How to find the right products to sell on eBay.

by: planes
Forum Moderator
721 posts

How to find the right products to sell on eBay.

Posted 2 Dec 08 7:51 pm.
EBay is a very competitive market as I am sure many of you know.

I think the best way to look for products is to clear any preconceptions about what you want to sell.
I know many say to sell what you are familiar with or are interested in, but I think this is a bad way to go.

You have to be a hawk. You have to sell what is wanted not what you want to sell !

Another problem I see is people looking to break into selling something that is to competitive. Like as mentioned here at Salehoo, don't try to crack electronics or other high tech items unless you have a great connection to get them.
I am constantly seeing requests here on Salehoo for, does anyone know where I can get ipods cheap?
The sooner you realize this type of product is not available to you for selling on eBay the faster you can get on with finding a good product to sell on eBay!

Ipods is a dead end. So are many electronic and computer products.

Here is a good research site to find products or research sales of products.

terapeak.com

They are a little pricey but have a 14 day trial period where you can try and cancel for a refund within 14 days if you don't want to keep the subscription.

There is a vast amount of data available. You can even research 90 days of sales from sellers.
You can see the amount of listings a seller had to produce to get sales; their sell through %; whether they did auction or fixed price;what time of day they listed etc... . You can even see a list of their completed listings and visit their
listings on eBay.

You can easily find hot/hotter and hottest items selling on eBay in real time.

You can track trends for the last 2 years etc etc... .

Now, what you do is find about 10 items that are hot on eBay and search for suppliers. You can do that here on Salehoo and through your own research.

There are ways to check companies. I'm not going to get into that in this thread.

BTY, Expect to spend not only hours doing this but days. This should take about 20 to 30 hours or more of research.

Then once you find your product and supplier, expect 4 or 5 hours researching on terapeak to find how your product is sold successfully on eBay by other sellers and copy their successful habits.

Then expect to spend 5 to 10 hours prepping your eBay listings to look good.
( creating a nice listing template that looks professional.)

Then another 1 to 4 hours listing.

Hope this helps.
by: fudjj
SaleHoo Staff
1996 posts

Re: How to find the right products to sell on eBay.

Posted 2 Dec 08 11:58 pm.

EBay is a very competitive market as I am sure many of you know.

I think the best way to look for products is to clear any preconceptions about what you want to sell.
I know many say to sell what you are familiar with or are interested in, but I think this is a bad way to go.

You have to be a hawk. You have to sell what is wanted not what you want to sell !

Another problem I see is people looking to break into selling something that is to competitive. Like as mentioned here at Salehoo, don't try to crack electronics or other high tech items unless you have a great connection to get them.
I am constantly seeing requests here on Salehoo for, does anyone know where I can get ipods cheap?
The sooner you realize this type of product is not available to you for selling on eBay the faster you can get on with finding a good product to sell on eBay!

Ipods is a dead end. So are many electronic and computer products.

Here is a good research site to find products or research sales of products.

terapeak.com

They are a little pricey but have a 14 day trial period where you can try and cancel for a refund within 14 days if you don't want to keep the subscription.

There is a vast amount of data available. You can even research 90 days of sales from sellers.
You can see the amount of listings a seller had to produce to get sales; their sell through %; whether they did auction or fixed price;what time of day they listed etc... . You can even see a list of their completed listings and visit their
listings on eBay.

You can easily find hot/hotter and hottest items selling on eBay in real time.

You can track trends for the last 2 years etc etc... .

Now, what you do is find about 10 items that are hot on eBay and search for suppliers. You can do that here on Salehoo and through your own research.

There are ways to check companies. I'm not going to get into that in this thread.

BTY, Expect to spend not only hours doing this but days. This should take about 20 to 30 hours or more of research.

Then once you find your product and supplier, expect 4 or 5 hours researching on terapeak to find how your product is sold successfully on eBay by other sellers and copy their successful habits.

Then expect to spend 5 to 10 hours prepping your eBay listings to look good.
( creating a nice listing template that looks professional.)

Then another 1 to 4 hours listing.

Hope this helps.
I'm one of those that are of the opinion that looking at selling what you know best is a great place to start for new comers to online selling. It may not be the most popular item on ebay, but when you work in sales for carrier you learn that product knowledge is a very valuable tool, and can quite often be the difference between a sale, and zero!

