Know Your Competition on eBay. Tips to Research Other Sellers andf Pricing Secrets How To Selll On eBay
There is no denying that successful selling and making a profit depends on a lot of factors, but two of the most important of those factors are without a doubt the volume of sales you have made and the profitability of each of those sales. I know this appears to be common sense, but you’d be surprised at how many small business fail because they overlook a hidden cost or don’t factor in taxes or overhead into their sales price - it doesn’t matter if you make a million dollars a unit and are selling thousands of them a day if it costs you a million dollars and five cents to ship that product to your customer … in the end if you are not making enough money to grow the business, pay your salaries and invest in future growth your business will not succeed.
With today's markets there is very little that is 'new' or that is not being sold by someone else somewhere – but surprisingly this is a good thing. When you enter into an existing market you will have competition. I can sense the puzzled frown on your face now – yes competition is ‘the enemy’ and you have to fight for customers any time that you have another vendor selling the same type of products (which can be difficult) but it also can be a pointer to how well the market is doing and what it is willing to bear.
Imagine if you lived in a world that had never used gasoline and someone gave you a bunch of crude oil fields. Odds are that if YOU were going to have to pay the thousands of dollars necessary to drill a well, pull up those barrels of crude oil and then pay to have them filtered and processed, THEN try to find a use for it you wouldn’t see the point.
In today’s world however, even though the competition is fierce since we live in a world where a gallon of gas can fetch more then $3.00 and tons of other products rely upon that same crude oil for their very existence there is no question that selling oil can be profitable and well worth a sizeable investment. This same principal is true for all sales, and easy to take advantage of on eBay where researching your components and the current selling price of similar items is just a quick search away!
Identifying the Competition
First of all the small volume ‘garage sale’ type of seller should not be your focus. If they have one projector and are willing to take a loss or don’t realize the cost of shipping and packaging then yes they can underbid you – once. The true competitor is the one who sells goods similar to your own over and over again at a price point comparable to yours.
Whether their product is identical or a cheap knock-off doesn’t matter, the product, volume and price are what you should focus on. With eBay it is easy to see how many transactions a seller has had, and judging by the type(s) of products they have currently listed you can quickly determine if they are a major player or just unloading a few items.
Once you find your competition is when the real fun begins – identifying the types of goods a high volume seller has available can actually help point you to existing trends and opportunities, while seeing how many bids and at what price point they begin to fade on his outstanding auctions will help you know what a reasonable “buy it now” price would be. You can also check his shipping and handling costs and feedback to see if anyone has complained about those prices or had problems with receiving the goods they have purchased from him.
Taking Advantage of Weaknesses
Weak links or problems you identify in your competition may either point out a problem with the product or supplier that you need to be cautious of, or present a weak link in your competitor’s capabilities that you may be able to take advantage of. For instance if both you and he are selling software to program embedded devices and there are a series of feedbacks that mention something like “once I figured out how to … it was great” you might consider advertising and making available free assistance or touting how easy your product is to utilize right out of the box.
Internet searchs
They key to all of this is searching both existing and finished auctions that match the product or category you are going to sell within of course, so let’s take a little time first to just discuss basic searching on the web and then advanced search capabilities eBay offers its users.
Database and browser searches
Most browsers and search engines have some similar database-like command structures that not everyone is aware of – for instance if you query on a search for
Windows sale bay
You might think you would find hits related to bay windows for sale, and you should have some in the thousands of hits that will be returned, but what you have really done in most browsers is to ask for pages that have any of the words “Windows” or “Sale” or “Bay” listing anywhere on them. Most people who have done even a basic search know enough to know that putting quotes around words makes them be grouped such as saying
“Bay Windows” sale
Would ensure you got hits from sites that had the words bay windows or sale on the site somewhere, but did you know that you can also put a command like
Bay~Windows and sale
In most search engines this will say that both words “bay” and “windows” must exist in proximity to each other either separated by a single character or space or all as one word, AND that the word “sale” must appear on the page too.
Jakartian Rules of Search
These rules of “free text” searching are similar on most search engines and a list of most popular operators and their most common effect / description on a search follows, derived in part from the definitive listing available here:
Single Term (simple) Search:
Just a single unique word such as an ISBN number or a keyword like “blue” used to retrieve all sites or lists with relevant words or derivatives for instance searching on
Ozone
Might return ozone, ozones, ozone-layer etc.
Using multiple keywords normally defaults to being a “and” meaning that both words need to appear in the page somewhere before a match is made, so that searching on
Ozone Layer
Might return ozone-layer, ozone from the cake will layer upon etc.
