Will Seippel: This is a presentation that I gave at our last treasure hunt down in Fort Lauderdale trying to show some of the different sides of WorthPoint and some of the things that we’ve done over the years.

A little bit about who I am. A lot of people don’t know that I started life as an athlete. I was going to go and play sports. I was a true truant. I didn’t show up a whole lot for school, but I did show up for sports. I got hit by a drunk driver in my senior year, so I ended up having to change my focus in life and start going to school.

I actually became a math nerd and was able to play some less violent sports than football and wrestling in college. Most of the people at WorthPoint, Danna is going to laugh when I say we’re nerds. We have a very high math and computer science background. I think that’s one of the things that makes WorthPoint really different, besides understanding the world of antiques.

I went out in the fortune world and was a C level executive at many very large companies that are household names. Decided at 50 I was going to quit all that, and I became an eBay seller. Really took the background I had from growing up in rural northwest Virginia and buying and selling a lot of Civil War relics that we would find in the ground and learning about history and turning it into a career later and become a power seller on eBay.

My eBay handle is Wills1N4. I think I have somewhere around 16,000 feedback on eBay, and I’ve sold about a million dollars on eBay over the years. It’s not the only place I sell, but it’s the primary place I sell. I don’t sell anywhere else online.

I am the father of five great kids, and I have four dogs. One of them is coming in the mail in another week. That’s exciting!

WorthPoint and who we are

WorthPoint was created out of need. When I started selling on eBay about 10 or 15 years ago, I promise everybody I did not drop out of the womb and know everything about everything about antiques, and I still don’t know everything about antiques. I still make mistakes occasionally and invite people to help me edit my eBay listings, because I sell about anything. WorthPoint, I needed a better place to do research for what I was selling on eBay. I think research is critical to us getting our listings right and, for a lot of reasons, getting more money.

When I started to do my research, occasionally I’d get a reminder from eBay that something wasn’t listed correctly. Civil War buttons is a tough one. It would take so long to go out on Google, which I think was a better tool than it is today, and try to find what I need out on the internet browsers. It was like, why can’t somebody save all this stuff in one place and create databases for us to do our research on? That was really the beginning of WorthPoint.

Now we have over a billion item images on WorthPoint, and over half a billion items, auction records. WorthPoint gets better every day with the great people that we have here. I was showing Danna today that it’s shocking to believe that WorthPoint is in the top 1,000 US trafficking websites. If you look at Quantcast, we’re actually 803 today. A lot of people use it, and it’s a trusted destination. We partner to auction houses around the world, especially eBay, who’s committed to making research in the market more transparent. eBay has a lot of the data here on WorthPoint. You can actually in some cases go back and find things that sold 15 years ago on eBay.

We have over 13,000 paid members today, and we’re quickly becoming, and it’s a trademark that we’ve registered, we’re becoming the internet of stuff. Eventually you’ll be able to track who owned things before on WorthPoint and find out their history that way. That’s something we’re actively working on, and some auction houses have talked to us about, to cut down on fraud.

There’s a lot of things to do as a seller in everyday steps. I go around the country doing a lot of presentations on how to become a more effective seller. Again, last year I sold part-time, because I don’t do this full-time. I run WorthPoint full-time. I sold about $150,000-$200,000 part-time.

Everyday steps to selling.

There’s a lot to know, and while you can do it casually, people need to understand that this is a job like any other job. It involves work, which is a four letter word. For me, it’s fun, and a lot of fun, because I really like doing the work that I do as a seller.

There’s different facets to this, and we’re only going to go into pricing your merchandise today. I look at building a business, sourcing your items. Sourcing I thought would be the hardest part, but I don’t think it is. Pricing your merchandise, selling, customer service, and reinvesting in your business. These are all steps that we need to take as sellers. I get a lot of questions about sourcing.

Where do I find things? I have to laugh. I got a text message this morning for the fourth time asking me to come to somebody’s house on Friday, and for the fourth time I told them we’re in Memphis doing a treasure hunt. If you can join us in Memphis, we’re going to have a lot of fun. We’re even going to go down to the Grand Ole Opry coming up this weekend. Pricing your merchandise, to me, is critical to getting this whole equation right. There’s really not a science to it. It involves a lot of intuition, and WorthPoint is certainly a good starting point.

I think that we, as sellers, have to have a toolkit.

