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October 25, 2006
Finding Products To Sell On eBay
Recently, I received an articulate and sincere email from a very frustrated would-be eBay success story. I have excerpted it here:
Subject: Finding products to sell is the easiest part??? Uuggghh!!
... I've bought and sold ~40 items on Ebay. That's the extent of my internet marketing.
... I've researched and researched 'til my brain is fried. Overture and Wordtracker are good demand and supply tools but you've got to have some idea of your product first before you can input related search terms.
... Sell what's selling. Or, sell what's in demand. Makes sense to me. But electronics are in demand and yet both Andy and Chris Malta both say that market is saturated. Others say find something your passionate about. I have two passions, golf and music, neither of which I've been able to adapt to a marketable product. Then I was reading your auction genius course sales letter and read your statement about people not believing you when you say finding products is the easiest part. And I thought......ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? Well, I guess you're right that finding them is easy. Go to WWB. But which ones? I'm using the Market research wizard and have yet to find a product in demand that results in an analysis score of greater than 1%. SEO and all the rest is meaningless if you don't have a product. CAN YOU HEAR THE FRUSTRATION IN MY VOICE? Sorry, I'm just really at a loss for how to go about this process. Everyone is looking the holy grail of ecommerce. High demand and low supply. And I don't want someone to tell me what to sell. I just wish someone would provide some guidance as to how to go about this. Sell what's selling is just too broad of a term for my liking.
... is there some method to this madness of finding a niche? Thank you for your time and sincere thanks in advance for any advice given.
...p.s. I'm really starting to understand why Andy says that most people get to this point in their ecommerce career and then quit. They get paralysis analysis on the product.
When he refers to "WWB" he is referring to Worldwidebrands, and the Market Research Wizard is also their product. And they are fine products. But his real problem is lack of knowledge on how to do market research. There is no way to take a single piece of software, type in a keyword phrase and have a Magic Answer emerge on your screen. The Wizard is one tool and only one. There is much more that goes into identifying a a profitable eBay or Internet product. Without this knowledge, his chances of finding a genuine winner are slim.
= = = <
... I've researched and researched 'til my brain is fried. Overture and Wordtracker are good demand and supply tools but you've got to have some idea of your product first before you can input related search terms.
He's 100% right when he says you can't effectively do keyword research until you know what your product is. If you're going to sell fine crystal glasses, you need to know the best keywords for fine crystal glasses if you're going to send traffic to your auctions and/or website. But isn't he doing exactly what he says NOT to do? He's researching keywords for products he doesn't have!
Example: let's suppose he does his keyword research and finds the perfect niche: huge amount of demand and very few competitors. And all of his competitors are relatively inept. Now what? If he can't find the product all his efforts are useless. There is no bigger waste of time than spending hours, days and weeks chasing an elusive product. I've been selling on eBay for over 10 years and I absolutely can NOT find a source for every product I've ever thought about. How can a total novice hope to succeed?
The point is that he's going about this backwards! Here's his method:
Do keyword research ---> Find
winning search terms --->
Look for product that fits keyword research
Here's a much more efficient way:
Locate tens of thousands of wholesale products ---> do keyword
research
based on the thousands of products already available to you
An irony: he mentions that he can't find any products in the music field yet I recently helped a friend research almost 4,000 music products to find some winners to sell on eBay. Currently, she's more than replaced the income she lost when she was laid off from her job at IBM. Selling ... music products.
Make sense? All comments welcome because is the #1 question I get about eBay. But think about it ... how many products are there on Planet Earth? Millions? Billions? Trillions? Quadrillions? (Don't know what comes after quadrillions :-) Does it really make sense that you can't find a handful of those products to sell on eBay?
Our frustrated writer has drawn the wrong conclusions:
1. He thinks there is nothing for him to sell
2. He thinks that no one else knows how to do this, either - or is teaching the "how to"
He's completely wrong on both counts. The real problem, though, is his own lack of knowledge.
Posted by SydneyJohnston at October 25, 2006 1:21 PM
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