You might be one of the thousands of individuals who open a trading account with eBay and dream about making auction selling a full-time home-based business.
However, before that dream can become a reality, you need to do many important things while running an auction business.
One of these important things to do is to pick the right products to sell. The right products to sell are the ones that people on eBay want or will buy.
eBay tells you what people actually want and what people actually will buy in four areas of its website.
“In Demand”
One of these four areas on eBay’s site is the “In Demand” section. There is an “In Demand” link for each of the main categories on eBay. Listed in these areas are the previous month’s top ten products that people wanted and the top ten searches for each subcategory. To see the data in these areas follow the link below and when you reach the page, scroll down and click on the link “In Demand” under any of the categories shown.
http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/sellbycategory.html
“Hot Categories Report”
The next area containing information on finding what to sell on eBay is the “Hot Categories Report.” This report lists the “fastest growing” categories on eBay for the previous month. The explanation for what eBay considers “hot” can be hard to understand on your first reading. Nevertheless, the important thing to know is that the categories listed are the ones were buyer demand for the items under those categories are growing faster than the seller supply. This report is a PDF file so you will need Adobe® Reader® to open it. Here is the link:
http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf
“eBay Pulse”
“eBay Pulse” is another area where you can figure out what people are looking for on “The World’s Online Marketplace®.” It contains a category’s daily snapshot of the ten most popular searches and the stores with the most active listings. A subsection on “eBay Pulse,” known as “Most Watched Items,” reveals the ten auctions that are getting the most attention. Visit this page and select a category to study from the drop-down menu.
http://pulse.ebay.com
“Merchandising Calendar”
The last area with information on what to sell on eBay is the “Merchandising Calendar.” Here, eBay shows you the categories they will promote on their homepage each month. This is where eBay “tells” you what to sell. You can ignore their calendar and sell anything you choose, but wouldn’t it be easier to make sales if you took advantage of eBay’s promotional influence? Look at this page and use the calendar as a guide in planning your inventory and listings.
http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/calendar.html
Last Thoughts
Now that you have the links to data that tells you what people will buy on eBay, you can look forward to listing these items and making sales. The next step is finding the wholesale or drop-ship sources that carry those items that are “In Demand.” That is when you will be one-step closer to achieving your goal of making a living from eBay.