You look at a carpenter, and you don’t come to somebody’s house to do work without a toolkit. If you do, you certainly won’t get very far. A seller needs to have a toolkit on how to do pricing. Some of these things are free. Some of them you build up relationships in your business, and some of them are certainly a learning process. You’re not always going to make money on everything, because it is a learning process.

The first one I think is the most important, help lines to associates. There’s people that I have on my call list that I don’t call too often, so I don’t wear out my welcome, but I’ll call them and try to get help on identifying and pricing something.

There’s a piece I was talking to Danna about a little bit that I’m pretty excited about that we came by over the weekend, which is a sketch done in 1962 by Alan Shepard, the astronaut, on designing the orbit capsules and looking ahead and predicting in 1969 that man was going to be on the moon. This was back, he was predicting this in 1962 and doing the drawings. I have a help line, an auction associate, on how do I price that. It was found in a scrapbook, and he signed them. These are things I don’t know.

Danna was with me at Scott’s Flea Market, and we found a really nice Japanese print. I also don’t read Japanese, so my help line was my daughter, who does read Japanese, and getting her to read it. The help lines are really critical for people that know a lot more about you in a domain or subject, and who you can pick and call. Now you can send pictures and just get help right there. I won’t use the words my daughter used to help me understand who the Japanese print-maker was, but it was a good printmaker, and it was pretty fun.

The next thing to do that I use a lot, while WorthPoint is my primary place for shopping or getting price data on the web, I do use other sites, and I bookmark them on my computer, so I can find them real often. There are sites. One that quickly comes to my mind is when you’re looking at pocket watches, the watches are generally serial numbers that were done in order, and you can tell by what year and a lot about the watch by the number. I’ll go to different websites that have the pocket watch serial numbers in them and get a lot of information right off those websites. It’s really good information.

I also get information on my listings from different people. I learned something last night that I didn’t know about a ship’s telegraph, which is the speed control that the operator uses, about a World War II ship’s telegraph. I invite my people that come to my store to give me feedback about my listings. Do I have it all right? That’s really important. Sometimes they can help me increase the value, and sometimes it’s bad news, and I missed something and the value comes down. Recently I even got fooled by a Coca-Cola tray with Johnny Weissmuller.

Paid databases such as WorthPoint, I can’t stress enough that I think we’re the best value in the industry. For $19.95 a month, or $200 a year, you get access to our price database. We have some other databases that sell quite well. One is called MAPS, that has marks, autographs, patterns, and symbols. WorthPoint, by far, is the best price database out there. You can compare to anyone you want, and it’s by far the best value for the money. We also have a library, but I know a lot of dealers that build their own libraries at home with books. We have over 1,000 titles online in our library that you can rent by the year. It has good browsing tools.

I think all these things are just real important. eBay has, in their seller hub, great web stat services that come along with different levels of membership. I’m an anchor store on eBay, so I know I have all that. I don’t know if everybody does. Again, that’s another good piece of my toolkit, to look at how much traffic I’m getting on an item and what my web stats are in regards to it.

I think these are just really important things that we have to start making up how do we make our mind about how we want to price things. What tools you need really depends on the width of your focus. I know there’s people that deal in pocket watches that are never going to need any other databases, because I guess they know everything they can know about pocket watches. It’s great if your niche is that narrow. I think it’s hard to be that narrow and always be a successful seller. Danna and I were joking about we sell anything. If it’s legal, and I can make money on it, I’ll sell it. I’ve sold everything from parts to paintings. If you go to my website, you’ll see that there’s quite a bit on there in my eBay store, from $5 to $20,000. ( Wills1N4 )

Another thing is how much do you value your time? I can’t stress this enough. I think the biggest boat anchor a lot of times to people being successful as sellers is the use of their time, not realizing or not stressing enough that this is a job. You don’t let people interrupt you. You go to work. You do your work. It’s flexible, because you can do it at home, but you need to treat it as a job. When you’re listing a $15 item, and you’re doing an hour’s worth of research, you’re working for less than $15 an hour, because you’re going to have success fees on selling it. You’re going to have all the packing and shipping time. You’ve got your listing time. You’ve got your research time.

You really have to try to make yourself efficient, which to me gets back to why do I love WorthPoint? Because I can go on and I can do my research on my item and get the bases for my listing right out of all the research other people have done on researching that item. I can see if things are going up and down over time, whether I care about selling it quickly or not. The value of your time, I just stress is really important. Think about that when you do your research.

