4 Quick & Easy Tips on How to Improve eBay DSRs and Feedback by Frooition

Article from the Frooition Blog

1. Item as Described
Write full product/item descriptions including all relevant details. Especially the condition of the item and any defects. Use Item specifics and include multiple pictures to help buyers see exactly what they’re about to purchase. Don’t use generic stock product shots, especially for used items – show the buyer the product they are actually going to purchase.

2. Communication
Make sure buyers know how to reach you by providing contact details in your listings, emails and shipping invoices. You can use automated emails through Selling Manager Pro to keep buyers informed of when you receive payment and when their product has been shipped.

3. Postage time
Ship items as quickly as possible once it is sold and paid for. The sooner a buyer receives their item the happier they’ll be. Offer premium postage options to enable buyers to select a low cost, slow delivery or a next day service at a higher price. Remember to confirm the shipping method used and inform buyers when they should receive their item to set their expectations.

4. Postage and Packaging charges
Offer the most competitive postage rates possible. If you can, consider free postage and include the cost in the purchase price of the item. Don't forget to offer discounted postage for sending multiple items which may also increase sales.

Frooition is a leading provider of eBay store and listing designs. Frooition provide design services for most other online sales channels as well as website design. Frooition has been working with the eBay platform more than 4 years and has clients in the USA, Canada and Europe.

11 Hot Selling Holidays eBay Sellers Should Be Ready For (April - June) by Lisa Suttora

Article by Lisa Suttora, CEO & Founder of WhatDoISell.com

You may think that the “holiday selling season” runs November-December, but take a look below and you’ll be surprised at all the selling opportunities you have for your online business coming up in the next few months. No matter what you sell or where you sell it, capitalizing on these HOT spring and summer selling seasons can make a huge difference in your income during the 2nd quarter of the year! From April to June there are 11 different selling holidays that you’ll want to ramp up for! Miss these and you’ll leave money on the table…

April
April may be the kickoff to spring, but in the world of online sales, there’s a whole lot of shopping goin’ on!

• Bathing suit season: It’s still too chilly to wear them but sales of bathing suits are skyrocketing now. In fact, shoppers who wait much past May will find that all the best selection is gone! If you sell beachwear, it’s time to get it on your store homepage
• Prom wear: Online searches for prom wear are on the rise this month. Even though most proms don’ t happen until late May or early June, prom wear sales are increasing quickly with online searches up 60-80% from last month according to Google Insights
• Wedding season: Wedding season is in full swing as we approach June, one of the biggest wedding months of the year!
• April 4th: Easter: Easter is April 4th. And there is still time to make last minute sales. According to BIGResearch the average amount Easter shoppers are expected to spend is $118.60, slightly up from the 2009 average of $116.59.
  April 22nd: Earth Day: Earth Day is April 22nd and sales of eco-friendly and green products abound during this time. Don’t just look to sell traditionally “green” products. Look for the green in everything you sell. A bicycle is not only for entertainment and exercise, it is an eco-friendly way for your customers to commute to work or around town.

May
But that’s not all people are buying…

Bathing suit, prom wear and wedding season continue, but Mom boosts the sales this month!

• Sales of summer products ramp sharply in May (and June): Products for outdoor activities, clothing and outdoor living products for the home. Don’t wait until June to feature these in your store or you’ll lose a lot of sales!
• May 4th: National Teachers Day. A week long celebration honoring teachers, if you sell gifts and decorative accessories your store should have a promotion around National Teacher’s Day.
• May 9th: Mother’s Day: Mother’s Day is one of the biggest spending holidays of the year. Because it’s not just about buying a gift for your mom… there are grandmas, aunts, nieces, friends, co-workers and friends who are like a mom, who will all be getting gifts on this holiday too. Recognize all the moms in your store promotions and you’re sure to increase sales!
• May 31st: Memorial Day: It vacation time, camping time, fun in the summer time and your last chance to make big inroads in summer product sales!

