Selling on eBay is something that looks easy to do.....but can be very frustrating for a new Seller.  Since I have sold on eBay for over 7 years, a lot of friends have asked me how to get started. 

EBay gives you some great guides and tools to start selling, but they don't tell you how to succeed.  What I recommend is what most new sellers do NOT want to do....do your homework first!  Usually potential Sellers have a few ideas of what they might want to sell.  They may have hobbies that they know a lot about, or a source of supply readily available...or they just plan to comb the local flea markets and garage sales every week.

What you need to do is go to advanced search and type in what you are thinking of selling.  Click the box for completed auctions and set the page list to 200.  When you click search, you have your market research done on that item....a snapshot of recently completed auctions, both the successful and unsuccessful ones.  Scroll down the list and look at the ending prices.  Click on some of the most successful ones and see what the items look like and what is on the auction page....check out what else the seller is offering.  See if you can figure out what keywords are in common for the most successful items.

When I started selling on eBay, I did this for multiple idea items for over 3 months if you can believe it!  Before I listed my very first item for sale I was nearly certain that what I planned to sell would be successful  most of the time and knew the price range I could receive.  (By the way, I started out selling handmade potholders, made with fabric that could be described with really popular keywords!).  When I finally started listing, my sales took off from the very first week and I made Powerseller level in 6 months time.  Whenever I try a new line of products even now, I first do my homework on completed listings before I jump in.