You also get into what are you trying to accomplish with the item? Am I trying to find the top person in the world that’s trying to buy this item and trying to get my top dollar about it, or am I quickly trying to move it? I do a lot of wholesaling, for example. While I’ll often list things at retail, I’ll wholesale them out if I don’t think that they’re a good long-term investment to hold.

You can go to my site and see that I have a poster of the Red Baron from World War I, and I’m not in a hurry to sell that. My goal on that item, in trying to accomplish my item, I have it priced probably at the top end, and I’m not discounting it. On the other hand, if I have a piece of Weller pottery that’s common and is going down, I’m in a hurry to sell it. It’s also breakable, and one of my dogs my break it, because I don’t always put my inventory away. I think you have to think about what are you trying to accomplish in the whole grand scheme of things.

Why should you care about research?

When we used to own Go Antiques, which we did for a period of time, one of my most frustrating things about trying to manage dealers–and Go Antiques we just acquired by happenstance, because it came with other assets we were acquiring–dealers, what I could see, they didn’t care enough about getting it right when they were listing it in their store.

I really do, and 99.9% of my listings I think are pretty accurate, are very accurate. There’s always that .1% that you’re trying to learn, but I want my shoppers to come to my store, and I want to have credibility. I think getting credibility on the items you sell is important, and that’s why I like eBay’s you can send it back policy. It makes people feel even more secure, and they should when they come to my store. Getting credibility as a seller is going to help you get better prices.

I laugh and say, getting it right keeps you in business. People trust you, and there’s so much vagary in this business, I think, getting the research accurate and getting things up on the site, people will see that generally with my listings there’s a lot of information in there, because I think if we’re just trying to sell a golf sweater that 99 other people have it’s not as important.

If you’re trying to sell something and getting the facts in there about why the item is significant or the history of it, it takes ambiguity and lack of clarity out of there and makes people feel very good. When you’re doing your research, and you can do it quickly, you may be surprised what you can find. I certainly was with my infamous turkey call home and never knew it would be worth $27,000, but it paid to do my research. The only place I found it was on WorthPoint.

That gets into our next slide. We are the leading toolkit. We’ve got a huge amount of people using it. We have all kinds of neat things in regards to partners. I was just out with Steve Sipe at Global Authentications in California last week going through some autograph collections that I’m going to be writing up some stories about in three different autograph collections that I purchased over the last couple months, or had a chance to purchase, because one I turned down. A lot of the resources I found for all this was on WorthPoint, and I’m really not an autograph expert, by any stretch of the definition, but I do know that you need to do your homework.

Our Marks Patterns & Symbols is a great place to look up marks. You can describe the mark and type it in and decide if you want pottery, metals, costume jewelry, and pick the vernacular of the area you want to look in. Just describe it, hit click, and we’ll bring you up all kinds of images, and it’s connected to our price database. If you find that mark you want, and you look it up, you can go right over to the Worthopedia and look at prices. It’s really pretty cool. We are the only person out there that do all this, and we are the only person to have close to a billion images on a website.

Some case studies of what we’ve help people do, or people have done on WorthPoint, or what they’re doing out in the marketplace, I think is really interesting. I laugh with this first one.

Some people like this painting, and some people don’t. It’s called A Sense of Smell. This was a Rembrandt that was recently found under a ping-pong table. I think it was in New Jersey, but I may have that wrong. The owner had died, and her sons had taken what they thought was the better stuff of the estate and packed it away and got to it a couple years later. The two brothers really didn’t like the painting, and they sent it out to an auction house that was hopefully knowledgeable about what they were selling. Even though it turned out they weren’t, and nobody liked it, including the auction house, they promoted the auction well.

Some people saw it online. The estimate from the auction house was $500, but the painting went for $1 million. At least it got good visibility, and people saw it, so knowledgeable people could bid on this. I say as a picker, the best stuff is still in people’s houses, and that’s where you want to get is into people’s houses to try to buy. Here’s a good case of a Rembrandt that was stored under a ping-pong table that was a known painting that had been missing for years from collectors trying to find it. They finally did. The auctioneer had to ask later about why it went for a million dollars, and somebody told him.

Toss it out on eBay and find out with an auction.

This is some paper money that I still haven’t gotten around, after a month, to listing that I found in a box. I still haven’t figured out how it got into the foyer of my house, but it was mailed to me 11 years ago in some stuff I had bought. For those of you that know me, I have a huge inventory. I’ve looked all over the web for this money. I’ve asked experts. I’ve asked Harry Rinker, and nobody knows what this play money is, but play money is quite collectible. In some cases, I believe, they even slab it now and grade it like real money. So there’s good money in play money.

