You may have already discovered that selling on e bay can be fun and profitable. But after you have cleared out your garage and attic, and auctioned off everything your husband owns, where can you go to get new product ideas?

Tapping into e bay’s resources-most people don’t realize that e bay itself is actually a terrific place to find product sourcing ideas. Besides being an easy selling venue with built in traffic, it also contains a goldmine of useful data about what that traffic wants to buy. One of e bay’s best kept secrets is their Seller Central page E bay.com/Seller Central. Very few people, even Power Sellers, are aware of this valuable resource. Consequently, very few people are taking advantage of the tools available there:

The merchandising calendar - this is a great spot to get sourcing leads because it shows you specifically what products e bay will be promoting over the next few months. It gives you dates and tells you which item categories you need to list your product in for it to be displayed on e bay’s homepage. When a user clicks on that item, your auction will pop right up.

The hot items section - this is basically a monthly trend watching report. It tells you what items are moving, producing more bids, and getting higher final prices. It lets you get a feel for where the demand is.

The hot categories section - this resource takes the top categories and gives you tips on how to sell in those categories, insider secrets about your buyers, and trending info. For each category, there’s a section called ‘In Demand’ that tells you not only the top selling items in that category, but also the top keywords that buyers are using to find these items. Use those keywords in your listing titles. If you have any left over, put them in your description. Essentially, e bay tells you what to sell and then tells you how best to list it.

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