Sell What's Hot!

Still haven’t decided what to sell on eBay? Think hot! Not sure what’s hot? Here are a couple of places you can check to find out.

First, check the pulse. The eBay pulse, that is. That’s where you will find up-to-the-minute popular search terms by category on eBay. These are the search terms that eBay shoppers use the most. It’s a great way to see what people are looking for today. Just go to pulse.ebay.com and you’ll see the top 10 popular searches in all categories. Click the drop-down menu to narrow the category. For instance, if I click on “Clothing, Shoes & Accessories,” now I can see the top 10 search terms for that general group of categories. When I use the drop-down menu again and narrow the category to “Women’s Shoes,” I find Gucci and Nike, among others. If I had Gucci shoes to sell, I would know that people are looking for them and it’s a good time to get them listed. Next, scroll down the page a bit and you’ll see the “Most Watched Items” in that category, which gives you even more of an idea what people are interested in today. On the top right of the page there's a section listing the largest ebay stores selling items in the shoe category. If you want to see how somebody else sells shoes, or what shoes are actually selling, explore those stores and look for things they do that you might do to improve your own shoe listings. So, check the Pulse for items that you think you might like to sell and remember to use those hot search words in the listing titles.

Next suggestion, google it to find out what’s hot. Google has a project called “trends.” Want to know the top 100 search trends on google, the terms that have suddenly gained in popularity? You should want to know because if it’s hot on google, then it probably really is hot and the trend may well spill over to eBay. An example of this would be when Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter, died. You can be sure that thousands of people googled “Steve Irwin” and “crocodile hunter” and other similar terms when they heard the news. You can also be positive that eBay was suddenly flooded with Steve Irwin items. Talk about hot, now that was a very hot topic for a few days, then it cooled gradually and went back to normal over time. One-day auctions for Steve Irwin items were the norm that week on eBay; who knew if seven days later people would still be looking for the crocodile man’s items. (While it may seem inappropriate to take advantage of a tragedy such as Steve Irwin’s sudden death, you can be sure that a lot of people made money as a result of that event.) So, to find search terms that have gained rapidly in popularity and may be getting really hot, or to see what trends your favorite searches or keywords show, visit trends.google.com. Read the “About Google Trends” page for a full explanation of how it works.

These are just a couple of ways to decide on what might be hot items to sell on eBay. You may have others and I would love to hear about them. So, how about it. No need to reveal your top-secret sources, but I’d love to read your comments and suggestions!