Lesson 1: Meet Your Research Tool!

Ready to take your sales to a whole new level? Now that you have the most comprehensive web-based market research tool available, along with thousands of your competitors´ mistakes and successes and this 5-lesson course, you are ready to skyrocket your listing sales and profits!

Hi, I´m Steve Nye, and as an eBay Certified Consultant, I am really excited about teaching you how to use your research tool to get what you need out of your auctions. My goal is to help you succeed using this fantastic tool.

This symbol in the lesson means that I have a nifty research tip or important insight for you. Often in these tips, I will point you to other resources that will help you become a more powerful seller. Many of these resources are companies we have partnered with in an effort to bring you all the tools, education and support you need to be successful. We trust these companies because they focus on our primary goal—providing you with the education and support to be successful.

Let´s get started!

This Course

During this 5-lesson course, you will get up close and personal with your web-based research tool and learn how to use a competitor´s wins and losses to make more money on every listing. The best way to learn how to get the most out of your research tool is to complete this course, and don´t worry—we´ll have a lot of fun, too!

You will receive these lessons in your e-mail every Tuesday and Saturday. Or, if you just can’t wait, at the end of the lesson you can click the link to advance to the next lesson. (That´s what I did. I sat down for about two hours and when I was through, I really knew my stuff!)

Meet Your Research Tool

In a nutshell, your web-based research tool lets you look at a group of closed eBay listings to discover:

• Whether a product will sell and for how much
• Ways to increase a listing´s chances of selling
• Ways to boost your profits on each listing
• Market trends for your specific product
• The size of the market and your specific competition

I know what you´re thinking. This is all really great, but how does it work? Your research tool uses licensed data directly from eBay to research market information on your specific product and category. This takes out all the guesswork for you as you create your listings. Once you learn how to use the power of research, you´ll be able to answer questions like:

• What listing type should I use?
• Which ending day will bring me the greatest success and profit?
• How long should my listing duration be?
• What starting price will create a bidding frenzy?
• What keywords should I use in my titles to hook buyers?
• What listing features will work, and which ones can I live without?
• Which category will give my listing the greatest amount of exposure?
• And much more!

Let´s take a tour of your web-based research tool.

When you first open your research tool, you will see two search options (Keyword and Category), and several search fields. First, you´ll choose between Keyword Search and Category Search, depending on the focus of your research.

Keyword Search—Researching a Specific Item

Keyword Search is the best way to research a specific item you are planning to sell. When you enter your product, along with other search criteria, and hit start search, your research tool will search through thousands of closed auctions within the last 30 days and will return the results of how that product is currently doing within the market. How many are selling? How much are they selling for? What can I do to increase my profits? Finding the right answers to these questions begins with asking the right questions.

Category Search—Researching Within a Specific Category

Category Search is your search of choice when you are determining the size of the market for a specific product within a category, finding hot items within a category, or selling a rare item within a category. However, instead of reaching back 30 days, a category search reaches back 90 days to give you a snapshot for trending over the last three months.

Advanced Options—Maximizing Your Search Potential

With both Keyword and Category search, your research tool gives you several advanced options to maximize the accuracy of your results. Advanced Options allows you to search for listings based on specific criteria:

• Date Range: the dates between which listings were active (you can search listings from the last 30 to 90 days, as well as listings active one year ago)
• Number of Listings: the number of listings you´d like to include in your research results
• Minimum/Maximum $: the minimum and maximum total cost of listing fees paid by sellers
• Listing Types: the type of listings used (Regular, Dutch, or Fixed Price)

Using Advanced Options helps you to narrow down your research to listings with specific criteria. This allows you to look at listings that sold items most like the item you would like to sell.

I look forward to plunging into our next lesson, and getting started on some real market research. Until then, please complete the following quick assignment.

Assignment #1: Check out your resources

For this assignment, I want you to get familiar with the research window:

• Do a basic search in the Keyword research window. Enter keywords in the Keyword field that you think will be part of the titles of listings you want to research.
• Click the green arrow next to the Advanced Options link. Practice entering more search criteria.

During the next lesson, I´ll lead you through narrowing the search to get exactly what you want.

CONGRATULATIONS! You´ve completed Lesson 1.