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| 3 Current Auctions Click to Enlarge Please Enable Pop-ups |
3 Completed Auctions (1 Sale) Click to Enlarge Please Enable Pop-ups |
One way to determine your product or service’s popularity is to see how it is selling on eBay (not the Hot Items Report). That will give you insight into what something is selling for, and also what your competition looks like, however, it really doesn’t tell you how popular the product or service is. Another way to determine a product’s or service’s keyword popularity is to use Overture. Start by using the same keywords you used on eBay and check out the returns. For example, let’s say that we specialize in antique bicycle parts. If I search on eBay for “antique bicycle part” my search returned 4 items, one of which was actually a necklace with moving parts.
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| 3 Current Auctions Click to Enlarge Please Enable Pop-ups |
3 Completed Auctions (1 Sale) Click to Enlarge Please Enable Pop-ups |
I’m also curious about the completed auctions involving antique bicycle parts. This time the eBay search returns 3 completed auctions (1 sale) and an interesting auction that looks like someone is selling off his collection for a mere $50,000, but no takers.
If I used this information alone it may cause me to conclude antique bicycle parts are a Niche, or maybe just a very unpopular business venture. I really need more information as to whether or not there are customers out there who are willing to purchase antique bicycle parts, even though the current eBay auctions indicates there are a limited number of auctions involving them (Since there aren’t very many auctions, it’s also likely that the Hot Items Report will not list this item as a Hot Item). By widening my search a bit to “antique bicycles” (people who are interested in antique bicycles will obviously need a parts source) I may get a better picture.
This time eBay search returns 210 current auctions involving the words “antique bicycle” that are ongoing, and 397 completed auctions. In both cases, I see that there are some items that really aren’t relevant, however in looking through the list, I also see that some auctions are selling antique bicycle parts, but aren’t using the word “part” in their listing header. Here’s where Overture can give a better picture of popularity.
We already know that using “antique bicycle part” is a somewhat narrow search phrase, even though it matches what we actually want to sell. By using Overture, and entering the search phrase antique bicycle, Overture will not only return the number of times “antique bicycle” was searched for, but also search phrases that contain “antique bicycle”. How is this helpful? You’ll notice in the list below that there were searches for Antique Schwinn Bicycle (213), Antique Bicycle Part (156), Bicycle Club Antique (32), as well as others. If I have parts for Schwinn bicycles, this is encouraging as there were 213 searches. There is also an interest in parts (156 searches). And when it comes time to advertise my items, I may want to look into Antique Bicycle Clubs. A quick Google search for “Antique” “Bicycle” “Club” returned 2,250,000 hits and “Antique Bicycle Club” returned 396 Hits! It appears there is a potential market for antique bicycle parts!
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Click to Enlarge Please Enable Pop-ups |
Click to Enlarge Please Enable Pop-ups |
The combination of the eBay search and Overture provides you with a reasonable understanding of what’s being looked at in two major areas of search.
There are three other areas, however, that we shouldn’t neglect when it comes to looking at the relevance of keywords; Google AdWords, eBay’s new Marketplace Research tool, and the Andale Research tools.
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