Before you sell any product on eBay, no matter what it is, you need to do some research.  Let’s say you’re planning to sell a gourmet coffee gift basket.  How do you know how much that product is likely sell for, or whether it will sell at all?  Should you set a reserve price?  Is a fixed-price format or an auction-style listing preferrable?

One of the ways you can find answers to these questions is to preform an Advanced Search on eBay.  The “Advanced Search” button is on the homepage, right next to the regular Search button.  By hitting “Advanced Search”, you can search for products using keywords, checking particular categories, or even looking in a certain price range.

How To Research Your Potential EBay Product:

Step 1: Use keywords to view completed listings similar to yours

With our gourmet coffee gift basket, I’ll simply use the keywords “coffee gift basket” and possibly “gourmet” to search (I don’t want to input too many parameters or I won’t get a good overview of all the coffee gift baskets that have been sold).  Make sure you click the box to view “Completed Listings”.

Step 2: Examine your results

When I type in “gourmet coffee gift basket”, eBay changes my search to “gourmet coffee basket”, and I only find four completed listings from the last seven days.  Of these four listings, only one sold, and for a measly 99 cents.  This tells me that maybe coffee gift baskets aren’t the great idea I thought they were, and if I do try to sell one I should put a reserve price so it doesn’t sell for 99 cents.

Step 3: Refine your search

I’m going to try again, just to make absolutely sure coffee gift baskets aren’t a gold mine (after all, Valentine’s is coming up, so it seemed like a good idea for romantic javaphiles).  This time I use only the keywords “coffee” and “basket”.  I get 202 results, some of which are unrelated results like coffee makers and coffee-colored baskets.  I don’t read all the listings because I can easily see that coffee gift baskets are indeed a bad idea (at least right now): in the last seven days only one Starbucks coffee giftbasket sold for $19.99 versus eight baskets ranging from $8-$43.99 which did not sell.  Even that one sale was a brand-name product sold by an eBay Top Seller.

Step 4: Take the hint

When brainstorming, coffee gift baskets seemed like a good idea.  People love coffee, it’s a good gift item, it’s close to a holiday where gifts are given… what could go wrong?  Luckily I checked the completed listings before I wasted $2 trying to post my basket, or worse, went out to Sam’s Club and stocked up on twenty baskets to sell super-retail on eBay.

You should never, never try to sell a product on eBay that has a terrible sale ratio in the completed listings.  If you check the completed listings and the majority of laptop bags or embroidery kits or chess sets similar to your did sell, make sure that the price was commensurate with what you’re hoping to receive.  Don’t forget to ensure that the other factors of the sale are actually comparable: for instance, if you’re not an eBay Top Seller, you may not have as good a chance as selling your product, or if your item is used or refurbished and everybody else’s was brand new, you can’t expect the same price.

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