How to Find the Best Selling Items on eBay (5 Ways I Swear By!)

As an eBay seller, one of the most important things you can do to grow your reselling business is to stay on top of what’s selling well, right? Knowing the best-selling items on eBay can give you a competitive edge, help you target potential customers, and, ultimately, increase your profits. But with so many kinds of items to source and sell, how do you know where to start?

There are a lot of different ways to identify the best selling items on eBay and, the truth is, you don’t always need to be selling the top selling items to be successful. In fact, sometimes, finding a niche category and selling the best items from that category can be even more profitable than securing the top 10 items to sell on all of eBay. However, it’s always good to how to see what’s selling well so you can do the research keep an eye out for profitable items to sell.

Improving your online sales via sourcing and selling top-sellers is where market research tools like Terapeak come in. These types of powerful resources can help you identify the best-selling products and brands on eBay, as well as uncover emerging trends and potential niches.

Of course, market research tools like Terapeak are just the beginning. There are several other strategies you can use to find the best selling items on eBay, including analyzing completed listings, checking out best selling lists provided by eBay, and researching your local competitors.

In this article, I’ll share a bit more about these strategies and how to use them to your advantage so that you can make the most of your eBay business.

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Why Knowing What’s Selling Matters

Depending on what kind of eBay seller you are, you may wonder if it’s even that important to stay on top of the latest trends. After all, you’re not going to head out to the thrift store and find a rack full of best sellers unless you’re ridiculously lucky!

However, if you want to try fill your eBay store with items that are high profit, quick sellers, understanding what sells well is always a great place to start.

As an eBay seller, it’s crucial to stay informed about what’s currently selling well on the platform. Here are some reasons why:

Stay ahead of competitors

By knowing the best selling items on eBay and the most popular brands, you can stay ahead of competitors who may not be doing that same research. You can also adjust your pricing and marketing strategies to better align with market trends. What’s hot one month can be totally different the next, so keeping on top of what’s trending is insanely helpful for smart business owners (that’s you!)

Boost your sales

Knowing what’s currently selling well on eBay can help you identify new products to sell in your online store and increase your overall sales. This is the number one reason I do this type of research semi-regularly. To stay ahead in the marketplace and draw in new customers, it’s important to understand what’s selling well and diversify your product offerings by staying up-to-date with emerging trends.

Make informed buying decisions

If you’ve been selling for a while, you know that it’s not uncommon to make “bad buys.” I know I’ve done it more than I like to admit and it’s always a humbling moment for me since I’ve been reselling for the better part of 15 years at this point.

Instead of relying on intuition or guesswork, having access to sales data and market trends can help you make informed decisions about your business. By regularly checking in with market research, you can identify the most profitable products and potential niches, and adjust your strategy so you’re working smarter and investing in inventory that’s in demand.

Tap into high-demand products

Finally, knowing what’s popular and selling well on eBay can help you find items that lots of people want to buy, so you can make more money! By focusing on top-selling categories like consumer electronics, home decor items, and men’s t-shirts, for example, you can increase your chances of making a sale and boosting your average product price.

While there are plenty of categories that sell well, sometimes it’s helpful to know where the best and fastest sales are made so you can keep those types of items on your radar and keep an eye out for high profit or quick sellers.

To put it simply, knowing what’s selling well on eBay is a critical aspect of running a successful reselling business! When you stay informed about trends and make it a habit of doing market research, you can identify the best selling items to look out for when you’re out sourcing and hopefully increase your profits.

In the next section, I’ll show you some specific strategies you can use to find the best things to sell on eBay.

What is Terapeak for ebay?

Terapeak is a market research tool that can help eBay sellers research how different items, brands, and categories have sold over time. It also provides really helpful insights into sales trends, popular categories, and emerging niches. It’s almost like having a crystal ball for eBay sales! With Terapeak, you can easily research and analyze sales data to identify the top selling products and the most profitable niches.

I love to use it to look up different brands, categories, etc. and just kind of dig in to see what I can learn. I’ve found surprising brands or items that sell for more than expected by just digging around and playing with it. It can be a little daunting at first, especially if you don’t love looking at numbers and data like I do. But if you mess around with it, you’ll see it’s really not that complicated and can really help you expand your knowledge and hopefully grow your business more as a result.