These are notes that I found in this box that I must have dumped in the foyer when I was over at the warehouse and just brought one box back with me. It’s from the Treasarian of Outer Space. I’m guessing it went with a game set, but I’ve looked all over the internet, and I can’t find it. Experts don’t know it. I have no clue what to sell it for, and I’m probably just going to put it out in an eBay auction and start it at a low price, and see if the marketplace can tell me. I have 25 of them. They’re different values from different planets. I’m assuming they’re from the 1950’s. If anybody sees this when we publish this out on the web, please tell me. It’s something I have no clue how to price.

I did a combination of those two things with my turkey call. This is what I picked up on an estate call here in Atlanta with a fill my car deal. I paid the people $10,000 to take what I wanted out of the house and fill my car. This turkey call brought $27,000 on eBay. Now, I do have to say that I knew it was an expensive item when I went to list it. I did not know it when I bought it. I just liked the carving on it. This is not exactly the one I sold. Mine had different carving, but it was very similar, and it was signed, just like this one.

What was unique about these is only about a dozen of them are known. They’re carved by the person that patented the box call, which is a type of call that you hold in your hand and you rub the paddle on top back and forth over the box below it. It will squawk like a turkey. There’s about a dozen of these known. When I got it, I looked it up on WorthPoint and found it, because it’s called a Gibson Turkey Call, and Mr. Gibson signed it. That’s when I got an inkling. The last one that had sold was for $15,000. I started this in an $0.99 auction on eBay, and the last-minute sniper bid came in at $27,510, I believe that was the number.

So, I started an auction. I know that turkey hunters are very competitive. There’s some areas on eBay I think are better auctioning than others, that are more competitive, and people are sure to see things. While I don’t do many $0.99 auctions anymore, I generally start them at about 25% of what I think something may be worth, but I’m a huge fan of auctioning in areas that I think are well vetted and people look at a lot, and where auctions are going to be competitive. Turkey hunters are certainly competitive. That may be an understatement. That’s an example of combining the research with finding something only I could find on WorthPoint that the prior one had sold on eBay many years before, and it was scare, and then using auctioning to bring it up to the correct market value.

A WorthPoint partner, Steve Sipe (Global Authentics) I think is the most flexible in the autograph industry for how he does his pricing. As a WorthPoint member, you can send a picture to Steve of your autograph. I believe this is still free for WorthPoint members, but certainly it’s very inexpensive. I think it’s $10 if you’re not.

Steve will give you an opinion on whether you should follow up with sending it in, in regards to whether he thinks it has the potential of being real or not. It was funny. When I was out with Steve last week, some guy was sending in about his hundredth image of an autograph. The poor guy, I don’t know where he’s shopping or buying them, but they’re not right. Steve is very good about getting back to people. His pricing is very real. I have about 100 items up now on eBay that he’s done for me. I tend to send things in groups where I can get a discount even further.

I would highly recommend you guys, for an autograph, check Steve out. (Global Authentics)  It adds to the credibility of what you have for sale, and you can take it from $2,000, I think it’s George Washington, to $20,000, I know it’s George Washington. You can sell with much more credibility, and you don’t have to worry about what you’re saying or about things coming back. Again, it goes to what I’m saying. Get rid of the nebulousness of your listings. Do I know versus I think, and you’ll be surprised how much better you do.

WorthPoint is going to probably reinitialize a group of experts in the company whose services we recommend you use for estimates or for appraising. We’re not going to do an ask a Worthologist like we used to, but have a related service with experts that we think are good to go to. Here’s an example where we fielded the question with knowledge of people that we had on staff when I was on news at NBC in Denver talking about what people could find and be worth money.

A lady emailed me about a TakanoriOguisu. She didn’t know who this painting was by. She had pulled it out of the trash in Boulder, and there’s a video on WorthPoint about this. She got this out of the trash several years before we were on television. She was using this painting in her closet to prop up school papers for her daughter, and she had nearly thrown this painting out several times, because she hated the colors. Thank God she didn’t.

