Researching the Ebay Market

Market research is an essential first step to any Ebay selling campaign. Simply throwing
it out there and hoping it will sell is a very haphazard business approach. Sure, you may
get a few winners. Buy enough lottery tickets and you will also eventually get some winners.
In the interim time and money that could be spent building and promoting your business are wasted.

Before launching any major campaigns you will want to know:

• Is there a current market for my product?
• How saturated is the market for this product?
• Who is my competition?
• What are average selling prices for my product?
• What is the sell through rate for this item?
• What are the demographics of potential buyers?

Onsite Ebay options for market research include a completed items search which will offer 30 days worth of completed listings and Ebay Hot Items, and Ebay Pulse. These are just a starting point and will only offer a basic overview. Ebay also offers a paid research tool which seems to have a lot of very mixed reviews from users.

By far best option for any serious research is a professional third party tool such as Terapeak Marketplace Research or Hammertap. These and a few others are relatively inexpensive and offer very comprehensive reporting of Ebay sales data.