How to access Terapeak on ebay

Now that eBay provides Terapeak to all sellers, all you have to do is go to your “Seller Hub” in eBay and hover over “Research” in the navigation.

There are a couple of options available:

Terapeak product research: This section is available to all sellers and allows you to do searches and see completed listings from up to 2 years ago along with active listings. It also provides metrics based on all sold listings like average sold price, sell through rate, and more.
Terapeak sourcing insights: This is available to sellers with a “Basic Store” subscription or above. According to eBay, it provides sellers with “access real-world sales data for every eBay category to develop their sourcing strategy and identify areas of opportunity.”
Research Resources: This section helps you utilize Terapeak along with other resources with helpful tutorials and article.

Using Terapeak for Research

Terrapeak is a powerful market research tool that can help eBay sellers find the best selling items on the platform. Lucky for you, eBay now includes this super helpful tool to all eBay sellers! This wasn’t always the case, so we now have a great advantage and the funny thing is, a lot of sellers don’t even know they have access to it and and even smaller percentage of sellers use or even know how to use it.

As a seller myself, I honestly don’t use it as much as I should and have recently made a plan to check in with it more regularly so that I can do my own research to find the most popular products and keep those top sellers in mind when I’m out sourcing for my reselling business.

Terapeak provides insights that can help you figure out top-selling categories, the most profitable products, and emerging trends. Here are some tips on how to use Terapeak to your advantage:

Find popular product categories

Terapeak can help you identify the top-selling product categories on eBay, including mobile phones, video games, musical instruments, and beauty products. By exploring these categories and researching the most popular brands and types of products, you can get a good idea of what’s currently in high demand on the platform.

Analyze sales data

Terapeak can help you analyze sales data for specific products and product categories on eBay. By looking at average prices, selling rates, and other metrics, you can identify the best-selling items and top-selling products in a given category. For example, if you’re interested in selling Star Wars merchandise, Terapeak can show you which items are currently selling well on the platform and at what price point.

Uncover potential niches

In addition to analyzing sales data for popular product categories, Terapeak can also help you uncover potential niches and emerging trends. By researching hot items like pet supplies, dietary supplements, and garden products, for example, you may discover new opportunities to reach potential customers and increase your sales.

Terapeak is just one of many market research tools that eBay sellers can use to find the best selling items on the platform. By combining Terapeak with other strategies like analyzing completed listings, researching competitors, and using eBay’s advanced search feature, you can get a better picture of what’s currently selling well on eBay and identify the best products to sell in your online store.

How to use Terapeak

There are a lot of great ways you can use Terapeak to figure out top sellers, but I thought I’d show you a step by step example of one of the ways I use it.

Let’s say I really want to sell beanies. They’re small and lightweight so they’re easy to store and ship. They’re also seasonal which means I can probably buy them for cheap during the off season and sell a lot of them around fall and winter.

I’m going to just search “beanie” in Terapeak and look at the results for the last 2 years. The results will show you a few different graphs you can click through, along with a list of all of the sold listings.

As you can see above, I now know that the average sold price is $49.44 (higher than expected), over 2 million have sold in the last 2 years, and sales seem to peak in December. Lots of helpful info, right?

But that doesn’t mean you should go out and just start buying random beanies to sell. Let’s find some good brands to look out for!

My first issue is that “beanie” is bringing up some beanie babies and I don’t want those. So I’ll also add a filter to only show items in “Clothing, Shoes & Accessories”.

Next, since I shop yard sales and thrift stores, I usually find items used so I’ll use filters to only bring up “pre-owned” beanies and then I’ll use the price filter to only show beanies that sold for $25 to $200. I put in a minimum of $25 to make sure I. can make a decent profit and then a maximum of $200 to filter out any lots or outliers that don’t make sense to look at.

Above you’ll see that we really narrowed it down. A total of about 15,000 beanies sold for $25 to $200. Most are selling October through March.

Now I’m going to scroll through the results sorted by most recently (just my personal preference) and see what kinds of brands and styles are selling.

Just from the above, I’ll now know to look out for Supreme, Surell, Arc’teryx, Chrome Hearts, Moncler, and vintage beanies.

Alternatively, you can look for a price range of under $20 or so to see which brands aren’t selling for much so you know which ones to kind of avoid.