June

• June: Graduation. Grade school, middle-school, high-school, college and technical college – sales of graduation gifts increase in May and June! And don’t forget the little ones! Pre-school graduation parties are all the rage. What do you sell that would make a perfect gift for the graduate?
• June 20th: Father’s Day: Dad doesn’t fare quite as well as mom when it comes to Father’s Day spending but Father’s Day gift shoppers will be out in full force. Put together a Top 10 Father’s Day gift list and watch your sales of those products soar!
• June: 4th of July products: Remember the majority of product sales happen in advance of the holiday, so if you wait until July to pull out the red,white and blue – you’ve just lost sales to the savvy seller who merchandised their 4th of July products in June. So get those 4th of July products out early, so your inventory is sold out come July.\

As you can see there’s a whole lot of selling you can do from April through June! So it’s time to get out there and capitalize on these spring and summer holiday selling seasons. Looking for creative ideas on how to merchandise your products or source products for these selling seasons? You’ll find them in the WhatDoISell Business Growth Center!

Since 2004, Lisa Suttora of WhatDoISell.com has provided thousands of online sellers with the skills, knowledge and support they need to build a unique, thriving business on eBay.

Infopia and ChannelAdvisor are First to Support eBay Motors Parts Compatibility

If you sell parts that fit multiple vehicles on eBay Motors, some of our Certified Providers can help.

Parts compatibility is a more efficient way for sellers to list parts that fit many vehicles. Sellers no longer have to create and manage many listings or to include the names of all compatible vehicles in the listing title to ensure that their items appear in search results. Instead, sellers can create one listing describing a single part and add an extensive list of compatible vehicles in the new Compatibility tab that we have created in the listing description. The information included in the Compatibility tab will be searchable.

Listing with parts compatibility also helps buyers find parts that fit their vehicles more easily, because buyers will see more precise search results containing exact parts for their specific vehicle.

Seller Benefits:

Save on listing time and Insertion Fees. With parts compatibility, you don’t have to list one part multiple times to ensure all compatible vehicles appear in search —a huge savings in Insertion Fees and time spent managing and creating listings.

Get a boost in search results. Listings with parts compatibility information will get an extra boost in search results. Since we use information from both the Compatibility tab in your listing and your title to match the buyer's search, you can now dedicate all 55 characters in your title for popular keywords like brand name and part number. Your listing will show up in more—and more relevant—buyer searches.

Gain more satisfied buyers. Parts compatibility helps increase buyers’ confidence that they’re purchasing parts that will fit their vehicles, and also helps reduce questions and returned items.

Starting in March 2010, compatibility listings will be available in certain sub-categories on a gradual roll out schedule. You can list with parts compatibility in the U.S. on eBay and on eBay Motors in the following sub-categories of Car & Truck Parts as they become available: Lighting, Lamps & Accessories, Air Intake & Fuel Delivery, Exterior, Tires and Wheels.

Parts compatibility should be available in all sub-categories in the following categories by the end of 2010:

• Car & Truck Parts
• Vintage Car & Truck Parts

Sellers in the categories enabled for parts compatibility can take advantage of this new way of listing with a listing and inventory management solution from the Certified Providers listed below.

Certified Providers:

ChannelAdvisor

Infopia

eBay Sellers Can List Faster with Product Details and Certified Providers

List even faster when you use eBay Product Details!

Quickly fill out item descriptions and add photos when listing to eBay with Product Details. Depending on your item and the category you are listing in on eBay, you may be able to include information from our catalogs in your listing, known as product details. Adding product detail information not only makes listing easier, but also helps your items gain added visibility on eBay in our product details page.

Some categories contain items associated with products in our catalogs. If you are listing in one of these categories, you'll be able to add product details along with a stock photo from our catalog to your listing.

Product details can help you create complete listing descriptions that are more visible and appealing to buyers in the categories: Books, Movies, Music, Video Games, Digital Cameras, PDAs and Cell Phones.

