Finding An eBay Niche

When you are trying to sell online - whether it is your own product or one you are acting as an affiliate for, it is important to find things that people need and that are also selling well. That's where the power of Build A Niche Store (BANS) and eBay come together.

eBay allows people to sell millions of products a day, all over the world. From houses to cars, from miniature figures to ancient antiques - eBay has it all. When using Build A Niche Store (BANS) to promote eBay items, you need to find an niche or product that has the following characteristics.

• Sells consistently.
• Sells for a medium to high price.
• Is something that people are searching Google to buy.
• Is something that returns a small number of "competing" page results in Google.

This magic formula is the key to beginning success in marketing products using affiliate marketing, BANS and the eBay Partner Network. We can summarize the formula using these figures:

• Sells consistently = Has a sell through rate of at least 60%.
• Sells for a medium/high price = An average price of around $50.
• Is something that people search Google to buy = An average of 100 searches per day.
• Is something that returns a small number of page results in Google = Less than 30,000 pages returned.

Sells consistently
Using this formula, you need to be able to find a product that sells a lot on eBay. If you choose something that is for sale on eBay but does not sell very much - you have chosen the wrong product.

Sells for a medium/high price
Also, you need to find something that sells for a high price. I guess you will be able to find some novelty items on eBay that sell consistently but have a low sale price, but an item with a higher price will allow you to earn more affiliate earnings.

Is something that people search Google to buy
You also need to find an item that people are looking to buy in Google. You need to know how many times (on average) the items are searched for in Google. This will give you an estimate of your market and customer base.

Is something that returns a small number of page results in Google
Your ideal market will also have a low number of pages returned when you search for it in Google. The benefit of this will be that it will be easier to reach the top positions in Google for your product rather that competing against millions of results.

From these criteria, without even doing any research you can estimate that items like iPods or Xbox 360 consoles will be useless as they do not fit the pattern. They may have lots of searches in Google each day but they have way too many websites selling the same items returned in the Google search results. Remember, your goal will be to get to the highest position on Google for your target product or niche. It is possible to rank highly in Google for popular items such as iPods, but you have to have a lot of time and efforts to apply to getting there.

To complete the analysis for a chosen niche market or product, I use the following tools - which are all free.

Terapeak.com
Terapeak gives free access to the last 7-10 days worth of data on products sold on eBay.com. It will also show you the average sell through rate based on the items listed and sold - and the average price that they sold for. (get your 14 day trial account)

Google External Keyword Tool
Yes! Even Google now gives away the number of times people search for certain words and phrases and will also provide you with similar or related search terms too.

Google
The plain old Google search engine will give you the results for the number of "competing" pages for your chosen niche market or product.

There are 2 main ways to perform analysis using these tools.

1. Verify the market and then find the product
2. Find the product and then verify the market

First, we need to find something that people are looking for in Google and that has a low number of pages that "compete" for that term.

1. Open the Google External Keyword tool page and think of an item that you might want to target.
2. Enter the term into the search box, make sure that the "Use Synonyms" option is ticked.
3. Enter the captcha displayed and click the "Get Keyword Ideas" button. For this example, I will test with the term "dog slippers"

The Keyword Tool will display the results below and also show you the average number of searches per month. You will be able to see from this list which terms are searched more than others - and I expect there will be plenty of items in the list that you did not expect to be returned too. This is good as it gives you a chance to see what people might be looking for within your niche market.

1. Choose at least 10 items that have an average search value of above 3100 (100 searches a day * 31 days).
2. Open Notepad or Excel and type the entries in, one per line. The item and the number of searches.
3. Open a new window in your browser and go to the Google homepage.
4. Enter the phrases 1 by 1 from your text file - but enter them in quotes. "dog training leashes" or "coke can despensers". This will ensure that Google shows you the exact number of pages returned that feature "dog slippers" as a phrase with the 2 words together rather than pages that contain "dog" and "slippers" somewhere on the same page - which you get if you enter the term without the quotes.
5. Write down the number of returned pages for the "phrase match" of your term next to the phrases you chose from the External Keyword Tool.

In our example, I have chosen to go with the following - written in the following notation "phrase"/"searches"/"Google pages"

• dog slippers/2900/25200
• dogs slippers/880/37100
• dog booties/9900/64400
• dog socks/4400/25100
• dog blanket/12100/76600

Once you have completed this, get rid of anything that returns a result of more than around 30,000 pages. This will help you narrow down your possible niche market or product to a few related search terms or items. I have decided to keep the following items from my list:

• dog slippers/2900/25200/
• dogs slippers/880/37100/
• dog socks/4400/25100/

1. Open the Terapeak free search page and enter your term into the search box.
2. Click Search and allow Terapeak to retrieve the information
3. Write down the average amount that the item sells for on eBay against each line in your file or spreadsheet.
4. Write down the average sell through rate for each item (listed in percentage).
5. Take note of the items that have sold and what sort of prices they sell for (this may help you narrow down your niche further - or give you ideas for the next one!)

Once you have finished your list, you can decide which items are selling the most (high sell through rate) and the ones that sell for a high price (averaging at least $100 is best). This information, along with the number of average searches and competing pages in Google will arm you with the best information to decide if a niche is worth investing time and money in promoting. Here is my list after doing the Terapeak research - written in the following notation "phrase"/"searches"/"Google pages"/"Average price"/"sell through rate":

• dog slippers/2900/25200/$10.35/32.38%
• dogs slippers/880/37100/$11.70/25%
• dog socks/4400/25100/$6.57/38.26%

As you can see, my results don't actually give me a niche to work with - at all! (based on my formula) But that's part of the fun in researching the niche possibilities. Remember, the narrower the niche, the more profitable. You need to laser in on what buyers want. They might want a new Xbox, but they might also need a "cheap xbox 360 wireless adapter" (cheap xbox 360 wireless adapter/1300/609/$54/59%)

This works in reverse to the previous example. This time we will be finding items that are selling on eBay and then working back to find if people are looking for them on ebay and if there are many competing pages.

1. Open the Terapeak free search tool.
2. Enter "1" into the search box and click Search.

This method will often return up to a million products that have sold on eBay in the last 7 days. It will also let you see some quite valuable items - which might give you a possible niche market right there! But I usually drill down further into the categories.

1. Click the Categories item under the Search Filters menu on the left hand side.
2. Click the + sign next to a category that looks appealing to you and that might contain products that sell for an average of $50.
3. When you are in the categories, look for items that have sold for a reasonable sum of money.
4. Make a note of brand names, model numbers and details and change the Terapeak search back to "all categories" and re-search for that name or product.
5. Once you have found an item, enter the term into Google surrounded with quotes to get the number of competing pages.
6. Enter the term or product into the External Keyword Tool and get the average search amount.
7. Compile a list as per the original example showing the search phrase, number of searches, competing pages and average prices and sell through rates on eBay.
8. Find your niche!

Of course that is just the start. Once you have found that all important product or item to promote through the eBay Partner Network - how do you do it?

I recommend using a product called Build A Niche Store (BANS).

Once you have your Niche selected, BANS will allow you to quickly and easily create a website to promote that item, showing live auction listings from eBay too! You are able to create pages of information to promote the items (which will help you rise higher in the Google search results) and it will also automatically set up a portion of your store for you so you will be ready to make money online within hours.

There is also no reason why you cannot use this same method to find profitable niches that you could tap to build Hubpages around too.