Stan Chee dot Com

One of the first things I was taught in my early days was to keep close tabs
on my market to ensure that I was always meeting my needs. I was also taught
the importance of keeping my competition closely watched to make sure they
didn’t get the edge over me.

While monitoring my competition, I ask myself these questions:

• Who else is selling a product similar to mine?
• How is their sales process or marketing plan?
• How successful are they at selling?
• What kind of traffic are they getting?
• Are they doing BETTER than me?

How you can find your competitors:

The easiest way is to do a series of keyword searches on eBay, using the words
and phrases that YOUR customers would use to find you – such as name, brand,
color, style, and condition of the item you sell, etc.

Then analyse the results — all the listings showing up for those keywords are

the ones you need to keep your eyes on!

Having found some sellers listing items similar to yours, do a Completed Listings
search:

1. Go to eBay Homepage2. Click on ‘Advanced Search’ in the upper right-hand corner of the page.3. On the Advanced Search page, check on the box ‘Completed Listings Only’.
Specify the results be ranked in the order of ‘highest price first’.

4. Look at the listings that sold for the most money and compare them with your
listings rank–Are there many sellers who are getting more money selling items
similar to yours, or just a few?

5. Take a look at the listings that are generating the highest bids, and ask
yourself what those sellers are doing differently from you:

* Item — What brand of item are they selling? Are they selling the item in
any color or size that you don’t? Which colors or sizes seem to sell best?

* Listing category — Are they listing in a category you haven’t considered?
Is it a more effective or easily-searchable category than the one you’ve
chosen?

* Listing & Auction format — Are they using the “Buy It Now” format? What time

of day do they typically list their items? How long do their auctions last?

* Photo — What stands out in the picture? How have they positioned or staged
the item differently than you?

* Title — What keywords are they using? Are they using the “bolding” option?
What order are their words in? What stands out in the title?

* Headline — What benefits/features are they mentioning first? Which keywords
are they using?

* Copy — Are they using a traditional salescopy format? What kind of description
have they created for the product? How do they answer the questions of their

potential customers?

* Price — If they’re using a “Buy It Now” listing, what are they setting the
price at? Or if they’re using a regular auction format, what’s their minimum
bid?

* Policies — How are their shipping policies different from your own?
Are they offering discounted shipping? Are they shipping worldwide?
What is their return policy?

* ‘About Me’ page — What kind of pictures or text have they included here?
How do they establish credibility and trust with potential customers?

* Feedback ratings — Are their customers happy? How do they deal with negative
feedback?

* eBay Store — If they have an eBay store, what cross-promotional tools are
they using? Are they selling items besides the ones that are similar to yours?

* Relationship-building efforts — Do they offer a newsletter to their potential
customers? Have they written any Reviews or Guides to help drive more traffic
to their listings?

You’ll want to take the best elements from the most successful listings and
apply them to your own listings (But DON’T copy directly).

Make only one change at a time with your own listings, so that you can test
and track the impact of each one has on your listings.

You might even want to buy some items from your top-selling competitors,
to actually test the way they manage their sales process!

There’s only so much you can do to learn about your competitors and your
market — by checking out the Completed Listings. For a more in-depth analysis,
suggest you explore the other free and paid market research tools available to
eBay sellers–I’ve a few of them listed below:

Hammertap — An eBay-endorsed market research system with multiple

tools and options for both research and auction automation.eBay Market Research — This is eBay’s own market research tool for their
sellers. With this tool, you can search back up to 90 days in eBay’s listings
history, and use a variety of different metrics and options to pull out
exactly the information you need from their search results.Toolhaus Neg/Neut Tool — This free tool lets you take a closer look at
all the positive AND negative feedback your competition receives on eBay.

eBay Pulse — If you’re looking for the latest and greatest items selling

on eBay — and want to get a handle on how your competition is managing to
stand out in the crowd — this is a good place to start your research.
You can find out what is selling best, and what people can’t get enough of
on eBay — right now!

Tags: eBay, eBay Online Marketplace, start eBay business , eBay business tips, internet

This entry was posted on Monday, November 19th, 2007 at 5:55 am and is filed under eBay. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.