She sent me a photo, which I shared with one of the people on staff here, and he recognized it right away as a TakanoriOguisu impressionist painting, with a stretcher in the back of the canvas. I tell people on paintings the back is usually more important than the front. Looking at the stretcher and the canvas, we believed it was real, and Soethby’s authenticated it. She sold it at Soethby’s for $100,000. Just from something she had pulled out of the trash. So, the stuff is out there. People are finding more of it every day, and that’s one of the things, that and learning make our industry so exciting. WorthPoint has a lot of resources it can throw at things.

This is an example of the help line that I used with my daughter, in regards to the Hiroshige print. I think it’s a second period, but I haven’t bothered to do further research yet. I wouldn’t know a Hiroshige print from a Burger King print. My daughter helped me at least decipher it right away. She knew the print anyway. I bought it for $25, and even if it’s a second-generation print, it’s $100-$400, I guess. Again, it’s a good example of being able to use the help line, as I said. In this case, I’m giving her the print to hang in her room, so the value doesn’t really ultimately matter, but she enjoys it, and I know I got a good deal. It’s a win-win for everybody.

One of the things that I love to do when I get down to research, and for those of you that know or don’t know, I’m about to launch a new website called History In Photos, which I’ve been talking about for a little while, where we sell very high end prints of old black and white glass negatives. I’ve been collecting these for about 15 years. This is one I actually purchased on eBay that I liked because it pertained to the Civil War.

The seller had no clue about where this photo was taken. One of the neat things you can do with items is blow them up and do your research better. That’s what I did with this photo, because it had so much clarity. Then we’ll go and restore it anyway and take all the white dots that you may see on the picture on the right out and make it much sharper.
By zooming in on the high resolution of this photo, which glass slides usually are, I was able to get the name off the side of the warehouse that’s behind the statue and do a Google search on that business.

I found that business back in Chelsea, Massachusetts in the late 1800’s. All of a sudden, I can put some provenance on this image and know where it’s from and what it was about. That makes it much more interesting to people. Again, this is a Civil War monument. We’ll probably sell about 100 images of it and then retire it. Chelsea, Massachusetts. There’s my little moniker now on the bottom of the screen, HIP, History In Photos.

By doing a lot of research, and this really didn’t take me that long, I can increase the value of what I’m selling, which I think is just so critical. When I started in this business, I didn’t believe it. I thought it was all about the economic strict value of something. After so many years in the business, I learned the story and the provenance of the item is just as important as anything when you go to sell it.

So, the moral of my story is, and some stalker of my webstore from New England told me they’ve noticed I don’t compete on price. I don’t. If I’m in a hurry to move something, I’m more motivated on price. If I need some money to pay my mortgage that week, I’m more motivated about price. Don’t set you up your store to compete on price. It’s a losing proposition. It devalues you completely.

The second moral, when I’m shopping, I look for what I think is different. What is different about this item I’m going to sell? Why is it different? Why should I be proud to have it my store as something different? Document why it’s different. It’s very critical. People like to buy things that are unique. I get so many compliments about stocking my store, and I have about 7,000 items in my store that are for sale, which is the tip of my iceberg. God knows, I probably don’t need to buy any more for my lifetime, and I could keep stocking new items.

Also, value your time. Your time is money. You are important. You’re important as a seller. If you don’t value your time, nobody is going to value your time. I like that noise on my phone. I just got money in eBay. Value your time. Think about how you do everything efficiently. Shipping is even set up efficiently for me. I have an inventory of boxes and packing material from our good friends at Bubblefast, so I can pack things very quickly.
Present a good image in your store. People laugh, because in my store, if you look at my photos, my thumb is my trademark in my photos. I should register it as a registered mark of Will, but I do take a lot of photos. I take them with an SLR camera, and if my thumb is over something in one photo, it’s not in another. You get really good images in my store. I get complimented on that.

The thing I can’t stress enough. There are obnoxious buyers out there, but keep in mind they’re a passionate group, and generally they want to follow their passion and buy something. I don’t let them drive my schedule. I have to go home and check an item tonight. I just got home from a week of travel, and I have a buyer that really wants to buy something, and she had sent me about 20 emails in a span of three days. I had to tell her to relax.

I’ll check on it for here when I get home. It’s not going to go anywhere. Don’t let her drive you to insanity. In this case, manage her and make sure you have fun, and make sure she has fun and ultimately gets what she wants, and everybody has fun. We’re in a lifestyle business. Still, like me, I need to make money, but I’m going to make sure it doesn’t stop me from having fun and change it so I hate what I’m doing. I used to do that from 9-5, and I quit.

