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Developing Your 'Product Finding Mindset' is The Answer to The Million Dollar Question...

Probably one the most frustrating and difficult tasks as an eBay seller, is the ongoing and time consuming task of sourcing a regular supply of hot selling items to sell through your eBay business. Don’t despair, you’re not alone, because each and every eBay seller has at one stage had the same hurdles while trying to grow their business.

In the early stages of most eBay businesses, everyday people just like you, generally start out by selling unwanted items they have sitting around the home, that are no longer wanted, needed or used.

It can be household items, unwanted gifts, clothing you longer wear, old records, DVD’s, electronics, cars, furniture, toys and so on.

What happens in a lot of cases, (including our own) is that you start out by selling off these unwanted items, and once you start selling and making money on just about everything you list on eBay, all of a sudden you find yourself ‘hooked’. Next thing, you’re stalking around the house in search for anything that isn’t nailed down that you can list and sell for a profit!

But as can be expected, you soon run out of ‘things’ to sell from around the house. Once you’ve collected and sold everything you could get your hands on from your friends and neighbours, you’re left with the job of sourcing an on-going supply of merchandise.

Well, the good news is, there are quite a few ways that you can go about finding never ending supplies of product to sell in your eBay business. But before we get into this, there are a couple of steps you’ll first need to put into place.

The first and most important step is to develop your ‘Product Finding Mindset.’ This simply means that if you want to be ‘switched on’ to what’s hot on eBay, there are a few tips and tricks you can develop that will give you a great head start.

First of all, when you’re going through the process of deciding what types of products you’d like to sell on eBay, you have to put yourself into the ‘consumers’ mindset to find out exactly what it is that they want or need to buy. Here are the four steps you need to take to ensure you develop your ‘product Finding mindset.’

1. Open Minded Ideas. Open your eyes, ears and mind to everything. The market place is changing constantly. What may be hot today could be cold and old news by tomorrow! Watch out for trends in the market place and think of how you can take advantage of them. Keep a very open mind here.

2. Look. When you next walk into a department store, or any store for that matter, look around the place to see if you notice any ‘new, hot items’ that have come into the market place. If they’ve made it to the shelves in department stores, they’ll probably sell on eBay!

By the way, if you find something in a store you’d like to sell on eBay, look on the back of the packaging, and in most cases there’ll be the manufactures details. Get on the phone and see if you can source the product!

3. Take Notes. Write down everything you see that you may want to sell in your eBay business. Carry a note pad with you always…you never know what ideas may pop into your head, anytime, anywhere! (We have a notepad with over 200 hot ideas we know will make money on eBay.)

4. Research. Research is the key to all eBay success stories. This is by far the most important ingredient of all. You cannot run your business successfully on assumptions. We’ve covered a number of ways for you to conduct market research to make things easy for you! If you miss this step…you’re in trouble.

It’s very important to note that it doesn’t matter what you think the market place wants or needs to buy, you must put your own assumptions aside and go with what the market research is telling you. Just because you may be into something….doesn’t mean the rest of the world is! We’ve seen many eBay sellers make the mistake of assuming, and as a result, they don’t have a thriving business.

There are many ways to find out what the market wants or needs through various types of research, so let’s take a look at what you can get started with right away.

1. You can attend trade shows to see what’s new to the market place and what is already making an impact. Conduct your research using research software programs such as Terapeak.

You can go to the Hot List on eBay, eBay Pulse and completed listings, to see if there’s a market for different products on eBay. And if there is, what is your potential competition doing?

2. Start reading Trend magazines to see what’s hot in certain categories. For example, selling baby stuff on eBay is huge. Find out what your buyers are reading and what they’re buying off line, and what they’re searching for. You can stay one step ahead of your competition by sourcing hot and in demand products and having them selling in your eBay business before everyone else does!

3. If you have children, ask them what’s hot in the kids and teenagers world and do some research. While we were at an eBay conference in Las Vegas, we listened to a lady presenting who was telling the story of another lady who was making a fortune on eBay because of something her kids were mad about. She did her research, found there was a hot market, for this particular product, sourced the product and went on to make a full time living with her eBay business. She credits her whole success to her two young girls!

4. Subscribe to trade magazines. These magazines are not usually found on newsagent’s shelves, they are subscription only. Here’s where you can find a plethora of information about a particular market you may be interested in. Open your mind, it’s all there for you!

5. Carry around a ‘product idea note book’ with you everywhere. Research tells us that we forget 90% of what we take in, so take notes!

6. Other forms of research for hot selling products are eBay pulse and using eBay marketplace research. Check this link below.

http://pages.ebay.com/marketplace_research 7. Another tip is that some of the biggest eBay successes come from sellers who concentrate on the niche groups. This simply means that instead of trying to be everything to everyone, choose a niche market and fully concentrate on that market.

For example, you may be interested in horses. You could create your whole business around horse related products, right down to e-books about horses. Become an expert in one market so that buyers feel comfortable shopping with you because you are perceived as the expert in your field.

8. Think about how you can get your customers returning to your eBay auctions or store, to shop with you over and over. This is called ‘back end’ marketing.

For example, if you decided to concentrate on the horse product market, you could build a data base of customers where you’d be able to contact them, time and time again, to sell them other horse related products as you source them. Remember, it’s always easier to sell to happy customers (evangelists) than it is to find new customers.

9. When you’re sourcing products, think of ‘mainstream’ products that you know people are actually interested in and looking for.

10. Another way to contribute to your bottom line is to introduce short-term seasonal or trendy items to offer to your customer data-base. This of course, depends on the market you have chosen to concentrate on.

11. Understand that every sale must involve a buyer with a specific want or need. I cannot stress enough the importance of this. If there is no need or want, there is no sale.

12. Listed here are 13 ‘hotspots’ you can explore to get ideas for inventory. They are…

• Magazines
• Newspapers
• Book Stores
• Pop Culture
• Entertainment
• Industry Specific
• Retail Stores
• Trade Shows
• Hobby Stores
• Shopping Malls
• Vendor Catalogues
• Current Events
• Trade Organizations

“Remember, the key here is to keep your eyes, ears & mind wide open for ideas and trends in the buying market”