Benefits:

• Easier, faster listing
• More complete and detailed descriptions
• Item visibility in product details page—easier for buyers to find your listing
• Can be added to your existing listing templates

eBay Certified Providers provide listing tools supporting product details, thereby allowing you to list even faster, easier and manage your inventory.

Certified Providers work with all levels of eBay sellers from beginners to advanced PowerSellers to online retailers.

Certified Providers:

Kyozou

Mercent

Infopia

Seller Sourcebook

Vendio

Monsoon

ChannelAdvisor

inkFrog

Auctiva

What eBay Sellers Should Think About When Developing a Returns Policy by Doba

Blog post taken from Doba's Dropshipping Blog

No retail strategy would be complete without a customer service and return policy. Retailers take very different approaches to this, and the successful ones often incorporate their policies directly into their branding. Nordstrom, for example, is famous for its extremely liberal return policy, while a big box retailer such as Best Buy may have very restrictive policies.

More important than the policy, is the transparency and communication of your return restrictions and service options. Learn and understand first-hand the process and impact an eBay seller’s policy (or lack there of) has on their business and how that translates into a likelihood of success or failure.

There are many aspects eBay Sellers need to consider when creating and implementing a return policy. For many, the best place to start is to look at your own expectations as a consumer and choose merchandise, suppliers and marketplaces that match up with your own personal philosophy. Others should take a more pragmatic approach. The category (electronics versus clothing), the marketplace (your website versus eBay/Amazon) and your product pricing strategy all affect a return policy in different ways.

When an eBay seller considers the cost of returns, do not overlook shipping. One of the largest shortcomings of ecommerce is the cost associated with shipping. Shipping is a fixed cost that is absorbed by the supplier, retailer, or consumer in every return. It is not margin nor lost time, but a payment to a carrier that must be paid regardless of the reason for the return (with the exception of carrier-related damage). Be mindful of the cost of the goods themselves versus the costs of shipping. In many cases, you will be better off to ask for forgiveness of the customer, let them keep the return, and give them a refund instead of eating three shipping charges on a replacement. Again, this is a retailer policy issue and only you can create the strategy that will work best for your business.

In the end, your customer support and return policies should communicate clearly to the consumer what they can expect when purchasing from you. It’s important to take control and own your customer’s experience and understand your decisions need to be acceptable to your business independent of the shortcomings of suppliers, marketplaces, and even overly demanding customers.

This article has been condensed. Read the full article here.

Doba is a product sourcing company connecting eBay sellers and small online retailers with drop ship distributors, manufacturers and wholesalers. Doba is a member of the Better Business Bureau and has been an eBay Certified Service Provider since 2004.

7 Tips on How to Raise Your eBay Seller Ratings from Frooition

Article from Frooition's Blog

Securing and maintaining eBay’s Top-Rated Seller status should be high on any seller’s to do list. eBay education specialist Mark Buckingham offers a few top tips to help you bolster the fortunes of your eBay Empire.

Introduced in October, the Top-rated Seller program distinguishes the cream of eBay sellers…and it is achievable for the majority:

1. Strive for 5 stars: Avoiding low 1 and 2 stars is key to the Top-Rated program, so communicate to your buyers the importance of Detailed Seller Ratings and feedback. Use your custom emails in Selling Manager Pro to keep your customers apprised, add compliment slips to remind your buyers where they bought the item from and highlight other special offers, and don’t hesitate to pick up the phone if a buyer isn’t happy.
2. Understand Best Match: From meeting eBay’s basic seller standards, to understanding recent sales score and impressions it’s well worth doing a little homework to get to grips with exactly how Best Match sorts matching listings. Get Best Match savvy, and you’ll reap the rewards.
3. Pick your ‘carrots’: Top-Rated Seller is partly calculated by number of transactions, so consider adding cheaper cost-neutral lines that will sell in volume and could help pad out your feedback, and help absorb any low scores. It will also help generate extra footfall into your shop. Don’t forget to use Good-til-Cancelled multi-quantity listings to save you re-listing the item and jeopardizing your sales-score.
4. Manage buyer expectations: setting and exceeding expectations is all-important. In my experience, a buyer won’t mind waiting a week if they know in advance. Don’t promise a turnaround shipping and delivery time you can’t realistically fulfill.
5. Anticipate problems: Look at your Detailed Seller Rating and feedback history and see where low scores and non-positive comments have been left, and look for trends. Perhaps particular lines in your eBay Store are more problematic than others? If so, take time to give those buyers extra-special customer service.
6. Offer free shipping: This is part of the Best Match algorithm – eBay announced they give a boost to listings offering free shipping. Of course, there’s rarely such a thing as free shipping, but it pays to build it into your unit cost, or subsidize it as best you can.
7. Beat your competition: Frooition customers already have an advantage over most sellers who don’t have a professional setup. But it still pays to know your competition and to be creative. Get into the habit of scouring eBay’s Completed Items searches and other research products like Terapeak, to see how your competitors are fairing. Look carefully to see what value other sellers are offering and how you can add more value and stand out from the crowd. Be creative. Consider embellishing your gallery thumbnails and consider adding a subtitle if you haven’t already. Even stating how much money the buyer is saving might mean the difference between winning a loyal buyer or giving your competitors the upper hand.

This article has been condensed. To read the full article, click here.

Frooition is a leading provider of eBay store and listing designs. Frooition provide design services for most other online sales channels as well as website design. Frooition has been working with the eBay platform more than 4 years and has clients in the USA, Canada and Europe.

MyStoreMaps Helps eBay Sellers Create Trust and Credibility with Buyers

Blog post from Auctiva Education

A seller's reputation carries a lot of weight when it comes to converting first-time visitors into customers. MyStoreMaps is one company that aims to help merchants build that trust with potential buyers.

MyStoreMaps allows eBay sellers to attach maps to their listings that display the countries and regions to which they have shipped packages in the past. These maps also note the date of a merchant's last shipment and the shipment's destination. Putting this information on a listing can be reassuring for buyers, says company President Brian Lawe, especially among shoppers who live in another country.

"Imagine a buyer from Stockholm looking at two similar items from sellers in Scottsdale and Sacramento," Lawe says. "Both sellers take great pictures, both sellers write great copy, both sellers have clean, professional templates and have nearly identical feedback scores. But let's say the Scottsdale seller uses MyStoreMaps and even sells the exact same item for $1 more. The Stockholm buyer sees the MyStoreMap at the bottom of the Scottsdale seller's listings. It shows the Scottsdale seller has shipped 35 items to Sweden. The Sacramento seller's listing says only 'We ship internationally.' Who do you think the Stockholm buyer will buy from, even for $1 more?

"This kind of information can dramatically alter a buyer's perception of a seller. Not just for international buyers—but also for domestic ones," he adds.


Sellers can use MyStoreMaps for both auction and fixed-priced listings, and choose between attaching a regional or worldwide map to their listings. MyStoreMaps populates maps with markers displaying shipment destinations and maps then loads these onto a seller's listings in 24 hours, updating every two hours. Sellers can manually add past shipments easily. Maps are customizable, so sellers can adjust their colors to keep them in sync with their listings.

The maps have been very helpful for some sellers. eBay seller Doug Sacks says the service provides valuable information and helps his listings stand out from the rest.

"I like the addition of MyStoreMaps to my listings because overseas buyers seem to feel more confident with a seller who has experience in shipping abroad," Sacks notes. "The map clearly shows where you ship to and I believe my sales have increased to certain countries because of MyStoreMaps."

Sandy Hancock, owner and president of It's Good To Be a Girl, says MyStoreMaps is a great resource for sellers.

"What a great way to keep my customers up to date on the latest shipments my company is making," she says. "It shows the diversity of my company in a great graphic presentation."

To add customer maps to your listings, visit www.MyStoreMaps.com.

This article has been shortened. Click here to read the full article.

