Auctions | Free Auctions | Online Auctions

Make Money On eBay and Protect Your eBay Business by Imitating the Weatherman

Protect your eBay Business by Imitating the Weatherman

I recently read a book about twelve very successful eBay sellers who had taken their annual sales into the six digit range and beyond. It was quite inspiring, and so out of curiosity I thought I would look them up on eBay and check out their current operations. Much to my surprise, a few of these successful eBay sellers were no longer in business! The book I read was only a couple of years old, so what could have happened to these missing sellers and more importantly, what could they have done to avoid their fate?

Anyone who has been selling or buying on eBay for any substantial amount of time can tell you it’s a changing marketplace. For every Platinum PowerSeller who goes under there are a thousand or more average sellers who abandon their eBay businesses. Is their failure something which could have been predicted? Was there anything that could have kept them from being broadsided and thereby folding their businesses? Are there any tools to help an eBay seller effectively forecast the changes which might affect his business?

We’re all familiar with the television news weatherman. He forecasts the weather so news viewers can plan their activities. His forecasts allow them to decide what plans to make for the weekend. Without the weatherman and his tools, we might show up at the beach when a tsunami arrives. We might plan to mow the lawn when a thunderstorm is eminent.

So can the weather teach us a lesson for our eBay business? Are there eBay tools in existence to help us predict the changing tides of the eBay marketplace? Just like the weatherman tracks the signs of nature, we can track the signs of the marketplace. We can track the signs by watching our competition.

Has our competitor taken on a new product, and is it doing well? It’s possible a new trend is emerging and we can become aware of it by spying on our competition. Or has something stopped working for our competition, something we’re doing as well? If we take a look at what is happening with our competition, we may be able to predict the winds of change that are headed for our own eBay businesses.

We may be too close to our own businesses to objectively see what is going on, but we can view our competitor as an uninvolved third party and clearly see what is working or what needs to be changed.

Just like the weatherman predicts the weather by spying on Mother Nature, we can predict upcoming changes in our eBay business by spying on our competition. Whether it be manually or with eBay auction software, spying on them is a must.

If we are not aware, we are likely to be broadsided and share the fate of so many sellers who close up shop each year.