Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Finding Out What's Popular by Using eBay

What does eBay have to do with the type of products you want to sell on your Web site? That might be the question you're asking, especially if you haven't planned on becoming an eBay merchant. The king of auction sites, however, has become a highly successful and proven business model that's making its way into almost every type of business, one way or the other. The bottom line is that a tremendous amount of e-commerce is being conducted by using eBay. Fortunately for you, the company wasted no time in collecting and analyzing all the valuable information about its buyers and sellers. The translation is that you now have access to a lot of useful research, and it's free!

One of the best sources of information while exploring the sellers' side (information for eBay merchants) is eBay Pulse. It tracks three major trends, which are top product searches, the largest stores, and the most watched items. The sections covering the top product searches and the most watched items list the most popular items being bought and requested by eBay visitors. You can see this information for the entire site or be more specific and view the top searches by a specific category, such as jewelry, sporting goods, or electronics. (You have lots of categories to choose from!) Similarly, you can view the biggest eBay stores, which are useful examples to study to see how they promote their products (with photos and product descriptions, for example) to find success. ...