9/10/09 eBay Powersellers Secrets Newsletter 

“In this week’s newsletter Amanda reveals how to find hot products in the most unlikely places.”   

Hello!

After a rather busy week, I was relaxing in my conservatory last Sunday afternoon enjoying the view and reading the Sunday papers. 

My husband likes to choose the Sunday papers and I never really know what he’s going to arrive home with - why do we let men go shopping? They always come back with half a dozen things that we don’t actually need! Normally he comes back laden down with about five different ones ranging from the broadsheets to the red-top tabloids, and last Sunday was no exception so I had quite a good choice as usual. 

Anyway, as I picked up the ‘Mail On Sunday’, out fell the usual mountainous heap of leaflets, brochures, magazines and scratch cards that are always secreted inside the weekend newspapers, and I did what I always do - bundled them up without a glance and headed for the recycling box.  

But as I did so, a particular brochure caught my eye - not for any reason other than on the back cover I spotted a photograph of a product that I have sold on eBay in the past. 

Now I don’t normally bother to look through these kinds of   ‘innovations’ style brochures and mini catalogues. I read the newspapers and supplements and that’s about it, but having seen this item on the cover and having had some experience of selling it myself, I was curious to see what other products were on offer from this company. 

On opening the brochure, I discovered that it was in fact absolutely packed full of household, garden and gadgety products ranging from mini digital hearing aids to ear cleaners (yuk!) to the worlds smallest binoculars!  

The first few pages I flicked through were fairly mundane - salt and pepper mills, kitchen towel holders, drip free teapots and foldaway steps. But then things began to get a little more interesting. 

From my experience of selling on eBay over the last 5 years, I was able to spot a few products that I thought looked perfect to me for sourcing and re-selling on eBay - they all solved a problem of one sort or another, were all small - so easy to pack and post - and were all in the middle price range. So, after making a quick list, I thought I’d take a look on eBay to see if any of these items were already being listed by anyone else. 

You might be thinking that what I wanted to find was that no-one else was selling these items on eBay, thus giving me absolutely no competition. But actually that wasn’t my plan at all. I didn’t want to find that nobody was listing these products already. Oh no,   what I wanted to find was that these products were listed already and selling extremely well! 

Does that seem a funny way of going about it? Well, no not really, because if other eBay sellers are already making good profits from these items, then that tells me straight away that they are hot sellers and I should be selling them too! 

So, after logging on to eBay UK, I searched for the first item that I had noticed that looked like it had potential: An ‘Electronic Flea Killer’. I wasn’t disappointed!  

I found a listing on page one of the search for those exact keywords with 37 sold from the listing so far at £13.97 each. Bingo! One hot product worth researching further and sourcing to re-sell. 

Next, a ‘Steam Brush’. Again, the page one results showed me a listing for the exact keywords I had entered and 29 sold so far, each at £14.99. Bingo again! That’s two hot products. 

Finally, I searched for ‘Bark Stop’, a bark control collar for yappy dogs. Sure enough, first page of the results and there’s a listing with 72 sold at £7.95 each. I think that’s a Full House don’t you! Three hot products all with profit potential. 

Just for a bit of fun and to prove to you that not all products are entirely suitable for eBay, I did actually do a search for ‘Comfy Toe Socks’ which were on sale in the brochure for £9.99 (these are knee high socks with holes for your toes to go through, which actually make your feet look mummified - very odd looking but I’m sure they are very cosy!). Anyway, funnily enough there were no UK sellers selling these so I could deduce from that that they are probably not worth sourcing! 

Anyway, what’s important here is that in a matter of minutes I had found myself 3 hot selling eBay products just by looking in a brochure that came free with my newspaper, then comparing the potential products on eBay. What could be simpler.  

I know that if I sourced unbranded versions of these products for myself, they would sell well, because others are selling them very successfully already. All I need to do is source them, write a killer listing and grab my share of the profits. The great thing is, that all the products I viewed were branded versions, so it would not be hard to find similar unbranded versions of these products at cheap wholesale prices. 

And, to be honest, there were probably 5 or 6 more products that I could have checked on eBay for potential and then sourced to sell, just from this one 48 page brochure that fell out of the middle of the newspaper.  

That means that I could have had an inventory of 10 or more, hot selling products up and running in no time - and my research would have taken me literally minutes. 

There are loads of these kinds of brochures around and they do almost always come with the Sunday papers - I’m sure you know the ones I mean. They are a great source of inspiration when searching for products to sell and it’s so easy to cross-reference them on eBay. 

I know that spotting potential hot products comes with experience, something which I have lots of where eBay is concerned, but the more you look, the easier it becomes to be able to spot the products that are worth checking out, and brochures like these are the perfect place to start.  

Remember that these are only a maximum of 50 page brochures with a selection of products available. If these products weren’t any good, then they wouldn’t be in the brochures because the companies are paying to have their brochures inside the newspapers! 

So, this weekend, remember to take a look at the ‘junk’ inside your newspaper, because what looks like a normal pile of recycling could in fact be the key to your eBay empire! 

Until next week as always I wish you the best of success,

Amanda

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I produce this newsletter on the understanding that these are my own personal opinions and experiences, which are as accurate as possible at the time of publication. I cannot be held responsible for any error in details, accuracy or judgment whatsoever. 

© Amanda O’Brien 2009 

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