Ebay Research

I receive a number of emails from people asking for advice on how to get more sales and greater visibility on eBay. A number of them express disappointment that the business they have launched has not been as successful as they hoped.

This is also a common theme running through many home business and eBay related forums. I was reading a post on one forum where someone had purchased a large amount of stock but had had little success in selling any of it on eBay and wondered why.

The problems these people are experiencing are all down to one thing. Lack of research. They have purchased products and believe that all they have to do is place them on eBay and they will sell, unfortunately, it’s not quite as simple as that.

EBay is just a market. A huge market, but just a market. People browse eBay looking for products they want. If they don’t want to buy a pair of rollerblades then they aren’t going to buy them, regardless of how cheap they are. So, if you’ve bought a thousand pairs you may have problems shifting them unless there’s a sudden surge in interest.

While it’s still possible to go to an auction and buy a load of items, and put them on eBay for a profit, it’s not as easy as it once was.  Auctions used to be an excellent place to buy stock.

I know because I used to buy computers from auctions about seven years ago for a computer business I used to have. Today auctions are not always so cheap. The problem is that they are full of people who’ve been watching programs about how to make money by buying things from an auction and reselling them. This has led to the sales price of items being forced up.

To avoid wasting your money on products that are difficult to sell you need to engage in a little research. The best way to sell on eBay is not to go out and buy some stock then try to sell it, but to first find out what buyers are looking for then go and locate the stock.  A little time spent researching can save you a lot of heartache and money.

Researching what’s selling on eBay is easy and you don’t need to waste any money on third party software because eBay provides you with all the tools for free. One of the most powerful research tools is eBay pulse, named appropriately because it’s the pulse of eBay.

This will tell you instantly what people are looking for on eBay. What the most popular searches are for, what items are been sought. This is a great research tool that eBay provides and you should use it. It is, I have to say, just one of many tools eBay provides for sellers to use.

I wrote a post in February about how to do some basic eBay research. It can be found here: http://www.middleagedinbiz.co.uk/how-to-research-whether-a-product-will-sell-on-ebay/ It’s never being easier to conduct research on anything by using the internet.

Researching product trends on eBay, average sales prices reached, successful auctions will take a couple of hours at the most.  By the end of your research, you’ll have a list of hot selling products and how much you can expect to get for them from eBay.

This puts you in a strong buying position. Armed with the average selling price of the products you’re looking for you can now make an informed decision about whether it’s worth your while purchasing stock at a certain price.

I think most traders, me included, have at some time, bought stock that we believed would sell instantly, only to find that it goes out of the door slower than an old dog you’re trying to take for a walk. To prevent this make sure there’s a market for the product before you buy it.

How To Research Whether A Product Will Sell On Ebay

EBay has some fantastic built in tools, which if used correctly are excellent market research for the product you are thinking of selling. Before deciding to invest in a product to resell on EBay it’s common sense to check a number of things about that product. For example, is the market already saturated? How much can I hope to get for this product? You need to find out what buyers are prepared to pay for the product you are selling. If you’re hoping to sell an item for £100.00 but they are selling on eBay for £80.00 then you need to rethink your strategy.

So, how do we find out what a specific product is selling for? It’s really simple; we use the eBay search function. Let’s say I want to sell a Blackberry Pearl 8120 mobile phone. I’ve found a place where I can purchase them for a reasonable price and I need to know what I could expect to sell them for on EBay. How do I find out?

Just follow me here: first go to the eBay search function and click on “advanced search”. This will open up the advanced search page. The first thing you will notice is that it has so many more choices than the standard search page.

I will enter my product description. Be specific here. I am looking for a Blackberry Pearl 8120 so that is exactly what I will type. In the “in this category” field on the drop down menu, I will put mobile and home phones.

Further, down you will see a field titled “search including” Under this is a box labelled “completed listings” tick this box. The completed listings box will show me all the finished listings for my item, this is the information I want to know. This is where I will discover what people are paying for this particular phone.

As you can see, there are many other options on this page to narrow the search down. For this demonstration, however I will leave it as it is and click search. And Hey Presto! I get the first of many pages showing me how much the phone is selling for and the dates when they were sold. Included in this page are accessories as well as the phone. I don’t want to know about these so I will click “mobile phones” on the side of the page. This removes everything except the phones and I have instant factual research right in front of my eyes.

I can see how many phones have been sold. These are shown in green, and I can see what failed to sell, displayed in red. This is crucial information. I can now spend an hour going through the selling prices of the phones. I would use a spreadsheet to input this in. from that I can establish an average selling price.

I can see the highest selling price. I can also compare the way each seller has listed his or her item and what success it has brought. Again, this is crucial information. I can look at the phones that did not sell and ask myself why? Did the seller over price the phone? Was it because of poor presentation? Questions I need to answer.

After a few hours of research, I will have collected valuable information about this product. Crucial information, which will have answered some essential questions like:

How much can I expect to sell this product for?

What’s the average selling price?

How should I present this product?

What’s the best format to list it under?

What price is too high?

Is the market saturated?

Can I hope to make a profit?

This simple piece of research will answer all these questions for you. From here, I can make an informed decision about whether I should venture into this market or not.

Being successful on eBay is not simply about picking something up and putting it up for sale. If you want to make money, you need to be professional. You need to research your market. This will save you money in the end and you will avoid costly mistakes. If you put an item on EBay for sale and no one buys it, you will have to pay relisting fees. Constant relisting can soon run up fees. By some good research, you can avoid this situation.