Saturday 25 November 2006

PAYG research for eBay sellers

Do you want to check out a new stock line, find the average sell-through rate or the best day to list for your category or find out how a competitor is doing? eSeller Street is a new pay-per-search service which can analyse ninety days of eBay results: much more useful than the unanalysed fourteen days you can get from eBay's completed listings. eSeller Street is designed for sellers who perform fewer than forty searches a month: above that, eBay's own Marketplace Research facilities will probably work out cheaper.

One sample search showed me a lot, even in a category I thought I knew backwards. I know that Sunday and Monday are my best days to sell, and that Wednesday is my quietest, but I was astonished to learn that 1-day listings have the best sell-through rate of any listing duration, delighted to see that the sell-through on SIF listings is only 6% lower than auctions (I thought it was just me!), and intrigued to learn that one related category has a 50% better sell-through rate than the 'natural' one for what I'm selling. eBay's own advice to avoid "other" categories is bourne out with real figures, but Gallery doesn't seem to make nearly as much difference as I thought it did: 46% sell with Gallery, 40% without. (I sell beads, if you didn't already know: why not check it out for your own categories?)

Sadly at the moment, it's restricted to US categories only, but site owner Michelle Waldorf has given me a sneak preview of the UK service she plans for early next year. I'm glad, because this useful tool shouldn't just be restricted to US sellers.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Mei Ling Waldorf said...

Thanks for your thorough review!

I'm working on releasing the UK version for the British folks in Jan. Pricing will be about the same and the data will go back 90 days on eBay.co.uk.

Don't forget to try out the really fun part - seller research! ;-)

Cheers,

Michelle

25 November 2006 at 20:34:00 GMT  

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