Auction 411

We cannot stress this point enough: Do your research!

Find out what people are buying on eBay, what items they’re bidding on, and what they’re willing to pay for them. One way to do this is to browse the Completed Listings - you’ll see how many people bid on an item, what they finally paid for it (eBay is a truly great example of a free market, because the true value of the item lies in what the buyer pays), the length of the auction (starting and ending dates and times), the item description details, and if they offered Buy-It-Now.

Another reason to do your research is to see if you can really sell your product. For example, if your product is in a collectible category, make sure that you familiarize yourself with all aspects of the product to extract key selling points you find important. You wouldn’t want a Disney Pin Collector turned off from a sale because you didn’t take the time to educate yourself on the item to fully divulge the right information.

One of eBay’s great tools is their monthly Hot Categories Report, which lists the best categories to sell in. For a nominal fee, you can also search eBay’s Marketplace Research Database, a pool of various essential statistics. You can view and analyze top searches, average start prices, average sold prices and so on. (Click on the Marketplace Research link from the home page for detailed information.)

Other third-party companies will sell eBay research tools for a small fee. Andale.com provides supplemental reports detailing the hottest-selling items, tracking pricing trends, and analyzing your sales data. AuctionIntelligence and HammerTap also provide research tools for a monthly subscription fee.

The point here is, do your research. No one said this was going to be a simple one-step process. There are never any gains in life without sacrifice, so if you want to succeed, think about sacrificing a couple of hours of your day to research.

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