What You Can Learn From Competing Ebay Auctions.
If youve a savvy businessperson, the chances are youve alreadytaken a look at your competitors auctions. What you might nothave realised is just how much you can learn if you know whatyoure looking for.
To begin with, dont bother looking at listings that haventended yet – you dont know whats going to happen with them.Instead, use the advanced search page to search for listingsthat sold. Just go to the advanced search page, type in thekeywords that you know will find your competitors items, tickCompleted listings only and set the minimum number of bids to1. Set it to sort by Price: highest first.
This will show you auctions competing with yours that haverecently finished, starting with the ones that sold for the most(ignore any with prices in red – they didnt sell). Go throughand take a look, paying special attention to the followingpoints:
Titles. What information do the top sellers of your item put intheir titles, and what do they leave out? If your titles arevery different to theirs, it might be time for a rethink.
Descriptions. Youll probably notice that the highest sellershavent just copied text from the companys website or anAmazon.com review – theyve gone to the trouble of writing alittle about the item, and about themselves. Learn from theirexample.
Pictures. I can almost guarantee you that the listing will havevery nice pictures – not catalogue quality, but good enough tosee what youre getting. With items of any significant cost,youll probably find more than one photo from different
angles.
Style. Is it written conversationally, or in terse businesslikelanguage? The way you should write entirely depends on what themarket seems to like – and the market seems to like what the topsellers wrote.
Time. Its pretty easy to ignore this as a factor withoutmeaning to, but pay attention to when the top selling itemsauctions began and ended. This might give you a few clues aboutthe best to catch buyers who will bid highly on your item, andthen you can schedule your items accordingly.
Price. If your competitors are selling using Buy it Now, you cansee what the maximum is that theyve managed to sell forrecently, and set your own Buy it Now price slightly below that.
Shipping. Look around to see the sweet spot for shipping. If youcan figure out a way to get your shipping costs lower than thehighest sellers, then this is a great opportunity todifferentiate yourself in the market.
Once you see what works, you can start to emulate yourcompetitors – of course you cant just copy them completely, butyou can structure your auction similarly and make sure itincludes the same information.
If you want your items to do even better, then start stockingthe items in your category that are the most in-demand. Wellshow you how to tell whats selling and whats not in our nextemail.
About the author:
Kirsten Hawkins is an Ebay and internet auction enthusiast fromNashville, TN. Visit http://www.auctionseller411.com/ for moregreat tips on how to make the most from Ebay and other onlineauctions.
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