Researching the Market

Before you determine what you want to sell on eBay, it pays to do your homework. I'm talking research hereresearch about what's selling, what's not, and for what price. There's a lot of research you can do for freeor you can pay for a professionally prepared analysis.

Search eBay's Completed Auctions

One of the best ways to research the market is to simply search eBay's completed auctions. (This research has the added benefit of being free.) You want to search the completed auctions for items similar to what you're thinking of selling. Examining the final results can tell you not only how popular an item is (how many bids it receivedif any), but also the true worth of the item, as evidenced by the final high bid. Just make sure you click the Completed Listings box on the search page, of course.

As you compare the completed auctions, make sure that you're comparing apples to apples. You'll see wildly differing final prices for new items versus used ones, items in different conditions, items bundled with other items or accessories, items of different size or color, and items of different ages. You can't compare the value of a new item with a used one; try to find items of the same approximate age and condition when doing your comparison.

Once you've whittled your comparison list down to those auctions that are truly similar, you will immediately start to notice patterns. Some auctions end with no bids; most will have many bids. Study those successful auctions to determine what made them successful. Was it the headline, the item, the description, the price, and so on? Once you learn this technique you can study various products and get a good grasp of what's going on. Everything successful on eBay is hiding in plain sight, for all to see.

Caution

Don't waste your time searching auctions still in progress. Because so much bidding takes place in the last hour of the auction (that's sniping, remember?), a mid-auction price is likely to bear no relation to the final pricewhich you can find by searching completed auctions.

Use eBay's Hot Categories Report

When you want to find out the best types of merchandise to sell, it helps to know which product categories are hot. Fortunately, eBay makes this relatively easy, with its monthly Hot Categories Report. As you can see in Figure 14.1, this list details the hottest product categories on the eBay sitewhich are the best categories in which to sell.

Figure 14.1. Find out what's hot with eBay's Hot Categories Report.

To access the Hot Categories Report, click the Sell link on the eBay Navigation Bar to open the Sell hub, then click the The Hot List link. Remember, the report is updated every 30 daysso check it monthly!

Search eBay's Marketplace Research Database

The Hot Categories report isn't eBay's only research tool. eBay pulls together other essential sales statistics in its Marketplace Research database, which you can search (for a fee). What sort of information are we talking about? Here's a sample, for any given item:

• Average sold price

• Sold price range

• Start price range

• Average BIN (Buy It Now) price

• BIN price range

• Average shipping cost

• Last sold price

• Last sold date/time

• Number successfully sold

• Average bids per item

Then there are the charts, including trend charts for average sold price, number successfully sold, and average bids per item; and distribution charts for average start price and number successfully sold. You can search the entire database, or filter your results by date, specific sellers, specific stores, country, and so on.

eBay's Marketplace Research can be accessed at pages.ebay.com/marketplace_research/. Three different packages are availablethe Fast Pass provides $2.99 for two days' access; the Basic plan costs $9.99 per month; and the more robust Pro plan (which offers more search options) costs $24.99 per month.

Use Ándale's Research Tools

You can supplement eBay's search tools with those from Ándale (www.andale.com), a popular third-party site. Ándale's key reports include

• What's Hot ($3.95/month) provides detailed reports about the hottest-selling eBay items; it's an excellent tool for identifying what types of products to sell.

• Ándale Research ($7.95/month) provides detailed pricing reports for any specific product or category on eBay; it's good for tracking pricing trends over time and determining what day of the week to list and what initial price to set.

• Sales Analyzer ($5.95/month) is designed to help you better understand your own eBay sales. It provides a detailed analysis of your total sales, sell-through rate, return on investment, and other key metrics.

Figure 14.2 shows the What's Hot report, which is similar to but more detailed than eBay's Hot Categories report. I find this and the Ándale Research reports worth the money, especially if you're a high-volume seller.

Figure 14.2. Mine the third-party data presented in Ándale's What's Hot report.