Terapeak eBay for Beginners: Product Research Tool

10 min read

If you are in the eCommerce business, probably you have heard already about Terapeak eBay. But do you know how to use it for your product research?

I sometimes find myself struggling with the decision on which type of products will have a bigger impact on my sales. Finding top trending items to sell may seem easy on paper but let me tell you, it is not an easy task. Not to mention that eBay is the second largest eCommerce marketplace in the world after Amazon, so you know the competition is fierce. 

That’s why, as an eBay dropshipper, I took the task of finding a good product research method that’ll allow me to understand the market and find products on demand that will definitely boost my sales.

As it happens, eBay has a great Marketing Tool known as Terapeak. So, in this article, I will share with you my knowledge on this amazing tool and why you need to start using Terapeak research if you’re selling on eBay — trust me, it’s a game-changer.

What is the Terapeak Research Tool?

Terapeak is an exclusive eBay Marketing tool suited to analyze eBay’s market in terms of supply and demand. In other words, it’ll tell you what to sell, when to sell it, and at what price with the help of analysis of the recent eBay supply, demand, and pricing data. And provide you enough insights to optimize eBay listings.

So, when it comes to Market Research, the cool thing is that you will be able to analyze market trends based on real data from millions of eBay transactions. This will allow you to effectively strategize your sales — like a true professional or owner of your research paper writing services.

Terapeak eBay additionally allows you to optimize your listings. By researching top-performing listings, you’ll be able to get hints and tips on how to properly optimize your eBay listings with small but effective variables such as photos, prices, item specifics, and retail standards. You can also identify data-driven keywords that could attract customers to your listings.

How much is a Terapeak subscription:

From April 2021, Terapeak is available for free for all eBay sellers with paid subscriptions. So, all sellers with Basic, Premium, Anchor, or Enterprise eBay store have equal free of charge access to the Terapeak eBay research tool. Those who don’t have an eBay subscription yet will need to purchase it in order to use Terapeak.

Every other eBay user can purchase a yearly or monthly subscription to use the Terapeak eBay tool. So, all you need is an eBay seller account with an automatic payment method — that’s it! 

The steps are simple, all you need to do is:

1. Visit the “Subscriptions management page” in My eBay.
2. Beside “Terapeak Research”, choose “Select and Review”.
3. Choose the payment plan you prefer (annual or monthly subscription).
4. Select “Submit Order”.

How do you access Terapeak on eBay?

As it turns out, accessing eBay Tereapeak research is very simple. To gain access to this research tool, head over to the “Research” tab in your eBay Seller Hub and click on where it says “Terapeak Product Research”. 

You can source products by different categories in the search bar. You can search for keywords, niches, product categories, or product codes. And everything of this is possible thanks to the real-time eBay marketplace data.

In simple terms, with Terapeak insights, you’ll be able to:

• Identify categories with high demand and low supply.
• See trends over time, and stay ahead of seasonal demand.
• Use sales data to refresh your inventory based on what buyers are looking for.

How to use Terapeak eBay Research to analyze trends on eBay:

Let me give an example, let’s say you’re interested in selling running shoes. Especially with all of the Olympics Tokyo 2020 trend that just finished back on August 8th. So, you want to figure out if selling these products would be profitable for you or not — let’s be honest, who wouldn’t want to buy a pair of cool sneakers?

So, here are 3 basic rules you need to follow:

1. Type in the magic keywords: Running shoes.
2. Select a date range and filter your results to show you specific periods in time (anywhere from the last 7 days or a full year). 
3. Filter the product listings by price ranges, item condition, buyers & sellers location.

Now, let me give you a few pro tips that’ll make your product research so much easier while following the rules above:

• First, filter the time period by the length of a full year (365 days). This will help you analyze the months where there’s a higher demand of sales in the selected product. 
• Second, filter the item condition by choosing the option “New”. You want to sell items that aren’t used therefore it’ll attract more potential buyers. 
• Third, filter items with a fixed price. eBay was originally the biggest auction website and still is. However, this feature is rarely used by dropshippers. So by choosing the fixed price option, you are in fact excluding every item under auction.
• Lastly, choose your price ranges. Make sure your minimum isn’t lower than $10 because as a dropshipper, you’ll source your items elsewhere, therefore there are costs involved (eBay fees + the product’s cost + shipping fee) that you need to cover when you set your price. Furthermore, it is always recommended to sell at a cheaper price than other sellers to stand out from the crowd.

Okay, now that we already filtered our options, it is time to analyze the trend. Terapeak will show you the most relevant data shown in the results. 

1. General data on this market: I would recommend you to focus on a few variables:

• Average price: Check what’s the average price given by sellers and what buyers are willing to pay for it — It’ll be easier for you to set your price based on this information. 
• Total sellers: Out of your filtered search results, you’ll see the amount of sellers who currently offer running shoes in the eBay market — check how many competitors you’ll have. 
• Free shipping: Check the free shipping rate given on the search results and determine how important it is to buyers. To be as competitive as possible, consider adding free shipping to your listings.
• Total sales: This will be the total sales revenue made. This would also mean how big is the market size. The question you’ll have to ask yourself is — is the market big enough to be highly competitive?

Bottom line, all this information will allow you to analyze if you need to adjust your price according to the average price set by other top sellers in the market. In addition, it helps you to understand if you should consider adding free shipping or is you should add more photos of the products you list along with a more detailed description. 

2. Trend line: Okay, so this is where you’ll see all of the gathered data showcasing the overall demand for the selected product throughout the year. It will give you an idea on when is the best time to sell these types of winning products.

Let’s analyze this trend line quickly. If you take a closer look at the peak between the months of March and April you can see that there’s a higher demand in those months, meaning more sales on running sneakers. 

So, what can we deduct from that? Simple, if you decide to sell running shoes, the best months to do so are from the end of February where you can see the trend go up all the way to April. Of course, this could change depending on various factors. However, you can clearly see the trend — cool, huh?

3. Market share: This graph will show you the amount of sellers or competitors holding a market share within this niche. In other words, how difficult it’ll be for you as a new seller to penetrate this specific market. Let me show you what I mean:

In this graph of eBay terapeak research, we can see that out of $67M (market size) only 10% of sellers hold almost 80% of the market share when it comes to selling running shoes on eBay. This will leave you a 21% of the market share to penetrate it and make sales.

So, in simple words, there is high competition in this market and it will be challenging for you to stand out. However, you can still make sales on eBay, especially if you dedicate time to optimizing them for eBay SEO (have enough quality photos of the products, detailed information on the item specifications, good price ranges, etc). 

Additionally, you can combine the insight that Terapeak research gave you to find products for eBay dropshipping, using other product research methods, for example, the sniping method.

Final Lines

That is why Terapeak is so great, it gives you the tools to actually analyze every single aspect of the market and allows you to strategize your sales based on the demand and on what other sellers are doing — so keep an eye out for every metric and plan accordingly!

So far, you’ve learned how to analyze eBay’s market based on any product you choose to sell. Moreover, what filters you can use to narrow down your search and what metrics you need to understand to overall determine the demand of the chosen item. 

Of course, there is more data to be analyzed. However, with all the information you gathered out of this article, you’ll be able to start your product research allowing you to optimize your listings accordingly and strategize on your sales.