MyStoreCredit is an eBay Certified Solution Provider delivering a buyer loyalty and rewards program for eBay sellers and PayPal merchants known as, MyStoreRewards. In addition, MyStoreCredit also provides a solution to help sellers reach international buyers with the fun and visual application of MyStoreMaps.

eBay Workshop March 18th - "Hybrid Mailing Services: Can they help your shipping?

eBay Workshop: "Hybrid Mailing Services: Can they help your shipping?"

Host: ShipRush

Date: Thursday, March 18th

Time: 11a.m. to Noon PST

Location: eBay Workshop Board

Description: More choices in shipping: Are you ready?

Formerly only for high volume warehouses, new "hybrid" shipping services are available to lower volume sites, home based shippers and small businesses. If you are an active seller, you probably qualify. These services give the benefits of a full service carrier (like end to end tracking, accessible customer service, weekly net terms billing) at costs similar to the Postal Service (no residential fees, no extended area fees, free Saturday delivery, etc.).

In other words: If you ship, pay attention, because this is interesting.

Attend the eBay Workshop hosted by ShipRush to learn about "hybrid" shipping services--what the benefits are, what it costs, and how you can get started.

Hope you can join us on March 18th!

Visit http://certifiedprovider.ebay.com/ to learn more about eBay Certified Providers and the services and solutions they offer to help an eBay seller grow their business.

Low-Tech and Simple Tips for Giving Customers a Personal Touch by Infopia

Blog post from Infopia

In today’s challenging economic times, acquiring new customers is one of the hardest things to do. And once you get them, the most important things you can do is to keep them! Here are a few simple “low-tech” tips for infusing loyalty into your business and customers:

Handwritten Notes
Keep an eye out for any large unit, large dollar, large volume orders and include in the package, or send separately, a personal hand written note. Especially in these days of email technology, nothing expresses true gratitude like a personal hand written thank you note.

Phone Calls
One way to show appreciation for your most loyal of customers is a short and meaningful phone call. And more likely than not, if you call during the middle of the day you are more likely to leave a message which makes the process go a whole lot faster! Regardless if you speak to them live or do in fact leave a message, the heartfelt feelings are the same.

Pre-printed Note Cards
The next time you have some printing done, make sure to draft up a standard “Nice talking to you” or “Thank you for being a valued buyer/customer” note card with your name and phone number. The note cards can be sent with the package or as a follow-up. This is a fast, easy and very low cost way to add a personal touch to your operations.

Regardless which of these low-tech methods you chose to introduce customer loyalty into your organization, remember to keep the message sincere and concise. And finally, the best place to start is to reach out to your premier customers - those that buy the most and or buy most often.

This blog post has been amended. To read the full blog post by Infopia, click here.

Founded in 1999, Infopia provides (Software as a Service) eCommerce solutions—helping eBay sellers grow their business efficiently and effectively.

eBay Sellers Can Find Additional Inventory with Worldwide Brands Product Sourcing Tool

Article by Worldwide Brands - this is a series of 14 blog posts providing information on how to find inventory and products to sell on eBay from wholesalers with Worldwide Brands and their Product Sourcing Tool for eBay.

Article #12 - Multi-Level Product Sourcing

As a new eBay seller becomes more successful with their eBay auction listings and first eBay Store sales, you will be able to fund more growth in your business. You can expand your offerings within your first niche by leveraging additional wholesale suppliers and drop shippers with complimentary products to those you are already selling on eBay.

So how do you select new niches and products, and how can you determine what works best without taking too much risk in inventory?

Market Research is the key. eBay Sellers need to identify products with demand and supply. Not all products can be sold on eBay. Some manufacturers have strict requirements. Start with your existing niche and expand the product choices. For example, tailor your eBay Store brand around your niche. Use the existing traffic to your eBay store to identify new top sellers in your Store.

The Worldwide Brands Product Sourcing Tool in eBay’s Apps Center can be very helpful to eBay sellers looking for additional product sources to help grow their online business. Worldwide Brands Product Sourcing Tool for eBay will research online to establish current demand and pricing on the internet and for testing different products, categories, niches and demand.

