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Cheers,

Deirdre
eBay Community Development

Key Listing Decisions

Below are key listing decisions that, as a seller, you must make that can directly affect the selling outcome:

* In what category should I list my item?
* On what day should my auction close?
* At what time should my auction close?
* How can I list when my competition is the lowest?
* At what price should I set my reserve or Buy it now (BIN)?
* What should I include in the title of the listing?

This workshop will show you how eBay Marketplace Research can help you to answer the above questions for your specific selling niche. The trick is really to find market imbalances and exploit those to gain better sell-through rates and higher selling prices.

eBay Marketplace Research Tool

A picture is worth a thousand words, so let’s take a look…

Notice the following sections on the page:

* Keyword search box
* Filters
* The chart and metrics within the Completed Items tab
* The Completed Items listing



Once you have performed a search, the tool shows the charts and metrics about the product. This page provides the information you need to start making your listing decisions.

On what day should I list?

A common question from sellers is “When should I list my item?” Unfortunately, there isn’t a simple answer. The success of your listing ending on a particular day can vary based on many factors including the type of product you sell and the current number of competing listings. In some cases, listing on a particular day doesn’t make a significant difference. However, Marketplace Research can help you to identify when listing on a particular day can offer a selling advantage.

In short, to determine the best day, you will want to look at the conversion rates (or sell through rate) for each day of the week. Then list to have your items close on the day with the best rate.

Step 1 Use Marketplace Research to search for your product.

Step 2 Set the “Time Period” of the search to 2 weeks. This will break down the chart into days, displaying the activity on each day for the last two weeks. For example, you’ll be able to see the sales activity for the last two Wednesdays.



Step 3 Calculate the Conversion rate for each day. Calculating the conversion rate per day is done as follows:

Number of Items Sold / Number of Completed Items = Conversion Rate

These totals are displayed by moving your cursor over the different days within the chart.

Step 4 Pick the day with the best conversion rate.

That day is likely one that will yield good sales results. In the example below, Wednesday performed the best, having the highest conversion rate during the last two weeks.

Listing when Competing Supply is Lowest

The best time to list your item is when your competitors have not flooded eBay with greater than normal volumes of competing products. The fewer products that are available on eBay that are similar to yours, the better it is for you. This increases both the likelihood that your item will sell, and also should yield a higher selling price.

Therefore, before listing or when determining which products from your pool of inventory you should list on eBay, perform a quick check to gauge the level of the competition.

This is simply done by checking whether the quantity of competing items available on eBay now, is more or less normal. To do this, follow these steps.

Step 1 Use Marketplace Research to search over the last one month of listings to find the total number of completed items.



Step 2 Divide this number by 30 to find how many items are typically available in a given day (Average number of competing listings per day).

Step 3 Perform the same search for the active items on eBay.



Step 4 Divide the total number of active items by 7 (because items are typically listed for 7 days) and this will tell you how many competing products right now are set to close each day. (or you can count how many listings are set to expire seven days from now using the “View all Auction and Fixed Price Listings” link).

Step 5 List now or hold off for a while.
If the number of competing items typically available (Step 2) is significantly greater than the number of active daily competing items (Step 4), you may want to wait to list. If it is about equal to or lower, then the supply on eBay is relatively balanced or skewed in your favor.

How can I build the most effective listing title?

When building a title for your listing, you should keep in mind that the title typically dictates how buyers find your item.

When buyers look for products on eBay, many begin with a keyword search. The default search on eBay only searches within the title of an item and will not return items that include the search terms in the description.

In order for a buyer to bid on your item, the first step is getting the item to show up in the buyer’s search results.

This is where eBay Marketplace Research can help…

Hey folks:

There's some great information here. Bring your afternoon coffee/tea and research questions and join us!

We'd love to hear from you,

Deirdre
eBay Community Development