Using Other Research Tools

Does all that manual number crunching seem like a lot of work? Then let somebody else do it for you! There are a handful of pricing research services and programs available that perform all sorts of analysis on eBay auction trends. The good news is that these services greatly simplify this process and provide highly detailed (and very professional) analysis. The bad news is that you have to pay for what you get.

That said, let's look at the freestanding research tools offered by eBay, as well as some useful third-party tools.

eBay's Hot Categories Report

When you want to find out the best types of merchandise to sell, it helps to know which product categories are hot in terms of sales. Fortunately, eBay makes this relatively easy, with its monthly Hot Categories Report. As you can see in Figure 2.2, this list details the hottest product categories on the eBay sitewhich are the best categories in which to sell.

Figure 2.2. Find out the hottest product categories with eBay's Hot Categories Report.

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To access the Hot Categories Report, click the Sell link on the eBay Navigation Bar to open the Sell hub, and then click the The Hot List link. eBay updates this report every 30 days, so it's good to check it monthly.

eBay's Market Database

The Hot Categories Report isn't eBay's only research tool. eBay pulls together other essential sales statistics in its Marketplace Research database, which you can search (for a fee). What sort of information are we talking about? Here's a sample, for any given item:

Average sold price

Sold price range

Start price range

Average BIN price

BIN price range

Average shipping cost

Last sold price

Last sold date/time

Number successfully sold

Average bids per item

Then there are the charts, including trend charts for average sold price, number successfully sold, and average bids per item; and distribution charts for average start price and number successfully sold. You can search the entire database, or filter your results by date, specific sellers, specific stores, country, and so on.

eBay's Marketplace Research can be accessed at pages.ebay.com/marketplace_research/. Three different packages are availablethe Fast Pass provides two days' access for $2.99; the Basic plan costs $9.99 per month; and the more robust Pro plan (which offers more search options) costs $24.99 per month.

I find the Marketplace Research to be a real boon when I need specifics about any given product or product category. It's in-depth data, well worth the money for serious sellers.

Ándale's Research Tools

You can supplement eBay's research tools with those from Ándale (www.andale.com), a popular third-party site. Ándale offers three key research toolsWhat's Hot, Research, and Sales Analyzer. You can use these various tools to discover hot product categories and determine how to price and when to list your items. We'll look at each of these research tools separately.

What's Hot

Ándale What's Hot is a research tool that provides detailed reports about the hottest selling eBay items, in any category. As you can see in Figure 2.3, the main What's Hot page lets you click through each category to find the hottest products in each category, or search for particular items to see their performance. Ándale also pulls out the hottest products in all categories (for the past four weeks) and lists them on this main page.

Figure 2.3. Discover hot products and categories with the Ándale What's Hot research tool.

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When you click through to a specific product, you see the individual product report, as shown in Figure 2.4. Ándale uses a chili pepper icon to denote the relative hotness of any particular product; three peppers means high demand, two peppers means medium demand, and a single pepper indicates just mild demand. You're also presented with the percentage of closed items (the higher, the better), the total quantity listed and sold, the average number of bids per item, the average sale price, the price range, and the number of unique sellers offering this item. If you want to view specifics of each auction, click the See Individual Items link to display a list of auctions monitored over the past month.

The results of a typical search are shown in Figure 2.6. The Price Summary tab displays some key information and three useful charts. The main information includes the average selling price, number of total listings, number of items listed (there can be multiple items per listing, remember), total number of items sold, and the success ratethe number of items sold divided by the number of items listed.

Figure 2.6. Using Ándale Research to track pricing trends over time.

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As to the charts, the first one presents the average selling price of the item, for each of the past four weeks. The second chart displays the quantity listed and sold, again for each of the past four weeks. The third chart displays the percentage of successful auctions, again for each of the past four weeks. Below the charts are links to individual auctions, which you can view in more detail.

You can view even more detailed information when you click the How to Sell tab, shown in Figure 2.7. This tab displays a very detailed report about the item or category you selected. A typical How to Sell report includes information on scheduled start day, eBay marketing features, and type of listing.

Figure 2.7. Fine-tune your auction listings with Research's How to Sell tab.

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Most useful is the Summary at the top of the page, which offers advice regarding

Best category to list your product
Best day and time to start your auctionand how long an auction to run
Which listing enhancements (bold, gallery, and so on) are cost effective
What listing type (standard, reserve, BIN, and so on) provides the best results

What opening price generates the most bids and highest sale price

I find Ándale's Research tool essential for both determining what products to sell, and for fine-tuning my product listings. Follow the advice givenbased on Ándale's extensive auction researchand you'll find yourself selling more items at higher prices.

