Free Ways to Find Out What Sells on eBay Part 3

This is the third installment in a series regarding the best free ways to find and determine which products you might want to sell on eBay, as far as the ones with the greatest potential to sell successfully and be profitable for you.

The first two installments covered eBay Pulse and eBay's Want It Now board.  Next, these are the techniques that will be discussed in this article: internet keyword research, workshops, discussion forums, and chat rooms.

Internet Keyword Research

Another very helpful way to find products that sell well on eBay is to research them on the internet in general.  Products that do well on eBay generally also do well on the internet at large. 

But be careful, because the two platforms constitute completely different marketplaces, and although researching keywords on the internet is a good first step in cluing you in to potentially viable products, that's all it is, a good first step.  Don't rely on internet sales statistics -- average selling price, sell-through rate, supply vs. demand, etc. -- for specific details to indicate whether or not or how to list particular products so they'll do well on eBay.   After you've found some potentially profitable products to sell from your internet research, it's crucial that you also research these keywords/products on eBay as well, preferably using a good eBay market research tool.

So that being said, one of the easiest ways to start this process is to find products that have a lot of demand online, and the best way to determine that is to find out how many searches are being done for particular product keywords/phrases on the internet on a regular basis. 

One excellent tool you can use to determine what the most popular searches are is Trellian, and if you access it from the following link you'll be able to use it to perform dozens of searches for free:

http://freekeyworddiscoverytool.com

The best way to start searching product keywords is to put in a fairly general term, such as "hat":

And this is what the results look like:

In order for a particular product to be viable to sell online, either on or off eBay, it should have at least 1000 searches listed in these results.  So based on the results above, the only product keywords that may be viable are "hat" and "cowboy hat". 

The next step is to take the keywords/phrases with at least 1000 searches listed in the Trellian results and type the same phrases into Google.  This will tell you approximately how much competition already exists online for this product.  The keyword in question should have less than 5 million results on Google in order for it to represent a sufficiently low level of competition to make it worth listing for sale on eBay.

Make sure you type the exact same phrases in the search field on Google as you did on Trellian; otherwise, the results will be inaccurate.  So first, let's type in the word "hat" in Google and see what we get:

As you can see, there are 577 million results for the word "hat".  In this case, these results don't necessarily mean that you can't do well selling hats on eBay, just that you'll need to focus on a more specific keyword phrase. 

So this time, let's type in "cowboy hat" and see what the Google results are.  And this time, we're going to put quotation marks around the words "cowboy hat" in the Google search field; that way, only the results with the words "cowboy hat" together, in that order, will appear, not results with both the word "cowboy" and the word "hat", but not necessarily listed together:

As you can see, there are only 1.18 million results for "cowboy hat", which means that cowboy hats represent a potentially viable product to sell on eBay.

The next step is to research cowboy hats specifically on eBay, preferably using a good eBay market research tool.  If your research indicates a healthy sell-through rate, at least 50% or higher, it's probably worth your time to find a few different suppliers to compare prices, policies, etc. among them, and if you're able to find cowboy hats at a low enough price that will allow you to obtain at least 10% profit per item, after your eBay and PayPal fees, then go ahead and start listing cowboy hats on eBay. You've found yourself a promising product!

eBay Workshops

Another great resource that may be able to help you find some promising products to list on eBay is eBay's Workshop Board, where all of eBay's recent workshops are available to review.  At least once every few months, eBay hosts a workshop regarding finding good products to sell on eBay, and these can be invaluable in providing sellers with excellent product ideas.

Here are links to 2 such recent workshops:

What to Sell on eBay, Keep or Give Away When Spring Cleaning

Research and Find Products to Sell on eBay, Within eBay!

eBay Discussion Forums and Chat Rooms

Another excellent way to find out what sells well on eBay is to ask other eBay users.   Although some eBay sellers can be secretive on this matter, not wanting any more competition from sellers of their own products, others are very open and helpful on this issue, and may be able to provide you with some great ideas of new products to sell. 

Obviously, almost no eBay seller has the time and the money to list every potentially viable product for sale on eBay himself, and most experienced eBay sellers realize that.  So many longtime eBay sellers who are already comfortably ensconced in their product mix of choice will pass along any other clues or tidbits they discover regarding other promising products.

One of the easiest and best ways to find these sellers and this information is to visit the eBay Discussion Forums and/or Chat Rooms on a regular basis.  Even if you don't post any comments yourself, just reading through the comments others have posted can be very beneficial. 

The discussion forum you should probably visit first is the Answer Center, which is available from a link that appears when you hover over the "Community" link in the top right corner of any eBay page:

Notice that the link to the Discussion Forums is right below the link to the Answer Center.

When you get to the Answer Center, this is what the page looks like:

The "Answer Center FAQ" page should be the first page you read, to learn how to use the Answer Center properly.

Then everything else circled in red on the page indicates links to pages where you may be able to find ideas and advice concerning good products to sell on eBay, or even general advice and tips on selling successfully on eBay.

Clicking on "Auction Listings", for instance, takes you to this page:

Notice the first circled portion, which says "Ask a Question".  That is what you would select to post a question on the board asking for help in finding good products to sell on eBay, after which your question would appear below, similar to the post you see here ("Variation listings or single listings?")

Next to the title of your post, you'll be able to track how many replies you have received, then you can click on "View Answers" (the second circled portion) to read the replies and/or post follow-up responses.

The other discussion boards function similarly to the Answer Center.  If you go back up to the "Community" link in the top right corner of the page, and this time, you click on "Discussion Forums", this is what you'll see:

If there are any particular issues of great importance, there will often be information concerning them posted at the top of the main discussion forums page, as you see here. 

Then below that is a list of discussion forum categories, from which you can select those that could likely result in some ideas for you concerning good products for you to list on eBay:

The categories and forum names circled in red are the most likely possibilities for obtaining ideas regarding good products to sell on eBay.

If there were one particular discussion forum to visit first, it would be "Seller Central", one of the Community Help boards, shown with a star next to it in the left column above. 

Now that you've gone through all 3 articles in this series, you should have plenty of idea and resources you can pursue in order to find viable, potentially very profitable products you can sell on eBay