I hope this helped understand just one way to use Terapeak to research and find profitable items to sell on eBay.

In the next section, let’s look at these additional strategies and how to use them effectively to find the best selling items on eBay.

Other Strategies for Finding Best Selling Items

In addition to using market research tools like Terapeak, there are other strategies eBay sellers can use to identify the best selling items on the platform. Here are some ideas:

Analyze completed listings

eBay’s completed listings feature lets you see how much similar items have sold for in the past, which can give you a good idea of what’s currently in high demand. It’s kind of similar to using Terapeak above, but you can use it easily on the app on your phone while out sourcing to see if something you’re considering investing in is worth it. You can also use this feature to see which items haven’t sold well in the past, which may even be more helpful to avoid making bad buys!

Research your competitors

Maybe you don’t feel like you have competitors, but they’re out there! It’s basically any other eBay store selling similar items to you. By researching your competitors on eBay, you can get a sense of what’s currently selling well in your niche or product category. You can also see how they’re pricing their products, and adjust your own pricing strategy accordingly.

To do this, I personally like to search for the types of items I’m selling and then search within my local area. Since the types of items you can find can vary widely by location, it helps to see what other sellers around you are having success with.

Explore eBay’s Best Selling Items list

Did you know that there’s a “Best Selling Items” list provided by eBay? I actually didn’t know this until recently. This allows you to see which items are currently selling the most on the platform. You can use this list to identify the top-selling products in different categories and get a sense of the most popular items on eBay.

By combining these strategies with market research tools like Terapeak, you can get a good idea of what’s currently selling well on eBay. This information can help you identify potential niches, adjust your pricing and marketing strategies, and increase your sales and profit margins.

Next, let’s explore some of the best practices for selling popular items on eBay, including tips for optimizing your product listings, pricing, and shipping to maximize your profits.

Best Practices for Selling Popular Items on eBay

Now you understand all the different ways you can take the time to educate yourself on the best places and ways to research top sellers on eBay. By simply dedicating a bit of your time to doing this research regularly, you can expand your knowledge and hopefully populate your store with top products for some fast sales and/or more profit!

But that’s not enough! Once you’ve identified the best selling items on eBay, it’s important to have a solid strategy for selling them effectively. Here are some best practices for selling popular items on eBay:

Optimize your listings

Your listings what your buyers are going to look at when they’re deciding if they want to buy your items or not. So it’s important to make them as appealing and informative as possible. Use lots of high-quality photos and clear descriptions to make your listings stand out.

Price your items competitively

Pricing your products competitively is key to making sales on eBay. Use market research tools like Terapeak and search sold listings to price competitively to get a sense of the average selling price.

Offer fast and cheap shipping

These are the days of free 2 day shipping, thanks to Amazon prime. So buyers are more impatient than ever when it comes to buying online. eBay buyers expect fast and affordable shipping, so it’s important to offer competitive shipping rates and reliable delivery times. You can also offering free shipping on popular items to increase their appeal to potential buyers. Just make sure you build that shipping cost into the price of the item so you’re not losing out.

Keep your feedback positive

Providing excellent customer service is crucial to keeping your account in good standing which helps more people see your items. It can also help to build a loyal customer base and increase your sales. Respond to buyer inquiries and complaints promptly, and go above and beyond to ensure that your buyers are satisfied with their purchases.

Final thoughts

In conclusion, you can see why finding the best selling items on eBay is crucial for any seller looking to grow their reselling business. Whether you’re a new seller just starting out or a pro who has been selling online for years, staying on top of market trends and knowing the most profitable products is key to making more profit and selling items faster.

By using market research tools like Terapeak, regularly looking at completed listings, and exploring eBay’s annual Best Selling Items list, you can get a clear picture of what’s currently selling well on eBay to make the best buying decisions for your business.

Of course, once you’ve identified the top-selling items, ensure you have a solid strategy for selling them effectively, including optimizing your listings, pricing your items competitively, offering cheap and fast shipping, and doing what you can to keep your customers happy and your feedback positive.

Understanding how to find the best selling items on eBay is something all resellers should learn and I hope this article has helped you understand how to do it.

How to Find the Best Selling Items on eBay (5 Ways I Swear By!)