One of the things I enjoy the most about helping others build their own successful eBay business is listening to their business ideas. I've learned so much from all of the people with whom I work, primarily how creative and enthusiastic everyone can be about their ideas.

While a huge percentage of the ideas I hear offline are wonderful, they aren't always ideal for marketing on eBay. So, my job is to teach others how to use a scientific approach to determine whether their idea is something that can be marketable and profitable on eBay.

This scientific approach is called research!

Research is defined as "a systematic investigation (i.e., the gathering and analysis of information) designed to develop or contribute to general knowledge." The knowledge in this case is your product or idea.

Why Do Some Ideas and Products Not Work for an eBay Business?

As most of you already know, I focus primarily on teaching others how to benefit from the already huge eBay market and the customers they recruit to their site for your sales. To benefit from this traffic, you need to market a product that is highly popular and searched for by the masses. Doing so will make your job a lot easier and your business a lot more profitable.

Before moving on, I want to clarify that there are always exceptions to the rule. For example, you can make money dealing in collectibles even though the items might not be searched for widely. This is so because you have a targeted group of people who are coming to eBay to look for this particular collectible.

For the most part, we are looking to find a product that is highly searched for and/or well known by the masses. I have found the best products for this goal are popular name-brand products that are, for the most part, household names.

What Type of Product Research Is Needed to Determine Product Popularity?

So, you have an idea and now it's time to start your research. The things you are looking for when doing your research are as follows:

Number of auctions in a category

Number of auctions resulting in a sale

Average number of bids per auction

Average list price

Average sale price

It is first important to know you need to conduct your research not only by active auction listings but also by completed auction listings. By searching both active and completed listings, you're better able to determine your average final bid value as well as the average number of items sold versus the number of items listed.

Be Sure To Compare Apples With Apples

What do I mean by this? Well, there are two different types of sellers (at least to me when doing research): the Business Sellers and the Garage Sale Sellers.

Business Sellers are eBay users who use eBay as a means of income. These buyers purchase products solely for the purpose of reselling them for a profit. This means they are listing their items with a profit in mind (which gives you an idea of what you will need to purchase the same products for to make a profit).

Garage Sale Sellers are those eBay users who use eBay as a hobby. They typically are using eBay to get rid of things around the house. Perhaps clothes their kids have grown out of, things they no longer use, and so on. Because these individuals aren't necessarily using eBay as a business, they usually are listing the items for much cheaper than if the item was new (or overstock) and they needed to make a profit.

You now have the basic information necessary for starting your research! I will continue to send follow-up information on research in my newsletters to help you better understand its importance. This will be especially helpful for people who are new to selling on eBay as well as new to my approach of how to sell profitably on eBay.

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