Research at your fingertips
One of the game-changing aspects of eBay is the data that is available at no cost to you. This article will focus on the importance of eBay data mining, how to do it, and how to use the information you capture.
Let’s start with using eBay data as a buying tool. Use this information to help you find suppliers, decide how much you can pay for a product for resale, how to increase your average sale prices, and to find out what best practices help sell products the fastest and for more money. Use these techniques no matter where you sell – eBay is a real-world market with data that is valuable across different marketplaces.
eBay keeps 90-days of data available for public search records directly on their website. Use this data to educate yourself and to help you make data-driven decisions.
Average prices a product has SOLD for – this is not the current price that sellers are advertising products at; instead, it is what the product sold for – a much more valuable piece of information. I do NOT suggest making buying decisions based on current advertised prices – you need to see the average prices the products sold for to calculate the delta between what you are buying products for and what you can sell them for.
The velocity of sales – the quantity of a particular product sold within a given period. Learn how fast you can expect to sell your product(s) if you list them at the average sale prices.
How condition impacts sale prices – match the condition of the products sold with the condition of what you are considering selling. If your product is New without tags or pre-owned, it is going to have a different resale price than New, with tags. Be sure you are comparing apples to apples.
Your competition – who is selling the same products you are considering selling? How successful are they? What best practices can you glean from their listings?
Best Practices – find the highest selling listings and use those same tactics to create your listings. Identify the techniques used, photos and quantity, listing details, titles, keywords, policies– anything that you can use to help your listings get the same results.
How to data-mine eBay information
For volume sellers with a paid eBay store, you have free access to Terapeak, eBay’s data service that you can automate and streamline much of this research. If you don’t have an eBay store, you can pay $12 per month for a Terapeak subscription.
For this article, I will describe how to perform these searches manually on the eBay website.
Search for sold listings – remember, we want to find the actual price items sold for, NOT just their listing prices. The sold prices are the real-world amount that buyers want to pay. Start your search on the eBay homepage.
I like to change the view from Gallery to List view to simplify things. Click the Sold Items checkbox on the left side of the web browser to only show Sold items. Select this from the pull-down menu in the upper right AFTER you perform your search. The default sort is Best Match, this shows you the listings that eBay is promoting in their algorithm. Check the highest sorted listings to see what information eBay thinks is most valuable to buyers. I then sort by Date Sold or by Sale Price to get right to the data I am looking for.
You can also include other filters in your search to narrow down the results. Condition, location (the US only can be crucial), Auction or Buy it Now, Free shipping, and more. Experiment with these to see what works best for you. Just be sure you select the SOLD and COMPLETED filters so you are viewing actual sales data.
Drill down to sellers – click into a sold listing, then click the Seller’s other items link to see the list of items for sale by each seller. Is this an end-user that is selling one item, or a reseller that you can learn more from or possibly buy from? Check the amount of feedback and similar items being sold to find resellers.
Identify competition – make a list of sellers that are selling the same or similar items that you are. Study their methods and compare their sale prices. Are there best practices you can use in your listings? Are their average sale prices higher for similar items? Why? Do they have better photos, better descriptions? Or maybe you can sell the same or similar items for more than they are getting? Could this reseller become a supplier to you?
Count the number of sales – you want to see the velocity of sales. If you only have one of an item, this is not as important. But if you are a quantity seller, you need to be able to calculate how long it is going to take to sell your products, ideally, BEFORE you buy them. If a particular item is slow selling on eBay, do you want to buy a large quantity? Remember that even low-priced items are not “good deals” if no one wants to buy them. Stay away from slow-moving products if you can.
Find the highest priced listings – back to best practices. Why do some eBay listings sell for more than others? You want to dissect the highest priced SOLD listings to emulate what they are doing. Maybe they are using particular keywords, phrases, or model numbers that more people search for. Perhaps it’s the sale terms – free shipping, free returns? It’s your job to figure this out so you can emulate them OR to do a better job than they are to get more money for your products.
Ideally, you want to be doing this research before you start buying. But that’s not always possible. The more you research various categories, the more you will learn, and the more confident you will be when buying products to resale. You will know when to skip over a brand or particular style and when to go all-in and buy as much quantity as you can get your hands on.
Questions or comments on this article? Contact me here.
Be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn, and if you are a Poshmark seller, don’t miss my book, Poshmark Unlocked, with over 200 pages in techniques and tips to achieve your own 6-figure success story on Poshmark.
Cheers to your inevitable success!
Shannon Jean
June 2020