Access can be purchased to the Worldwide Brands Product Sourcing Tool. Through use of this tool, eBay Sellers will be able to drill down their options to find wholesale products in demand within a niche. The tool provides the contact details of drop shippers and wholesale suppliers willing to work with eBay sellers.

Drop shipping is most commonly used for testing new product ideas. When you notice an increasing trend in sales for one of the drop ship items, you can then start buying that item in Light Bulk (minimum wholesale orders less than $500). Of all the Light Bulk items, some will sell faster than others. Once you identify those, you can invest in volume inventory at even better wholesale prices allowing you to make more profit per item, or compete more aggressively. This is called multi level product sourcing.

Check out Worldwide Brands Product Sourcing Tool for eBay today! A 7 Day Free Trial is available.

Worldwide Brands is an eBay Certified Service Provider, providing product sourcing access and information for eBay sellers. They are the publishers of an extensive directory of legitimate, fully-verified ecommerce wholesalers and manufacturers.

What's New with Doba: New Features for Better Product Sourcing

Blog post taken from Doba's Dropshipping Blog

What's New with Doba: New Features for Inventory Notification by Email and Customizable Product Data

If you ask any of our affiliated retailers to list their top five Doba-related pain points, you’ll hear about items going out of inventory without any advance warning, as well as the sheer number of people attempting to sell many of the same products with the exact same product titles and descriptions. Today, I’m (Doba) pleased to announce we’ve (Doba) made significant strides with respect to both issues. Doba members can now easily customize product title, description, weight, dimension, and more; and, by accessing the new and improved Watchlist, receive updates about product inventory by email.

New Features

• Watchlist notification allows eBay sellers to receive updates about products within their Doba Watchlist via e-mail
• Inventory update notifications (choose frequency of updates)
• Set inventory notification levels (if available inventory falls below "x" amount, notify me)
• Custom Data Product Features (customize item title and price)

To read the full article on new Doba features and how to use them, visit Doba's Dropshipping Blog.

eBay sellers can try out Doba for 14 Days free!

Doba is a product sourcing company connecting eBay sellers and small online retailers with drop ship distributors, manufacturers and wholesalers. Doba is a member of the Better Business Bureau and has been an eBay Certified Service Provider since 2004.

eBay Certified Provider KYOZOU Helps Sellers Maximize Efficiency

eBay Certified Provider Spotlight

Kyozou is a full featured listing management solution helping eBay sellers to automate and organize many aspects of their eBay business, other online channels and their brick-and-mortar store.

Many of eBay’s larger sellers (Gold, Platinum, Titanium and Diamond) use a solution such as Kyozou. Kyozou allows for multi-channel inventory management, online ad creation, shopping comparison site feeds and all post-sale activities (on eBay and other channels).

Kyozou's Unique Features -
1. Consignment
Unique tools and features for consignment and Trading Assistant sellers allowing them to track their consignors, sales, commissions and even print checks.

2. Multiple Location and Warehouse Management
Supports inventory management, tracking and shipping from multiple warehouse locations. Know which warehouse has the product and ship direct from that warehouse location to the buyer.

3. Bar coded inventory and warehouse management system
Kyozou supports the most common and easy to find printers and barcode scanners on the market. Allowing sellers to easily scan in inventory and manage sales with current bar coding products or system.

4. Kyozou Widget
Kyozou’s Widget allows all eBay sellers to promote their products across many online forums, social networking sites, blogs, etc…

Benefits of Kyozou:

• Sell more efficiently
• Automated integration with online marketing venues
• Single shopping cart integration over multiple selling venues
• Supports Third Party Checkout for eBay
• Free auction templates, counters, galleries and web hosting
• Automated integration with online marketing venues
• Multi-user access and live production monitoring
• Multiple currencies, languages and international tax profiling
• All major payment and shipping carriers supported
• Ship with ease and keep track of all shipments from multiple warehouse/store locations

eBay sellers looking for a tool with comprehensive multi-channel listing and inventory management should look into Kyozou.

