Com idea for helping to find and preserve your guides.)
- A Seller's How-To on Writing a Professional Guide, and
- Writing your eBay Guide Offline - Cheat Sheet. (How to write offline, and paste into eBay's Guide authoring window)
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