That’s all the presentation I have. If you want to follow up with any questions, that would be great. I can’t stress enough, this should be fun, and it’s very manageable. I’ve sent five kids through college on money I’ve made off of eBay, besides paying my bills.

Danna: Thank you Will for sharing this great information with us. You can visit Will’s eBay store at: Wills1N4

FYI: Below is the video replay from the webinar presentation.

NOTE: if you would like to do a webinar with me and share your knowledge about selling on eBay: CONTACT ME with your information.

Further reading:

https://powersellingmom.com/ebay-research/worthpoint-ebay-sellers-resource-collectibles-antiques-art-identification/

Researching items to sell on eBay is one of the most important “beginning” parts of listing items. Worthpoint helps speed up the research process.

Not only the identification but the value. Determining the current market value can be challenging.

Here is a copy of the webinar I presented sharing ways I use Worthpoint to research.  I hope you will find it most valuable and informative.

Enjoy a free trial! One week of 7 look-ups!

Cancel at anytime.

The identification of items will help you to list faster. Which will help you to sell items faster. Understanding the price of what items have sold for helps you create better listings in more ways than one.

First off, Worthpoint allows us to copy the words used in other listings. Next you can past them into your current eBay listing. It seems with each search on Worthpoint I learn about more keywords that will help get more eyes looking at my items.

Need some assistance? Feel free to contact me with your questions.  I may be able to help you seek out the answers you need to identify that hard to find item.

How to search?

Start with a few keywords. Don’t use too many at once. You can always add more or less as you go along.

Such as:

• Nippon Vase
• Rose Nippon Vase
• Tall Nippon Vase
• Abingdon Cookie Jar
• Train cookie jar
• Choo-choo train cookie jar

Trying out different combinations will help narrow down to the perfect search. Adjust the page view to show 100 photos. This will make it easier to scan the page faster each time.

Worthpoint is the perfect solution for researching everything Collectible and all types of Antiques. The site is growing their data base every day. Adding more and more items. Pulling in data from eBay and other auction houses. This system will help us all become better eBay sellers.

Further reading:

Worthpoint: An eBay Sellers Resource for Collectibles, Antiques and Art Identification

eBay Sellers Research Tool Worthpoint

No matter what items you might be selling, as the reseller of products it is your job to know exactly what you are putting up on the eBay auction block or up for a “buy it now” option. Knowing that you have a genuine product helps instill confidence in the buyer and helps you establish a trustworthy reputation as a seller on eBay: This means a bigger profit margin for you and far fewer returns due to customer dissatisfaction. Worthpoint.com is a resource founded in 2007 by Will Seippel that eBay sellers can use as an effort to identify the products or items they intend to resell. In fact, it’s a tool that empowers the seller with the ability to provide accurate descriptions of what they are selling as well.

Imagine, for example, you have a collection of carnival glassware you want to resell. First, you need to figure out what the value of the items are: Doing so allows you to provide fair pricing and to receive equally fair compensation. Worthpoint provides you with a “Value It” tool where you can find out what types of carnival glass you have, the estimated value of the items, and information on the dating of the glasswares’ production.

You’ll also have the ability to explore the styles of glass produced through different time periods as well as the pieces generating the highest and lowest values. The Worthopedia™ tool is one where you, as an eBay reseller, get instant access to over 350 million product prices,

 

all of which are derived from as many as 350 quality valuation sources.

To figure out the value of the glassware when using the Worthopedia™ Guide, you will see some input boxes where you provide some information about the items in question. You’ll need to enter a search term or keywords associated with the item you are valuing, and you’ll want to be as specific as possible. For example, to discover if you have a carnival glass fruit bowl, you’ll have an easier time finding the product you are looking for if you specify the product’s features in your query.

Instead of using the term “carnival glass bowl,” you’ll get better results if you enter a term like “blue carnival glass fruit bowl.” After entering the search query, you choose “Price Guide” as your search type, and then choose the appropriate category associated with the glassware (for the purposes of this imagined scenario, you will choose the category of “glass.” )

Once you conduct the initial search you will see listings of products that have sold all over the world matching your query. Listings cover several years of sales (in fact, some results will go back as far as 15 years). The Worthopedia™ Price guide allows you to filter the search by price so you can view the values from high to low or vice versa: An excellent option when you want to know the items that draw the highest value. The “Best Match” filter narrows down the search to whatever descriptions closely fit your keyword search. Each listing presents you with full colored photos and a brief product description for ease of item comparison. There are over 1.2 billion images you can use for product comparisons, and more items are uploaded and added to the Worthpoint database on a regular basis. As the other sources Worthpoint gets its valuation information from, like auction house databases, continue to make successful sales, more product information becomes available.