Do you have to sell a popular item to make money on ebay?

Well I guess that answer would be defined by what you call popular.

You will often hear people talk about a niche market, and that is never a big market, yet those markets can generate some of the best sales figures. A niche market is one that is hot because it is under serviced, demand is greater than supply, and if you are a lucky supplier trying to keep up with demand then you can do very well.

Any seller supplying such a market would consider they have a popular product, however I think most would define a popular product as a product that is in high demand to a mass market.

This is where new sellers become frustrated most of the time, because mass markets are completely saturated with more suppliers trying to get into the market than buyers for the products.

Sure the products are popular, but that means you are trying to get into a super competitive cut throat market, and the chances of you being able to compete are not very good to zero!

You don't need the most popular item to fill a niche market, you just need the right one to be successful. but of course niche markets are the hardest to crack because research is usually more hands on.

If you are astute some research may point you in the right direction, but most niche markets are developed through trailing different products, then honing the various results to develop your market.

Most will always chase the big popular items for the mass market because It's easy to chase that range. You don't need much of a thought process, you just go lets see what's popular, and BAMO, there they are.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule, especially in sales, but I think focusing on the biggest selling items can some times be a complete false economy that leads to nothing more than complete frustration.

While Niche markets are almost developed from scratch by the more industrious sellers around, I personally think they are where most of the opportunities lay.

I know if I were to sell new products, and a product assesment showed me that the products I knew best were not a good option, then I would try those not so readily available on ebay.

Just because it's not on ebay doesn't mean that it won't find a market. It just means that no one is currently supplying the market...and who knows just how popular that market could be?

Who knows how many new gizmos there are released onto the world market everyday, the choice would be absolutely extreme. I've said it before, but take a look around your local craft type markets because you never know what products someone might be making and not selling to an online market yet.

Try to widen your horizons a little and stop focusing on the bleeding obvious, because you are not just competing with those already on ebay, but you are also competing against the other million or so lookers wanting to get products on ebay as well!

Finding out the top ten sellers on a website is the easy part, sourcing them at a competitive price is a different ball game all together!

Marc Ransom

Community Manager
SaleHoo
by: bayericlowe
SaleHoo Master Member
486 posts

Re: How to find the right products to sell on eBay.

Posted 23 Jan 09 11:53 pm.
iPod accessories aren't a dead end however. Both on eBay and off. I've sold quite a selection of very good (rare) iPod accessories through my store and they aren't a dead end, you just need to have alot of traffic, in the tens of thousands in order to sell iPod brand items. And I rarely bother with the original iPod except in certain cases for discontinued merchandise.
by: planes
Forum Moderator
721 posts

Re: How to find the right products to sell on eBay.

Posted 29 Jan 09 5:05 am.

iPod accessories aren't a dead end however. Both on eBay and off. I've sold quite a selection of very good (rare) iPod accessories through my store and they aren't a dead end, you just need to have alot of traffic, in the tens of thousands in order to sell iPod brand items. And I rarely bother with the original iPod except in certain cases for discontinued merchandise.
You are right. I hope my post did not suggest this.
by: beatsonboy
New SaleHoo Member
2 posts

Re: How to find the right products to sell on eBay.

Posted 16 Feb 09 9:18 am.
If you want to see how the Big Boys do it, check out this free monthly newsletter link hidden
by: bayericlowe
SaleHoo Master Member
486 posts

Re: How to find the right products to sell on eBay.

Posted 20 Feb 09 4:20 am.
What are you referring to by 'big boys'? Are you talking about the elitists that spammed their way to having a 1 million member mailing list?

Because I can assure you, things are not close to that simple in real life. Unfortunately or not, they are not at ALL that simple.

Big Ticket Depot is where you can really get some good results finally.
by: shopwindows88
New SaleHoo Member
1 posts

Re: How to find the right products to sell on eBay.

Posted 30 Apr 09 6:10 am.
i think to find something that can be sold in ebay you must do some research using tools like terapeak,ebay pulse which can give you idea to sell good on ebay
by: aznvcboi
SaleHoo Senior Member
52 posts

Re: How to find the right products to sell on eBay.

Posted 2 May 09 7:30 am.
You can find tons of products here ***Link Removed***

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How to find the right products to sell on eBay.