Sales – Contact Kyozou through sales@kyozou.com or by calling toll-free at 1-877-596-9681.

Sellers can request a live Demo of Kyozou - http://www.kyozou.com/request-a-demo.asp

Kyozou provides a robust application to help eBay sellers manage their sales online and offline while increasing efficiency.

eBay Seller HelloBaby Grows Business with Terapeak Research

Article from the Terapeak Blog

A Terapeak interview with Trevor Ginn of Hello Baby (http://stores.ebay.co.uk/hellobabydirect)

How long have you been selling on eBay?
I’ve been selling on eBay as Hellobabydirect for about 18 months. Before that I was working for Auctioning4u who were the UK’s largest eBay trading assistants. All in all I’ve been selling on eBay as a business for about 4 years.

What got you started there?
At Auctioning4u I provided consulting services to businesses to help them use eBay as a sales channel. With online sales experiencing strong growth most of my clients were doing pretty well, much better than me it seemed. I was itching to give it a go as I was sure I could build a successful online retailing business.

I choose baby products as my research showed that the industry had healthy margins and was not as competitive as areas like electronics. I also wanted to be in an industry which I knew something about (my first daughter had just been born), was largely non seasonable and mostly recession proof.

What sort of things do you like to sell?
We sell a wide range of baby and nursery items. Items range from small toys nursery and baby safety items like safety catches to larger, more expensive items like prams and cots. We sell a lot of our items internationally, especially to Europe as the strong Euro makes our products good value for our friends in the Eurozone. We sell on eBay and other online channels.

How do you use Terapeak to help build your business?
We use Terapeak to research products and also to investigate the tactics and best selling product of our competitors. eBay data, provided by Terapeak, is the only source I know of actual sales data about online sales. Other, very expensive, reports from companies like Mintel make broad statements about market sectors, but this is not much use when a merchant is looking to make purchasing decision at the brand or product level.

When we are analyzing new products we will use a product search on that particular brand to establish what items are selling well and then drill down to individual products to establish average selling prices. We then put the sales data into a spreadsheet which allows us to calculate the profit we can make from selling the item by taking into account cost like sales tax, PayPal and eBay fees. This process saves us from buying product for which the market is very competitive and there are poor margins.

We also make extensive use of the seller report. This allows us to see the products which our competitors are selling successfully and how their business is performing.

Terapeak Tips from Matt – What else Hello Baby can do to build their business using research?

Trevor mentioned a good portion of his business is targeted at international marketplaces. A lack of availability for products in certain regions can create excellent opportunities to sell your goods for a higher price. Terapeak’s International Report compares statistics for 6 eBay marketplaces around the world including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany and Australia.

The International report provides charts detailing buyer and seller location and helps identify which eBay site represents the highest potential margin.

I (Matt with Terapeak) would recommend Trevor try using the International report for some of his products and see if he can expand his offerings into more eBay sites around the world.

Terapeak is an eBay Certified Provider and a member of the eBay Market Data Program. Terapeak 5.0 is a full, web-based solution providing real-time market research and data analytics on eBay. Terapeak 5.0 provides eBay sellers and buyers with two years worth of trending data.

eBay Workshop March 3rd - "What to Sell on eBay, Keep or Give Away when Spring Cleaning"

Workshop: What to Sell on eBay, Keep or Give Away when Spring Cleaning

Host: Lynn Dralle, The Queen of Auctions

Date: March 3rd, Wednesday

Time: 11AM - Noon PST

Location: eBay Workshop Board

Description: It’s the time of year for Spring Cleaning. Why not learn how you can make money on eBay by turning your household items into cash when cleaning out your closet, house or garage.

Please join Lynn Dralle, The Queen of Auctions and published author of the "100 Best Things I've Sold on eBay" book series, as she shares her tips, success and insight for new eBay sellers, part-time sellers and even experienced sellers seeking additional advice.

Visit http://certifiedprovider.ebay.com/ to learn more about eBay Certified Providers and the services and solutions they offer to help an eBay seller grow their business.