How to Use eBay Research for Beginners
If you are new to selling on eBay and want to make money on eBay, there are a few things you should learn before listing any items for sale. You will want to analyze eBay market research. That research starts on eBay and these tips will start you on your way.
Be specific
The search for the competition should start on eBay because that is where the compet0rs are located. eBay generates enough traffic on its own, you do not need to worry about driving the traffic to your sales page. If you are searching maternity clothes, you should keep in mind are you selling used or new clothing. This will impact the type of result you will get.
Spelling Mistakes
Hey we are all human and we all make mistakes and you should capitalize on these mistakes. No matter what you are searching for, think of a few common misspellings. There is a good chance that these auctions will go for less because few people will find them. You can buy it on eBay cheap and resell it on eBay for profit! For example search addis instead of adidis. There are over 40 results with Adidis spelled wrong. If you want to learn more about how to make money off of people’s mistakes on eBay, check out this listing of mine on eBay!
Use a Thesaurus
If you are selling on eBay or you want to start selling on eBay, there is no need for you to own a thesaurus. Why? Because you have internet access and could use thesaurus.com to help you think of different words someone might search for when looking to buy what you are selling. For example searching for both ‘TV’ and ‘television’, or for ‘phone’, ‘mobile’ and ‘cellphone’. This goes back to being specific, if you can you should consider using the brand and model.
Use eBay Categories to Your Advantage
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If you do not know, eBay requires all sellers to list their items in at least one category. You can narrow your search results by searching in specific category. Even after you completed your search you will notice a list of categories to the left of the search results. For instance, if you are looking for a particular CD, you should search the CD category. This will save you valuable time looking through a ton of auctions that you do not even care about. You maybe asking yourself, why would I want to search for something I want to sell on eBay? You want to check on the competition! Any time you are trying to sell anything, you need to spy on your competitors. Check on their prices, shipping costs and how much activity on the auction(s).
Take Your Time and Browse Around
This tips goes along with using the eBay category search tip. Once you have found the item you are looking to sell, you should check out the entire category and try and find items that would compliment the item you are trying to sell. If you find items that go well with your item, you could create a package deal to increase the value of your auction, thus getting more bang for you eBay buck and more sales. Also, you will get ideas on what other items are selling in that category and you could add these items to the list of items you are already selling. Thus, growing your business!
Advanced Search Techniques
Here we start getting into some more advanced techniques, but they are not that difficult to understand. Just know these few strategies will help you complete very narrow searches and will ensure you are defining you niche.
Wildcard searches
You can put an asterisk (*) into a search phrase when you want to say ‘anything can go here’. For example, if you wanted to search for a 1950s car, you could search for ‘car 195*’. 195* will show results from any year in the 1950s.
In this order
If you put words in quotes (“”) then the only results shown will be ones that have all of the words between the quote marks. For example, searching for “Lord of the Rings” won’t give you any results that say, for example “Lord Robert Rings”.
Exclude words: Put a minus, and then put any words in brackets that you don’t want to appear in your search results. For example: “Pulp Fiction” -(poster,photo) will find items related to Pulp Fiction but not posters or photos.
Either/or
If you want to search for lots of words at once, just put them in brackets: the TV example from earlier could become ‘(TV,television)’, which would find items with either word.
So once you’ve found your bargain item, bid for it and won it, what if it all goes wrong? Don’t worry – eBay has a thorough dispute resolution procedure, and we’ll cover it in some depth in the next article, so you’ll be prepared if the worst happens.
I hope this post has helped you! If it has, leave a comment. If you think I missed something, leave a comment. If you think I suck, leave a comment. If you want to enhance you eBay market research, you should check out the folks over at hammertap.com. I have used their services and it has improve the money I have made from eBay.
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3 Comments on How to Use eBay Research for Beginners
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Robor on
Fri, 24th Jul 2009 11:57 am
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How to Sell on eBay Researching Popular eBay Items « Sell on eBay Tips for Beginners on
Thu, 13th Aug 2009 7:48 am
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make money selling things on ebay on
Mon, 17th Aug 2009 7:53 pm
http://www.yourinternetincomeadvisor.com to GoogleReader!
Robor
[...] success on auction sites will guarantee you steady success. The problem is that without the proper research, you don’t know what the popular items are! To find out what you should be selling on eBay, [...]
I bought Adams Instant Store Builder in Las Vegas last year 4,500 plus 2,000 for the Seminar where he pitched the ISB. ISB is very very difficult to set up. You also need a Logo. Nothing in the ISB about how to create a Logo either. I went back and forth w/ the support tickets. I did get responses that helped somewhat but you have to know what to ask and I’ m not a Techy so that was another challenge. I have not made a dime off of it. You have to know how to drive people to your site (SEO) which was not part…
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