Are you ready…. 

So, are you ready then? I am and I have been for the past few weeks! Ready for what? Well, today is ‘Black Friday’ which means that Monday is ‘Cyber (or Manic) Monday’! I mentioned these important dates in last week’s blog post (if you missed it you can read it here) and I suggested you get yourself in gear for some of the busiest predicted sales days during the festive period.

Black Friday deals have been available on Amazon this week and this Monday is historically the day when everyone goes “Eeek, Christmas is less than 4 weeks away and I haven’t started my Christmas shopping yet!” The credit card is swiftly whipped out and people start spending.…

So, did you take my advice and get your products listed in preparation? I hope so!

If not, there’s still time but you’ll need to list TODAY – use a 3 day auction style listing if you want your items to end on Cyber Monday and if you are running Buy It Now listings make sure you include a reference to Christmas Gifts because every little tweak helps!

Phew!

Ok, now on to other things. This week I want to remind you about a great research tool that I must admit I have been neglecting to use as often as I should. I have re-discovered this tool recently and have found it extremely useful – and I think you should try it out for yourself!

Now, as you know, mainly because I go on about it often enough, research is a very important part of your online business and is the key to uncovering hot selling items that you can then source and resell for a profit. And one important tool for your research is the good old internet browser. In this case, I’m specifically talking about ‘Add Ons’ which you can download within your browser.

Before we start though, I must mention that in order to use this tool you’ll need to be using the FireFox browser rather than Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or any of the other browsers available. If you haven’t already got FireFox downloaded you can get it here. 

Ok, so the ‘Add On’ I’m talking about is called the ‘eBay Button’. I’ll tell you exactly what it does in just a moment, but first, to download it here’s what you’ll need to do:

  • Open your FireFox browser
  • Go here
  • Click ‘Add To FireFox’
  • Click ‘Install Now’
  • Restart FireFox when prompted
  • Select ‘Add Ons’ from the Firefox menu at the top left of your screen and then choose ‘Extensions’ and you’ll see that the ‘eBay Button’ has been installed
  • Click ‘Options’ (to the right of the ebay Button Add On) and check that the button is set for UK
  • Close the ‘Add Ons’ box

You’ll now see a red coloured e on the top left side of your toolbar – that’s your ‘eBay Button’ all set up and ready to go.

Now here’s what you can do with it…

By clicking on the little arrow beside the red e and scrolling through the options on the drop down menu, the ‘eBay Button’ will show you lots of different, but all very useful, data such as the bestselling items for different product categories on eBay, the most watched items and most popular searches, all of which you can sift through and will help you to spot hot products. Don’t overlook the most gifted option and the movers and shakers option, both of these will help you to spot up and coming trends and be one step ahead of the game.

You’ll know from looking at your own eBay listings that there is an option to ‘Add To Wish List’ on every description and this is where the most gifted data comes from – potential buyers adding a particular item to their wish list with a view to buying it themselves or someone who they give access to their wish list buying it for them.

Using the ‘eBay Button’, I looked at the bestsellers in the Clothing category. I saw that at number one was ‘Knitted Rudolph Christmas Jumper’. This is in fact very similar to an item that I researched, sourced and gave a full profit calculation for The Source Report  members just last month!

So, let’s use this as an example now. As I’ve said, I had already checked out the bestsellers and so I know that this is a product that is causing a flurry of sales, so I also checked it out in the movers and shakers list and most gifted – again using my ‘eBay Button’. This showed me that the same product is currently placed at number 8 in most gifted and a similar version is at number 6 in movers and shakers – this is good news because the product has appeared in three lists so far – bestsellers, most gifted and movers and shakers.

You can see the item “Knitted Rudolph Christmas Jumper” here, currently sells around 15 per day,  So at this stage, I can now safely come to the conclusion that I’m looking at a product that is very viable for sourcing and selling….

Here’s a second example…

Using the eBay Button again, this time I looked at bestsellers in ‘Fitness’. Top of the list at number 1 were these no-slip shoe spikes. You can see them here:

No Slip Shoe Spikes

With over 19,500 sold from the listing I can see immediately that this is a red hot selling item – particularly at this time of year. In fact this seller is selling over 80 pairs of these EVERY DAY! And one more example – this Potato Ricer is at number 5 in the bestsellers for Kitchen and Dining using the eBay Button and is selling at a rate of around 8 per day.

You can see the product here:

Potato Ricer

The ebay Button is an ‘Add On’ that you should definitely have in your arsenal of seller tools! It costs absolutely nothing and you can see at a glance exactly what’s moving and shaking around eBay UK – try it out for yourself and see!

And there’s more!

Before I sign off today here’s one more FireFox Add On that is also very useful for research purposes. This one is called ‘FoxyBay’ and again it’s very simple to download:

  • Open FireFox
  • Go here
  • Click ‘Add to FireFox’
  • Click ‘Install Now’
  • Restart FireFox

Once you’ve done this a small eBay logo will appear on the top left of your toolbar and next to that a small search box, an ‘Ending Within’ and an ‘Under’ box, both with drop down menus. If you click the arrow next to the eBay logo you can change your search preferences to United Kingdom, so do this first.

You are now ready to use ‘FoxyBay’! This ‘Add On’ allows you to specify an auction end time and how much to bid as well as which country to search (just change the search preferences) and this means that you can quickly and easily find bargains on eBay that you can snap up and resell for a higher price – this is part of my ‘Find and Flip’ strategy – if you want to know more about this, take a look here: Find It, Flip It, Profit

So, the little arrow that I mentioned earlier, next to the eBay logo will also take you to the ‘FoxyBay’ homepage where you’ll see ‘Trending Topics’, ‘Hot Searches’ and ‘Popular Searches’ – not all will be relevant and you’ll find that there are a lot of brand keywords listed, however the results are worth checking out for those hidden gems and this is another simple way to uncover hot products!

So there you are – two research tips for you that you can put into action immediately and all absolutely free – try then for yourself and enjoy!

As always I wish you the best of success

amanda_signiture

 

 

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