In any business, taking the time to research the market environment before committing resources is imperative. You must commit your time and attention to getting very familiar with the latest sales stats as well as sizing up your competition before diving in. eBay's Completed Listings search feature is perfect for this.

Do You Know How Lucky We Are..?

No other market has it this good! We can literally pull up a "snapshot" of the last 30 days which, in most cases, is more than enough information to make solid business decisions.

Most new sellers know to look for how much similar products have sold for over the last 30 days, but that's not all you can learn from the Completed Listings. You can literally critique the actual ads that sold and will be selling right next to you. See what's working for other sellers and, more importantly; what's not working.

Take specific notice of the "search result" view of each ad that does well. This will give you a clear understanding as to how the winners, if there are a few, are getting the majority of this product's traffic or target market.

You can't sell someone that doesn't see your ad, so this is always the first step. Getting the lion's share of the traffic!

Now, how about the actual ad? Are the one's that are selling using traditional ad copy techniques or are they just using copies of the manufacturer's ads? You'll find this a lot on eBay. Frankly, I get excited when I see that the top seller I'm researching is not utilizing common psychological sales skills. This leaves a BIG space for me to sell in and usually means that I quickly take control of that market.

Moral of this issue; don't just brush over the completed listings and act as if you've done the research. There is plenty of information to be had here and all of it WILL help you succeed or overt a possible financial disaster.

Respectfully,

Chuck Mullaney
www.iauctionsuccess.com
http://www.pajamaexecutive.com