Due diligence is in the process of researching and identifying the niche that has the most potential for you when determining What to Sell on eBay
Now is the time to begin narrowing your focus for what to sell on eBay and finding your niche.
The best strategy is to find for determining what to sell on eBay is to choose one niche and become an expert in that area.
Finding a niche will help you streamline your supply chain and wholesale resources, increase your service levels to your customers, and ease your expansion efforts as you create multiple streams of income.
As you grow and are able to take advantage of discounted pricing from your suppliers because you are buying in such large volumes the specialization will really pay off. And just a side note, when you sell things online, it is a good idea to look into utilizing drop shipping suppliers. This has been a staple for many eBay home business owners and I recommend that you look up some dropship companies as one of your seller resources.
My niche was in sporting goods. I had never played the sport and never even really knew what the sport was until that fateful Christmas party. I am living proof that there is a process to this madness and that you do not need to be selling products that you know a lot about. You can sell things you never even heard of before – as long as there is a market.
Research, Research, Research, the key to determining what to sell on eBay
Let your imagination run wild and check all of the categories on eBay when trying to figure out what to sell on eBay. I suggest finding a major category (mine was sporting goods) and navigating your way down through the different segments. When I was first getting into my business there were only 4,000-6,000 paintball auctions live on any given day. When the sport became more popular and the competition grew, there were as many as 10,000-20,000 auctions per day. You can start in a very small segment and branch out if necessary. You can never start too small. You can always grow into bigger and better categories as you learn more about your business. For now, I would look for something with about 5,000 auctions or less per day.
Once you have chosen a few niches to explore as you determine what to sell on eBay, the next step to getting some money in your pocket is checking to see what products in that niche are selling for. For the sake of this example let’s just pick something simple, one of my favorites, Barry Sanders football cards. Go to eBay and type “Barry Sanders card” in the search section.
The results will show you every Barry Sanders card for sale on eBay. As of press time, there are 173 items for sale under the search term
“Barry Sanders card” and 182 of them fall under the sub-category of “Card”.
Note that you can sort the results by time left before the auction ends or by the total price of the auction, including shipping among a few other options. You also have tabs on the top left corner of the screen that allow you to narrow your results down to include only the items being sold on auction or only the items being sold at a Buy It Now price.
Now let’s do some research. Search for the exact card that you want to sell. Remember, this process can be followed with any item so just substitute your item for “Barry Sanders card” in this process. If there are hundreds or thousands of items on auction then try narrowing your list by searching for “Barry Sanders rookie card” or “Barry Sanders Topps card.”
Begin writing down what other sellers are selling your specific item for under the Buy It Now tab. Look under the Auctions tab to see the auctions that are ending soon. What are these near-complete auctions selling for? How many bids are they receiving? And when I say soon, I am talking about anything ending within the hour.
The number of bids is going to give you an idea of the demand for the item. As you begin looking through several different categories you will see fluctuations in the number of bids. All of these numbers can clue you in to the demand and potential for these and similar products. The last hour of an auction is when you get the most activity on any auction. Sometime within the last hour of the auction, every item will be on the first page of search results if you sort by items ending soonest.
Here’s a hint for deciding what to sell on eBay that I used to my advantage because not a lot of other sellers knew about this feature at the time. I even find that many people today still do
not know of this nifty option!
Not only can you look at the items that are about to sell, but you can look at the items that have sold recently. This is still my most used tool on eBay and always has been.
To find this option, go to the far left column of your eBay Search Results page and look under the “Search Options” section in the Preferences area. Place a check in the “Completed listings” box and wait a second for eBay to bring you the new results.
Wow! I am now looking at the last 387 Barry Sanders card auctions that have ended on eBay.
Any item with a selling price listed in green sold for that price. Any item that has a final price in red did not sell. The price in red is either a Buy It Now price or an Auction that did not meet its reserve (or minimum) bid amount.
I sort the results in order of highest priced to lowest priced auctions because it is easier to research sorting this way. You will eventually find a break even point where no auctions under a certain amount were successful for any one given item.
Using this information, you can begin to identify how much you think your specific item is going to sell for which will help you decide what to sell on eBay.
Since you have already sorted this list with the highest priced auctions at the top, you can begin to scrutinize the auctions that got the best final selling prices.
The Most Important Questions You Can Ask When Determining What to Sell on eBay
As you scan successfully sold auctions (at the highest prices of course!) you need to be asking yourself the following questions when deciding what to sell on eBay:
- What do these auctions have in common?
- Are they all from one seller?
- Do the titles look the same?
- What got people to bid more for these items than all of the other items that showed up in the search?
- Is the seller established?
- Did these items have professional listings?
- Were they generic in nature but with a really good, detailed and compelling description?
- What were the photos like?
- Are the pictures images provided by a manufacturer or are they photos that the seller took themselves?
- What details do the photos show and is everything crystal clear to the buyers?
Look at all of the top items and note what compels you when you view them. If you were a buyer, what would make you feel secure and confident about bidding this much to win the item you yourself are about to sell?
Read and reread that paragraph and questions above. This is some “How-to” information on what to sell on eBay that is going to be extremely valuable to you as you learn what comprises a successful auction. The funny thing is that the “How-to” guides will walk you through the simplest steps of selling on eBay but never, ever get into these compelling questions.
Write these questions down. Find auctions that really impress you and note the answers to these questions. Keep track of them in an Excel spreadsheet and then scour your niche for the best sellers and ask yourself these same questions as you try to figure out what to sell on eBay.
Can you do better? Are there very few people doing a good job? If you answered yes to these questions and cannot find one major, low priced, dominating seller in your niche, then GO FOR IT!
So there you have it, one of my tried and trued research methods that I used when deciding what to sell on eBay.
