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Getting the Most Out of eBay With Market Research

In past years, the famous eBay site has become more like a business and less like a place to sell your goods. Today, the best sellers on eBay are treated like merchants, and effectively for all intents and purposes, they are.

This has brought about an age of business-savvy eBayers who have taken the opportunity to use analytics, marketing and business tactics to rise up above the traditional home based seller.

Want to compete? You’ll need some help.

Marketing for many is a confusing term and a complicated one, but essentially it’s simple. If you market a product, you don’t just simply sell it, you sell it at the right time to the right person for the right price, and that’s it. When it comes to eBay, all the tools you need to perform your own marketing are already there. Take a look at our top five marketing tips:

Search Existing Auctions

Before you consider selling anything, the first thing you need to do is to establish whether or not a market actually exists. In the case of eBay, chances are the market will always exist, but to be sure take a look for similar products. If there are no similar products, you’re either going to make a killing as the sole supplier, or it’s been done before with limited success. At the same time, take a look at how the other auctions are selling their products. Are they powersellers? How does their auction page look? Most importantly, look at how much their products cost and ask yourself if you can compete.

Search Completed Auctions

Now you know how much existing auctions are selling for, take a look at completed auctions to find out just how much things have been selling for. Remember to factor in additional costs, and work out whether or not it’s a profitable endeavor.

Take a Look at TeraPeak

For premium market intelligence, the Terapeak product helps you find out what’s profitable in seconds. Whilst it is a subscription only service, it’s an amazing way to get real-time market analysis without having to do it yourself.

Construct the Perfect Product Page

eBay is a competitive auction site and to sell successfully you need to learn how to make an attractive sales page. The first and most important rule is to construct a good title. In marketing, we call it a call to action, so instead of just listing “used socks” for sale, spruce it up a little by using the sub-title element as well. A keen tip is to use a catch-phrase for the subtitle, which everyone will associate with you.

After writing a great title, you need to ensure that your product page is just as good. Most important of all is good photographs. Learn to photograph well, it’s not difficult and a few hours of practice is a lot better than simply snapping a picture and uploading it.

When you’re working on content for your eBay product page, ensure that you’re honest, informative and above all, don’t misrepresent the product you’re selling, because the most important aspect of eBay is in building a high feedback rating.

Posted in eBay, How To, Selling | No Comments »

eBay Auction Snipers Exposed

You have probably bid on many auctions only to find that someone bid at the last second and won the auction, and you probably thought at the time they cheated. The reality is that they didn’t break any rules, but instead took advantage of a special program or website which let them place their bid at the very latest opportunity.

They used an Auction Sniper.

Firstly, an auction sniper doesn’t involve guns. It’s simply the name of the first ever application that was sold to bid at the last minute. It was akin to a one shot kill, thus the name ‘Auction Sniper’ was given.

Today there are loads of last-minute bidding applications out there. Some are free and you have to download them, whereas others are web based and track your auctions server-side meaning you don’t even need to keep your computer on to win bids.

Web based applications are great to use because they are hosted on a third-party computer, which often has an extremely fast connection which will never fail. This gives you almost unlimited sniping potential when compared to traditional software solutions.

The way an auction sniper works is quite simple. You tell it the auction number, the time you would like to bid, and your maximum bid. It will then do its magic and you can sit back and watch whilst it bids on your behalf and virtually guarantees you win the auction.

Why use an auction sniper?

One of the reasons they were invented was to try and reduce the close price of many auctions. The problem faced is that when people place ordinary bids, they often get tied up in a bidding war. An auction sniper puts your bid in at the last minute, meaning no-one can compete with your bid,

It sounds like cheating, but eBay hasn’t done nothing to prevent it. These days many competitors have a 5 minute rule meaning that every time someone bids, the auction length is extended by five extra minutes. It’s the only way to prevent and limit auction snipers.

Here’s what you need to know:

If you’re keen to start sniping auctions, then there are a few key rules.

First, be careful when entering your maximum bid, because the sniper is ruthless and it will continue bidding until it’s reached.

Second, if you’re running a sniper program on your computer, then remember to stay connected to the Internet and obviously don’t switch off the application.

Third, don’t bid too late. Placing your bid when there are less than five seconds remaining is great, but if your computer slows down for even a moment, it may miss the opportunity and you will lose the auction.

And finally, if you get out-sniped by a sniper, don’t take it personally. Sniping is great fun, incredibly exciting and just a little bit devious.

If you want to try for yourself, take a look at Gixen which is a free web based sniping tool.

Posted in eBay, Shopping, Software | No Comments »