Do you know how many people in US are earning their livelihood
with the help of eBay? According to a new survey conducted on
July 2005 by ACNielsen, a leading research firm, an astounding
724 thousand Americans respond that they rely on eBay for their
main or supplemental income. Apart from these professional
sellers, another 1.5 million people confirmed that they generate
additional income by selling goods on eBay. Last year alone,
around 150 million registered users have sold over US$ 34 billion
worth of goods on eBay. Isn’t it amazing?

Why entrepreneurs are flocking into eBay? Some of the reasons are
quite apparent.

• Starting a business on eBay is easy and quick

• You don’t require large investment

• Anybody can start an eBay business, no special skill is required

• You can sell virtually anything on eBay

• With your eBay business you can have flexible work time

• You have a ready-made market of over 150 million people and
counting

• eBay get 1.5 billion page views each month. You get access to
this massive traffic almost paying nothing.

So, there is no wonder that anybody with slightest penchant to
have their own business will jump into this great opportunity.
But, there are two major problems that many of the would-be eBay
sellers encounter. The first is what to sell and the next is
where to find it.

What to sell?

According to Forrester Research, a major research company, this
year, categories with products purchased by women will have the
most growth in online retailing. Some categories are already
getting more than ten percent of their overall sales through the
Internet, which include: computer hardware and software, tickets,
travel, books, consumer electronics, cosmetics and fragrances,
toys and video games, and flowers, cards and gifts. While
choosing items to sell on eBay, you should also explore the
features available on eBay and other places on the Internet that
show items people search and items people actually buy.

eBay has a complete section called “Seller Central” dedicated to
delivering utmost information to help you succeed in selling
products through eBay. Two links from this section should
interest you. One is What’s Hot
(http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/whatshot.html) and the other
one is Category Tips
(http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/sellbycategory.html).

When you go to the subsection ‘What’s Hot’, check out the
following three areas:

Hot Items by Category

This is a comprehensive report of categories, and products within
a category by the ratio of bid to listings growth rate in PDF
format. The report gets updated monthly and shows which products
have increased demand in comparison to last month. Super hot
products, for example, have over 35 percentage point difference
between bid growth rate and listing growth rate. According to the
latest report, by the way, Sunglasses for men, in particular
Prada sunglasses are super hot.

eBay Pulse

This is another area where you can see the top ten searched
categories, ten most widely watched auctions, list of stores with
most active listings, and other cool stuffs on daily basis.