eBay market research revealed – HammerTap Review
What is HammerTap?
[myrpeditors]Make More Money on eBay with HammerTap
- eBay market research revealed – HammerTap Review
- What is HammerTap?
- Why Use eBay Market Research?
- Videos – How to sell on eBay Effectively
- How to create best sales copy for your auction
- How to find best product to sell on eBay
- How to find best day/time to start/close your auction, duration, listing type and start price
- How to create title that attracts customers
- How to research competitors/market size
- Conclusion – HammerTap or TeraPeak
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Formal explanation goes something like this: “HammerTap is eBay market research software for buyers and sellers that performs statistical analysis of the eBay closed auctions. It helps eBay users sell more effectively by providing them information they need, to understand and easily predict the performance of their auction listings by highlighting market trends and eliminating guesswork.”
If mentioned above explanation doesn’t make sense to you (as it doesn’t make much sense to me), here is what HammerTap will do for you:
- Tell you what products to sell
- Make more on each listing
- Sell more products
- Tell you which eBay features you need to sell more products
Why Use eBay Market Research?
Did you know that by not doing market research you are losing money and if you are serious about your business you should not rely on guesswork. By failing to prepare we are preparing to fail. There are gazillion factors involved in successful eBay sale strategy.
You need:
- Pick right product that will sell and will make you profit
- Great sales copy and description
- Right day and time to start and end auction, when people spend most
- Right category to get maximum amount of traffic/visitors
- Most profitable price to start so you cut down your eBay fees, but not the profit
- Right keywords and phrases buyers use to search, because if they can’t find your listings, they can’t bid on them
- How many serious players are in your market and how big is your market
- Listing features that are supposed to get your listings more attention
So let me tell you how I use HammerTap as a research tool that helps me make more money from my eBay ventures. I will go over main challenges that everyone selling on eBay are facing.
Not sure about HamerTap? See it compared to other eBay Market Reseach Tools
Videos – How to sell on eBay Effectively
Watch HammerTap Tips and Techniques Videos.
Most Profitable eBay auctions Ever. Part 1.
Most Profitable eBay auctions Ever. Part 2.
Visit HammerTap Official website
How to create best sales copy for your auction
If your action description is poor you will get poor sales. I am personally using HammerTap in two cases: first – when I am selling something from my closet and second when I am looking for a product to sell from a drop shipping company. So in the first case I have an exact brand and model and I am looking for general market trend for this product – what is the listing success rate(LSR). This gives me general idea – should I spend my money on eBay auction or not. If LSR is 45% or more I can sell my product. So now I need great descriptive, informative sales copy and since I usually don’t know heck about technical details of products that I am selling, I use great feature in HammerTap – “Listing Report” (where you are provided with links to closed auctions) and pick 5-10 auctions with highest sale price – obvious winners, then research their sales copy, take the best, improve and I got the best sales copy than anybody. It works every time.
How to find best product to sell on eBay
When I am looking for a product to sell from drop shipping company, I need a product that is on demand that will make me profit. Usually I start pretty broad from pointing general direction for example: Consumer Electronics–>Portable Audio/Video–>Portable DVD Players.
I don’t know anything about brand or model.
I don’t know anything about portable DVD players (because I don’t use them) except I see, the whole bunch of kids everywhere, watching movies and cartoons using those things. So I use this scheme to find best products to sell:
- Search for portable DVD player (Listings With Sale- 61%)
- Go to keywords report, sort it by Auction Success Rate (ASR) and find keywords with higher ASR:
- “WIDESCREEN” -82,5%
- “INSIGNIA”-89,93% comparing to “TOSHIBA”-54,05%, “PANASONIC”-64,03%
- 7”-96,52% comparing to 8”-86,55% ; 9”-57,14%; 10”-74,47%
So now it is pretty obvious for me that 7” WIDESCREEN INSIGNIA PORTABLE DVD PLAYER has much more chances to be sold comparing to 9” TOSHIBA PORTABLE DVD PLAYER.(Actually 87,9% to 52,1%) so if your drop shipper has both which one you choose? If you choose “INSIGNIA” you will sell 9 out of 10, if you choose TOSHIBA you will sell 5 out 10 and closing auction without a sale means loosing money, less business. You can use this scheme to drill down to exact models and features. Just run another search for 7” INSIGNIA PORTABLE DVD PLAYER and find most profitable models and features.
How to find best day/time to start/close your auction, duration, listing type and start price
With HammerTap finding such complicated things as best day and time to close your auction, duration, listing type and start price are very easy, just put your keywords in search box and click the button. You are done and have all the information in front of you.
How to create title that attracts customers
What do you do when you want to buy something on eBay? You type the name of a product in a search field
and then start looking for a good deal. What if your listing never comes up in search results because you pick wrong title? It means no customers, no bids, no money, even if you have the best product in the world nobody will buy it because they will not be able to find it. But if you know what buyer’s typing in a search field exactly, would you put those keywords in your title? Market research tools give you all the information to create winning title to get as much exposure as possible. Just use Keyword Report and sort it by Average Sale Price (ASP) and Listing Success Rate (LSR). The items with the highest ASP and LSR have the highest demand, meaning the highest number of bidders are bidding on a relatively small amount of items. One note here: when choosing best keywords for your title make sure they match the product you are selling.
How to research competitors/market size
Sellers often think eBay is an unlimited market and if they simply post a product, buyers will come; your real market is the eBay category or categories where you sell. So to determine the size of your market simply use HammerTap category research. For example I decided to find out how big is the market for “Burton Snowboards”. I picked Sporting Goods–>Skiing and Snowboarding–>Snowboarding–>Snowboards category and for the last three month there were 7550 auctions for total of 1,234 000$. That is the size of a market on eBay. To find out how many serious players I have to compete with I use “Seller Report” and sort it by number of auctions with sale. In my case there are 6 serious players who sell more than 20 snowboards a month. This tells me how competitive this market is and whether I can enter this market or not. You can also find your place in the market – just use Sellers Search and put your eBay id.
Conclusion – HammerTap or TeraPeak
As you can see not doing market research can cost your business real money. There are two main sources of eBay market research available: HammerTap and TeraPeak. Both are great tools, especially both’ve recently released new versions HammerTap 3 and TeraPeak 6. I am personally using TeraPeak more, because I like web interface and I have yearly subscription which is cheaper. So if you are selling more than $500 a month on eBay investing in a right market, research tool is definitely worth it. It will pay for itself after few auctions.