The cost to use this tool is $7.95 per month.

Sales Analyzer

Ándale also offers the Sales Analyzer tool ($5.95/month), which is designed to help you better understand your own eBay sales. It provides a detailed analysis of your total sales, sell-through rate, return on investment, and other key metrics. This tool is of more use to established sellers than to new eBay businesses; check it out once you have your business up and running.

Mpire Researcher

Mpire Researcher (www.mpire.com/research/login.page) is a web-based eBay research tool, similar to Ándale Research. Enter a product or category and Mpire returns a report that tells you the average selling price of the top-selling listings and the most effective title keywords, listing enhancements, listing types, start price, listing duration, ending day and time, and product category. (Figure 2.8 shows a sample report.)

Figure 2.8. Detailed product and category analysis from Mpire Researcher.

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And here's the very best thing about Mpire Researcherit's free. That's right, unlike Ándale Research and all the other paid research tools and services, there's absolutely no charge to search the Mpire database and generate research reports. You do have to register, but there are no fees associated with that. Just enter your search query and generate your free report.

Terapeak Marketplace Research

Another good web-based research service is Terapeak Marketplace Research (www.terapeak.com). Terapeak searches a three-month running database of eBay listings to provide a variety of detailed research reports. Two plans are availableResearch Lite for $9.95/month, or the more fully featured Research Complete for $16.95 per month. The Research Complete plan also includes research on the top sellers in any eBay marketplace, which is a good way to get smarter about the competition.

AuctionIntelligence

AuctionIntelligence (www.certes.net/AuctionIntelligence/) is an auction analysis program available on a subscription basis. Downloading the software is free; you have to pay $14.99 per month to use it.

This program lets you search eBay by category or keyword. After it retrieves all matching auctions, you can generate a wide variety of sophisticated reports just by clicking the name of the report in the Reports list, and then you can customize the report based on your own user-defined parameters. You can generate reports that detail price over time; bidding and pricing trends; the effects of auction duration, premium features, feedback, and PayPal; frequent bidders; common words in listing titles; and more.

For example, Figure 2.9 shows the AuctionIntelligence Search Summary report. This particular report displays the total number of auctions found; the sell-through rate for this item; number of regular, reserve, fixed price, and Dutch auctions; average number of bids for each auction; average price for this item; and more.

Figure 2.9. Basic auction sales analysis from the AuctionIntelligence Search Summary report.

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Figure 2.10 shows the Price Over Time report. This report is an excellent way to discover the pricing trends for a particular item, whether the average selling price is going up or down. The results are presented in a highly visual fashion, making it easy to see whether pricing is trending up or down.

Figure 2.10. Track pricing trends with the AuctionIntelligence Price Over Time report.

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AuctionIntelligence also offers Hot Items and Category Distribution reports. As such, you're looking at an extremely full-featured research program, although it's somewhat technically demanding (it requires the installation of a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or MSDE 2000 database before it can run) and not the easiest program in the world to use. Given these caveats, AuctionIntelligence can generate some extremely valuable research reports for the serious eBay seller.

HammerTap

HammerTap (www.hammertap.com) is a software program that performs basic auction sales analysis. It's a tad pricey, at $199 for a yearly subscription or $24.95 per month. HammerTap provides fundamental information about any category or specific product, including the number of auctions in the past 30 days, the number of bids for each auction, percentage of items sold, average selling price, and so on.

Note

The product now known as HammerTap was formerly known as DeepAnalysisand is still called that in various places in the program and on the company's web-site. The product formerly known as HammerTap (an auction management program) no longer exists.

HammerTap presents several tabs of information, including

Auction, which lets you view the details of individual auctions for a given product or category
Seller, which provides competitive sales data for individual sellers
Report, which displays relevant statistics about the selected product or category, such as sell-through rate, average selling price, most useful listing features, and so forth

Tip

Several other companies offer category-specific eBay research tools. These include MiBlueBook.com (www.mibluebook.com) for musical instruments; PriceMiner (www.priceminer.com) for antiques, art, and collectibles; and SmartCollector (www.smartcollector.com) for antiques and collectibles.

Other tabs provide even more detailed analysis, such as which title keywords are most effective. You can save individual searches within the program, as well as export your results to both spreadsheet and database formats. This versatile program works seamlessly with the data available on the eBay site.

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Using Other Research Tools