How to use keyword research tools to find the best products to sell on eBay. Step one in starting an eBay business.

Before Starting an eBay Business

Before starting an eBay business, it is important to research what products to sell on eBay. First research what are the best products to sell on eBay and online in general. And secondly, check out your competition to see who is currently selling these products. Market research is step one in any strategy in starting an eBay business.

Product Research – What Products to Sell on eBay

a. Use eBay’s Best Selling Product List

For initial research into what products to sell on eBay, I’d suggest using eBay pulse which lists the top 10 selling items on each eBay site overall and for each main product category and sub-category. eBay also lists of it’s top keywords and popular search terms. As this is based on user data it’s a useful insight into how people use eBay. It is also an excellent resource as it is updated regularly and it’s free. Remember the top 10 best selling items will vary between different countries.

b. Use Closed Listings to see how & why products sold

Once you’ve used eBay’s pulse, popular products and keywords lists to make a list of possible categories, sub categories and products that you want to target. Then look at what actually has been sold in your target categories by searching the closed listings (do this by searching for products and filter to show only ‘closed listings’).

By looking at these closed listings you can get an idea of

• The price people will pay for the items that are making money on eBay
• What products/listings got buyers bidding?
  
• How your competition is making money on eBay?
• What the average postage costs are.

eBay also has a paid service which provides more statistical data on popular searches and products, called eBay marketplace.

c. Extend your research to what products to sell on the internet in general.

Although eBay is the most popular shopping site in most countries, most people start their online shopping by using search engines, and 90% of the time that means Google. So although they may end up finding and purchasing the items they’re looking for on eBay, most of the time they’ve been sent to eBay by a search engine. So it’s important to continue your product research via Google (plus Yahoo and MSN).

And this is where keyword tools come into your market research. I will be comparing free keyword tools against paid tools, namely Keyword Elite in the next post. But for now, which ever keyword tool you use, they will have at least the basic function as a keyword suggestion tool. Put in the generic product names and terms that you’ve found using eBay pulse into the keyword suggestion tool and it will provide a list on related search phrases and the number of times a phrase was searched for say the last month. Again keyword tools can provide country specific phrases and search counts.

Save these lists of phrases as they will be a useful insight into HOW people search for a product online. But will also be useful when it comes to actually promoting your website, web pages or eBay listings as you’ll need to optimize you web content to encourage search engines to index them and drive traffic/visitors to them. But for now it’s the search counts which will be of use to you as you can see how many people actually search for products every month. Use these stats to determine the best products to sell on eBay and online.

d. Competition Analysis

Now that you have a list of products and search terms, look who else is selling these products by using these search terms in Google. How are these people or companies selling their products, what is their unique selling point (USP)? Think about how you could provide a better service or product or USP to beat this competition.

Search in Google with each of your chosen search terms in quotes to see the number of unique web pages which have been optimized for these terms. Keyword Elite has a function that calculates how effective the top ranked web pages in Google results are optimized for a given search term, using this data you can see how you can write your web pages and eBay shop listings to beat the top ranked pages. More detail on this later in the coming few posts.

In summary

1. Use eBay pulse to find the best products to sell on eBay based on popularity and what you are able to sell.

2. Closed listings – using past performances in eBay see what the potential is for making money from selling these things.

3. Use keyword tools like Keyword Elite to find what the potential volume of traffic is for these things online and on eBay.

4. Use search engines or Keyword Elite to determine the level of competition, how they sell, what you can do to stand out and what you need to do to optimize your shop listings to give them the best visibility.

As you can see from these steps you will be able to start building a good foundation for your eBay business strategy. From which you can realize the potential of how to make money on eBay selling these products.

Coming up next: Free keyword tools verses paid keyword research tools i.e. Keyword Elite