Greetings! Thank you for taking the time to join us today! For those of you unfamiliar with how these workshops go, we’ll be posting some materials for you to read, and then we’ll be here for the hour to answer any questions you might have in regards to market research and your eBay business! All of our examples and screen shots today are from the Terapeak website. You can check it out at www.terapeak.com and do a search for free.

But first read this workshop!

Now I’ll post the content, then open up for questions – please feel free to “speak” up – we all learn more when there is lots of interaction – no question too small!

We’ll look at this in the most logical order:

How to find HOT PRODUCTS using Terapeak Research!
What affect does SEASONALITY have on your core items?
WHERE and WHEN should listings be placed to attract the holiday shoppers?
Attracting NEW eBay SHOPPERS…the more the merrier!

I like to use a fictional example in workshops to work through the material, in hopes that the application of the information in a situation similar to yours makes it familiar to you.
Let’s pretend that we are a clothing store that is gearing up for the holiday shopping season. We have an existing solid business, with a nice supply of quality items, and a good amount of returning customers. What we want to do now is add inventory to supply holiday shoppers with fabulous gifts and generate even more revenue.

If we select the Sleepwear/Robes subcategory we will see a report on all of the listings closed within our criteria for the past month. We can sort the info by price or bids – I like to sort by bids to determine where the most action is –

SEASONALITY

Sticking with our example, let’s see how the seasonality of our item category – sleepwear – trends over the last two years.



This category peaks at December, and remains steady throughout the remainder of the year. That means that we’ll see a lot of new shoppers, so we need to make sure we’ve got the right inventory to supply them!

If you are wishing to attract new eBayers and people who are new to online retail, make sure your listings are clear and detailed. Think of all the questions a new buyer might have and answer them in your listing. How much for shipping? What is the detailed size and fabric content? What forms of payment do you take?

You want to make your listings clear and attractive for your buyers. Building your listings require you to decide what sort of listing features to add, and which to not include. Since listing features add cost to your listings, it is important to evaluate how they will benefit your listing before paying the extra money.

It does stand to reason that during the holidays a gallery/featured listing will serve you well, since you will have more “window shoppers” during this time. Let’s look at the listing features that currently occur within a “pajama” search:



Almost half of all listings (the total is 11,488 within “pajama” – in women’s clothing) have a gallery listing, while very few have a Gift Listing – which may be a nice feature to add closer to the holidays. Gift listings highlight to buyers that you have gift wrap, express shipping, or the ability to ship to the gift’s recipient. These are all bonuses to holiday shoppers, particularly as the holidays loom closer. Keep a close eye on how your competitors are building their listing promotions to ensure that your listings are standing out!

Hello. This is my first time on a discussion board. I'm opening my 1st eBay store and can't wait to learn more.

Why haven't U sold anything since 2004? Just curious?