Tuesday, January 22, 2008

How To Legally Spy On Your Competitors And Find Out What Is Selling Best For Them

How To Legally Spy On Your Competitors And Find Out What Is Selling Best For Them

Have you ever wished that things could just be easy? Have you ever thought' If I just knew what they were doing I could make an absolute killing'. Well, I'm here to tell you that you can.You can find out everything about your auction competitor and cherry pick what is working best for them and ignore what isn't working so well for them. By doing this you won't be able to help but to increase your overall profits simply because you will only be selling the hottest items.

So let's get started with this free method.You will need to open a spreadsheet like Excel or whatever program came with your computer. Go ahead and name it what ever you want and you will want to put the name of the seller that you are going to be researching at the top of the spreadsheet for your own reference.Next, you are going to name 5 columns.


The first will be 'Item Description' the second one will b! e 'Starting Price' the third one will be 'Ending Price' and the fourth one will be 'Shipping' and the 5th one will be 'Shipping Method'. Now you can add more detail if you want such as if the item sold was at a fixed price or if it was bid on, but you really only need the 5 I've mentioned.Now go to whatever auction site you use and either type in the sellers name or the type of item you are interested in selling.

If you are going to use the sellers name then you want to make sure that the person is a seller with at least 2000 feedback comments and a 98-100% positive feedback rating. If they are missing either of these 2 criteria then you will want to find someone in the same category that has these. This is extremely important. If you are going to use an item to research the niche just make sure that when you find a seller that they also have what is mentioned above.

Next is a whole bunch of copying and pasting.When you find a qualified seller, click on thei! r feedback. In most cases it will show you to the feedback com! ments an d you'll be able to see what the item was and exactly what it sold for. Copy and paste the items as well as the numbers into your spreadsheet in the appropriate columns.

After you do this, then click on the item and see what the shipping cost was and put this into your spreadsheet. Click on the bids and see what the starting bid was and add this to your spreadsheet as well.

NOTE: Some sellers keep their auctions private and you may not see this information. If this is the case simply find another seller.

-Highlight the item that was sold and then copy it into your spreadsheet. The other information like the starting price you can just type in from memory as this will probably be faster for you (it is for me).

TIP: Press down the Alt key and then the Tab key to flip back and forth between the auction site and your spreadsheet. To Copy faster: Press down the Ctrl key and the letter 'C' after you have highlighted what you are copying. To Paste faste! r: Press down the Ctrl key and the letter 'V'. These key commands make everything a lot faster.

If it requires you to calculate shipping do it this way. Type in zip code 33040 (Key West, Florida and make note of that number. Then type in 98357 (Neah Bay, Washington) and make note of that number and put these into your spreadsheet. If the 2 shipping costs are different then just add them to your spreadsheet column like this: 13.95 - 19.00.

These 2 locations are the farthest southeast and the farthest northwest locations in the United States and will give you the exact shipping information you need to know since your competitor has already done this work for you (as long as you're selling the exact same item).Be sure to make note of their shipping method and see if they mail by the United States Post Office or UPS, FedEx etc.....

Now you have the 5 basic things you need to know to compete with your competitor. You will now need to gather a large amount o! f data to see what the trend is and what is selling best for y! our comp etitor. You will want to go through all of the feedback for the last 90 days (no matter how many pages that is) and copy and paste all of the information into your spreadsheet.

I know it is a lot of work because I have done it, but keep in mind that you will only need to do it once and when you get the system down you can do about 50 item listings in about 5-6 minutes.Once you have the items sold information for the last 90 days then you will simply sort your spreadsheet in this order:AlphabeticallySold PriceStart PriceDon't worry about the sorting the shipping cost as this is just information that you need to set up your auction.

You can now look at your spreadsheet and see what is selling best for the competitor, exactly what it sold for, what your starting price should be, and what you should charge for shipping. In short you have everything you need to start selling.

By: ! Brad Bradley

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

AuctionReports.net provides free information on how you can make extraordinary money with ordinary items in online auctions. Use the free research tool to maximize your profits and to legally to spy on your competitors and find out what's really selling!

By: Brad Bradley

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

AuctionReports.net provides free information on how you can make extraordinary mo! ney with ordinary items in online auctions. Use the free resea! rch tool to maximize your profits and to legally to spy on your competitors and find out what's really selling!


Source: http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/How-To-Legally-Spy-On-Your-Competitors-And-Find-Out-What-Is-Selling-Best-For-Them/411144
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