The product search tools include the ability to narrow your search request by title only, image only, price range, and the location where the product was sold. Being able to define location is excellent, especially if you only sell in one part of the world and refrain from international selling options.

With the valuation tool, you can also search for product marks, autographs, symbols, or other key features that will help you, not only identify if you have a genuine piece, but it will allow you to provide a detailed seller description: This makes you appear knowledgeable about the products you are selling. Knowing your product’s details also makes the buyer more interested in the product as you provide key information about the product’s authenticity, and, as mentioned earlier, the trust between you and the buyer is more easily established.

Worthpoint gives members access to a digital library containing books related to all of the products the site allows value searches for, and these books are made digitally accessible. You can study the history of the items you specialize in selling and you never have to leave home to explore the information related to the products you sell.

When available, even current classified listings related to the products of interest and educational articles are something an eBay seller like yourself can access as a Worthpoint member: Giving you the ability to get a good jump on the good deals that you find. The classifieds portion of the site is specifically for members only and allows for members to offer what they have to other members using Worthpoint research tools.

As an eBay reseller to pass up on the option to use Worthpoint as a tool to add to your reseller-prep arsenal can prove fatal to your success as a seller. According to Worthpoint.com, as every three seconds passes by, another person is conducting research on the value of items they either own or want to sell. The simplicity of searches is definitely bound to make Worthpoint appealing, particularly to the person who is new to the practice of selling items on eBay. This resource tool will help you enhance not only the item description your working on, but it will give you ideas on important keywords you may of missed to add to the listing. With every successful sale, you’ll begin to understand the true power of knowing your product and developing that ever so vital trust bond with those you choose to buy from you: It is a delicate relationship indeed, one that requires you put forth the extra effort to research the items you are selling. Worthpoint makes it enjoyable. I find it very rewarding to be able to identify the awesome treasures that I come across. Thanks to Worthpoint I can now get the job done faster!

Go ahead, take it out for a spin with a free trial.

Research before you buy or list

The research process actually begins before buying an item to sell on eBay. Research is very important for being successful on eBay.

Research is King

One way to research but is very limited, is to use eBay’s completed listing source. To find this simply visit any eBay page. The search bar can be seen at the top of the page. Notice the word “advanced” located to the right of the eBay search bar. Click advanced and now you can search for completed and sold listings.

 

eBay Research Tools

The type of tools I use for my eBay research depends on the item. For Antique, art and/or collectible type items I will mostly use Worthpoint. For all other types of items from the new to the old I will use Terapeak.
However, whenever I look something up on Worthpoint I will double check it on Terapeak since I subscribe to both. Both of these sites I feel are a valuable source for my business.

This is especially true for the consignment seller or the owner of a local thrift/antique shop. Combining the power of Terapeak and Worthpoint, you will have all the tools you need to succeed!

Subscriptions:
Terapeak has a few pricing options.

• Professional
  $19.98/mo. billed annually
• SEO Pro
  $5.97/mo. billed annually
• MySales Pro eBay
  $16.64/mo. billed annually
• MySales Pro Amazon
  $16.64/mo. billed annually

[button color=”juicy_pink” size=”normal” type=”3d” target=”_blank” link=”http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=4iivt9cab&oeidk=a07edjmi952906571e8“]START A FREE TERAPEAK TRIAL or SIGN-UP[/button]

 

Worthpoint has three price plans. Each with unique options.

• Value It – Worthopedia Price Guide – The ultimate price guide with over 300 million prices including details and images. –
  $19.99 a month after free trial
  $199.99 a year after free trial
  $16.67 a month – SAVE $39.89
• Research It – Marks and Library – Your identification and origin research guide: 100,000+ identifiers and online books.$22.99 a month after free trial
  $256.99 a year after free trial
  $21.42 a month – SAVE $18.89
• All Access – Worthopedia + Marks & Library – Both WorthPoint products combined! Complete access for the best price.
  $39.99 a month after free trial
  $439.99 a year after free trial
  $36.67 a month – SAVE $39.89

[button color=”juicy_pink” size=”normal” type=”3d” target=”_blank” link=”https://www.worthpoint.com/product/index?a_aid=POWERSELLINGMOM”]START A FREE WORTHPOINT TRIAL or SIGN-UP[/button]

Further Reading:

• How to Make Money on eBay by using Marketplace Research
• eBay Research for Consignment Sellers Part 1.
• eBay Research for Consignment Sellers Part 2.
• eBay Research for Consignment Sellers Part 3.