Phrase Searches (grouped words):
A phrase or group of words in an exact order and syntax, for instance querying on
“Ozone Layer”
Would only return pages or lists that had those two words separated by a space – although most engines do not worry about the case.
Boolean Searches
So called “Boolean” operators are symbols that cause a certain type of action that are common in programming and must always be typed in capitals or use the associate symbols (if any) to be respected by most search engines. The principle Boolean operators consist of the:
AND (+)
Where both words must be in the query resultOR
Either one or the other of the words must be in useNOT (-)
A term or word must NOT exist in the search results
Related types of searches using “wildcards” are often useful with Boolean searches and their characters are often listed in the same sections as the Boolean operators, so I will continue them here. Wildcard search characters and their functions consist of:
?
Any single character such as searching for ozone? would return both “ozone ” and “ozone-“ as well as “ozone1”*
Any series of characters, a true “wildcard” the asterisk (*) means any match, so searching for *or* would return ANY text that had ozone within it including for, door, more etc.~
This is the so-called “fuzzy” search, in which you can either find variations in spelling, or word matches that are within a specified number of spaces of one another. Most commonly used simply as an inclusive such as saying ozone~layer to find any instance where the two words separated by other words are in proximity you can on most searches also specify using an optional parameter to limit the distance or number of words between them such as “bill board”~3 –
NOTE: Many of these advanced features are not directly supported on eBay’s search engine, but can be used in your browser to find eBay sites and listings using other search engines, and as such are good to know and understand.
You can also use combinations of these searches in a technique called “boosting” for instance searching on
(fiber or resin) AND carbon
Will specify that your search MUST contain the word carbon, and then either the word fiber or resin.
Searching eBay
On eBay many of the advanced Boolean searches do not function or might not follow the same rules, but again for use in finding information on your competitors and general searching you need to know and understand even the search terms eBay doesn’t directly support.
On eBay the basic “and” is assumed, so if you type carbon fiber searches returned need to have both words in some form within them. OR also is accepted, phrases can be specified and when using the ‘advanced’ search you can also say whether to search by a seller’s User ID and whether to include completed items and if so for how many days.
EBay searches are not case-sensitive, and a fairly complete list of parameters and what they do can be found online but is summarized as follows:
Phrase Search
Place terms in quotesNot
Place a "-" on front of words to be excludedMultiple Not
" " and commas between that word and each following word to exclude anything but what is in the quote marksAnd
Place a comma between all words that must be presentWildcard
The * is supported for instance book* will find book, bookends, books etc.
NOTE: eBay also has 'intelligent' searching which may include items that it feels are close to what you have been searching on. To prevent this simply add quotes around any single keyword to show you are doing an 'advanced' search and this feature will be disabled.
Being Specific
Whether on eBay or the web many searches return far too many hits to be valuable to you, so some general rules of thumb when searching is to be as specific as possible, and to isolate (whenever possible) a specific model or manufacturer or keyword in your search. A few suggestions to get you started off with include:
Not using plurals' (bat vs. bats for instance)
Review the hits that you get which are relevant to see if you can isolate more specific keywords or terms to add to your search
Try different search words that mean the same thing, such as urn for vase for example
If you have a specific example use the part or model number to find examples that you can use to isolate the specific names, locations and keywords associated with those products
(Note: On eBay many times specific product categories exist for exactly the item(s) you may be searching on and this is a quick way to isolate those so you can then browse that category)
Bringing it all together
The key and purpose behind searching and finding competition on eBay for your chosen product still remains to isolate and learn from what others have experienced, there are many ways to accomplish this but the searching of the web is one of the richest. Sharing information and making publicly available what was once tribal knowledge is really the entire purpose of the World Wide Web after all, and you never know just what you will learn until you dive in yourself and see where your queries bring you.
more selling on eBay information online and resources
eBay Basics
signing up, account management
ways to make money selling on eBay
how to make money buying on eBay
secrets to building a successful auction business
choosing what to sell
what's hot, whats best to sell
how specialization can dramatically increase your sales and opportunities
where to get products to sell
a roladex of sources
listing items for sale
ebay super seller secret
exactly how to sell $100,000 a year on ebay
after the sale, impress
communication and delivery
business reputation
use of feedback
ebay wealth for a lifetime
repeat sales ...
opening an ebay store
even more profits
eBay Articles
Recommended Resources
Free Auction Manager
Free "Learn To Sell Basics" Video Training from eBay
Analyze eBay Hot Categories, Items, Popular Keywords and Searches with the Ultimate eBay Seller's tool, Hot Item Software Click Here
Best DropShip Directory
Best DropShip Directory
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