Imagine you owned a retail store selling shoes and clothing to teenagers. Every quarter representatives from different clothing companies would pay you a visit and you would select the clothing and quantities to be shipped to your store six months later. Every order would be a roll of the dice. You’d always be thinking, “What will kids be wearing in six months?” “What trends or fashions will be hot?” Which styles will be flops?” The success of that business would depend on your best guesses.  

With an eBay business, the guesswork is taken out of your product choices. Each month, eBay produces a Seller Central section that helps you figure out what people want to buy now and in the future. It’s called “What’s Hot”. The exciting thing is that although some sellers know about this page, most don’t. You have access to upcoming promotions, top searches, the most watched items and monthly sales data for all of eBay.  

Hot Items by Category

The Hot Items by Category report helps you to understand which categories and subcategories are on fire; the ones that produce the highest bid-to-item ratios which means that demand is outpacing the supply!  

This public report lets you review the work of thousands of other eBay sellers to figure out what eBay bidders want and, equally important, what they don’t want.  

The eBay Hot Items by Category report can be located at this link:

eBay Hot Item list

The list is shown as an Adobe Acrobat Document. If you don’t have the Adobe Acrobat reader on your computer, you can download it for free from the Adobe website:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html


In this report you’ll find what’s selling Hot, Very Hot and Super Hot on eBay right now. It is broken down by category, not by product. So find a Hot or Super Hot category that interests you and then look at that category or sub-category on eBay to through the Completed Listings report for a particular product that is selling well.
 
Here is an example of a recent report, the Super Hot list in the Cameras and Photos category, levels 2, 3, and 4:


Super Hot
        Level 2                                        Level 3                                  Level 4
Binoculars & Telescopes            Eyepieces & Accessories             Filters
Camcorder Accessories             Blank Tapes & Memory                 DVD-R/RW
Printers, Scanners & Supplies     Photo Printers                              Kodak
 

The Hot Items by Category report is issued monthly, but past reports are not archived. Be sure to print or save each month’s report in case you want to review past trends and hot categories.  

Merchandising Calendar

The Merchandising Calendar gives you a sneak peak into what eBay will be promoting on the homepage in the upcoming month(s). Often times casual browsers on eBay will click on the flashy promotional ad and view those items. If you are selling the right product in the right place at the right time, that means extra traffic for your listing!

You can find the Merchandising Calendar at this link:

Merchandising Calendar

Be sure to check the page often. eBay has years of data showing what items sell best for every time of this year. This can be a clue as to when you should list and promote your items as well. Here is what part of the calendar might look like:

              Event                     Dates                 Featured Categories
      Holiday Gift Guide    2/15 to 3/15          Antiques
                                                                Books
                                                                Cell Phones
                                                                Clothing, Shoes & Accessories
                                                                Computers
                                                                Consumer Electronics
                                                                Dolls & Bears
                                                                Everything Else
                                                                Health & Beauty
                                                                Home & Garden
                                                                Jewelry & Watches
                                                                Motors
                                                                Movies
                                                                Music
                                                                Photo & Camera
                                                                Pottery & Glass
                                                                Sporting Goods
                                                                Sports Mem.
                                                                Tickets
                                                                Toys
                                                                Video Games

eBay Pulse

Another great research page of the What’s Hot section lets you check the eBay Pulse. This page shows you several lists including popular searches, some of the best eBay stores, popular products, highest priced items, most watched items and more. This is your chance to study where the best money is being made on eBay. Study the trends, strategies and techniques used by both buyers and sellers.  

Check the eBay Pulse now:

http://pulse.ebay.com/

eBay Marketplace Research

This is the newest addition to the What’s Hot section. It is a paid service offered by eBay that shows you “90 days of historical information on completed items as well as active listings data, including average start prices, average sold prices, top keyword searches, and more!”  

When you’ve studied the trends and analyzed the research from the previous free tools, you might want to pay the $2.99 for a FastPass look at an even larger and more targeted volume of data.  

Don’t pass up this opportunity to outsmart your competition:

Marketplace Research

Visit these links on a monthly basis and you’ll see your eBay business grow as fast as the hottest trends on eBay!