How to Use eBay's Tools to Find Out What Buyers Are Looking For

Everyone wants to know what the hot ticket is on eBay. They want to know what’s selling best so that they can run out, buy it, and make big money on eBay. Unfortunately, nobody has or can give you secret information that magically transforms you from a garage seller to a warehouse tycoon overnight. You get there by studying the market and finding out what works and what doesn’t. There are no shortcuts. That said, here’s where you can find information on what’s hot or what’s going to be hot on the site.

Hot on the home page

New shoppers to the eBay site generally enter from the home page. In case you haven’t noticed, eBay runs promotions smack dab in the center of the home page — immediately drawing the attention of anyone who drops in to browse the site, as shown here.

Now wouldn’t you be the smart one if you were to list items that coincided with the hot items on the site? You can find out what eBay will be listing on the home page ahead of time by clicking the Sell drop-down menu on the navigation bar and finding the link to eBay’s What’s Hot area.

You’ll find a current list of the most popular searches on the site. Use the drop-down category menu to select the leaders within the particular category you plan to list.

eBay Marketplace Research

eBay maintains an area that continually evaluates item sales. Click the Sell drop-down menu and choose Seller Tools & eBay Stores. On the resulting page, click eBay Marketplace Research from the Choose a Topic list on the left; the page you land on is shown here.

Marketplace Research provides some great and useful data. Unfortunately, all that great data isn't free. For $24.99 a month (or $197.95 for a yearly subscription), you can really go to town and access huge amounts of historic data.

Here eBay sellers (and buyers, if they so wish) can access up to 90 days of eBay data on completed items. By doing so, you’ll get a firm grip on the demand for items you're planning to sell — with charts trending the average bids per item, number of completed items, and more. You’ll also have access to the top searches within a category — or the entire site — to see what buyers are searching for.

There’s much more available these days since eBay smartly partnered with Terapeak. This company developed an eBay toolset that can really dig deep and do research for you. You’ll be amazed at the data you’ll see — especially once you’ve narrowed down the items you’re interested in selling to just a few.