Wholesaling on Ebay: First, Do Your Market Research

Maybe you have an interest in getting into online wholesaling, but fear getting ripped off by a vendor or ending up with a pile of products you cannot sell. Don’t panic — that only happens to those who are not thorough about doing market research on the products they decide to sell. The Good News, forearming yourself with online wholesaling market research is not complex.

What you have to find out, quite simply, is information about the product, its potential customers, and its competition. If you were opening up a bakery, for instance, you would allocate time and effort in picking a location where the highest amount of people would be likely to become aware of it, and in making sure that there was not a similar store within sight. The time and effort you’d take is what market research is.

The most necessary thing that a beginner online wholesaler must do is avoid the urge to jump on with products that is “hot” and in high demand. The fact is, you don’t need a large pool of customers if they are urgently in need of a product that has hardly any competitors. The majority of Ebay’s elite “power sellers” started out by detecting ignored “niche” market segments, such as those in need of plus-sized clothing or equipment for the left-handed. Once you have completed a few of these niche market sales, you’ll be ready for product and audience expansion.

Here’s one way to do the research: Go to Ebay and click on the blue “Advanced” to the right of the green search button in the navigation bar. Go to the second section, under Find Items, titled Search Including, and click on the second box for Completed Listings. Then under Find Items, enter some product keywords, and click the blue search button. You’ll receive a catalog of completed and uncompleted sales.

Look through the first five pages and calculate how many items have sold — their prices will be in green. What sells best on Ebay will come up at least 60% green. If it doesn’t, make your product search more specific or try a different one altogether. If it does, you’re ready to complete the next step — finding an outlet that can provide you with the merchandise at a wholesale price so you can sell it for a profit.

While researching this way is free, it’s time-consuming and cannot address any questions that you may have. That is why it is highly recommended that online wholesaling newbies do their research a different way, which you can get access to at http://online-wholesaling-for-newbies.tumblr.com. Here’s why:

The smartest method for online wholesaling newbies to get off to the best start possible is by making investing in becoming a member of the online wholesaling Web community Salehoo.com. Along with more helpful marketing research tools and other tools, Salehoo offers step-by-step lessons in online wholesaling for newbies, listings of pre-approved wholesalers, and the friendship of aspiring and experienced online sellers just like you!

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