AuctionCut

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.

This makes a lot of sense. Thank you very much for your tips. I am only starting out here. I haven't even posted anything on ebay yet. I am still trying to learn the ropes before I take the plunge.

Well if the answers to the questions mentioned in the above thread are positive you can just start blindly bidding in that website...

That are really the things to consider before joining any auction website... Great job done man..
Cheers

To second John's suggestion here's an interesting step by step article by the eBay selling coach on how you can make use of misspelled keywords and flipping them to more profits

http://ebaysellingcoach.blogspot.com/20 ... -in-5.html

Cheers!

Great link Saleeho..
I have read the article and it proves to be very useful when it comes to misspelled keyword... Nice Sharing

Cheers

And I'd like to share this article about all the eBay tools you may use to help supercharge your business - http://www.salehoo.com/education/ebay-s ... ness-tools

A good one to mention is eBay's Listing Analytics. This tool is a free tracking and managing tool for sellers. It can give great benefits by helping sellers analyze and improve their exposure in eBay's search results.

Hope this helps.