REPLAY from the Live Webinar on January 22, 2017:

FYI Link to Elena’s website that was mentioned during the webinar : http://elenasgifts.com/
HAVE QUESTIONS?

I welcome questions!

Just fill out the form at:  [button color=”juicy_pink” size=”normal” type=”3d” target=”_blank” link=”https://powersellingmom.com/contact-ebay-power-seller-danna-crawford/”]CONTACT DANNA[/button]

Check the EVENTS page for future webinars and workshops!

 

Terapeak is one of the primary tools I depend on to increase my profits on eBay. Terapeak is one of the most comprehensive and affordable eBay marketplace research tools available.

I remember when they first rolled out, I never wanted to spend money on monthly fees. Back then I was tight with money, stubborn and determined to use only free marketplace research tools. I stuck to using only eBay’s completed listing search.

Then, one day I gave in and gave Terapeak a try. I was floored!

Immediately I recognized how Terapeak could have been helping me make more money on eBay all along. Not only is there an incredible amount of helpful data, but it’s so easy to use!

No, really.

Math and numbers are not my strong suits – at all. But the Terapeak dashboard is configured in logical, super easy to understand sections that break all the information down in so that it makes sense – even to someone like me!

I signed up immediately and never looked back!

In fact, I believe in it so much, that I spent hours putting together this in-depth tutorial on how to use Terapeak.

I invested a ton of my time so you can see just how valuable this selling and listing tool is and how much money you’re missing out on if you don’t use Terapeak.

Terapeak offers a FREE trial and I suggest signing up for it so you gain hands-on experience while working through this tutorial.

Click the banner below to get your FREE trial with Terapeak!

Ready? Let’s get going!

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Table of Contents

• Product Research
• Competition Research
• Hot Research
• Category Research
• SEO Research

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How To Use Terapeak For Product Research

For this tutorial, let’s say you gained access to a huge vinyl record collection – because I did.

And, let’s also say you have no idea where to start – because I didn’t. 😉

I bought out an estate there were boxes and boxes and boxes of vintage LPs and I was like, “Holy cow! WHAT am I going to DO with all these records?!”

So, I made a BIG pot of coffee and fired up Terapeak!

Once logged into Terapeak, I navigated to “Research > Product Research”.

First, I want to get a feel for what the overall category of records might yield so I perform a broad search using the words “LP Record”

Keep in mind those two words must be used in the title of an eBay listing for it to appear in the search research of Terapeak.

With this search, we can start to get an idea of the marketplace in this vertical. We see the following statistics:

1. The average selling price is $21.22
2. Average shipping price $5.77
3. Starting price $9.33
4. Out of 352,435 listings
5. With a sell through rate of 20.26%

Also notice, in the top right corner, I’ve selected my date range to be a 90 day period.

With seasonal products being the exception to the rule, 3 months provides an adequate snapshot of current market trends.

Next, notice the View area above the blue Average Price box. You can see there are a few view options.

Take a few minutes and explore those.

I keep mine on the 2nd choice but you may decide you are most comfortable with a different view.

The view choices are as follows:

1. High Level Information With Key Metrics

The awesome bonus about the “High Metrics Table” (above) is that you can re-arrange these blocks in any order you like.

Also, notice the gray gear in each corner of the block. Those are drop-downs that allow you to change the view. This is perfect for those of you that preview to read charts vs lists. This type of breakdown will give you ideas about keywords, best time of day to list, which day of the week and more.

2. Listings For The Item

This is my favorite view and is the one I use the most.

The results show:

• Photo of the item
• Top Selling Items
• Auction vs Store listing vs Fixed Price Listing
• What was the starting price or asking price
• What did it sell for
• How many bids
• Ending date

3. Graphical View of Historic Trends

4. Top eBay Sellers Which Have Item Listed

5. High Level Information across eBay International Sites – Including eBay Motors

As you can see, Terapeak provides fantastic in-depth information which gives us realistic selling expectations – including ROI and projected sales.

How To Use Terapeak to Research the Competition

Now, let’s navigate to “Research > Competitor Research”

If you’re just starting to sell on eBay, using Terapeak to research the competition is an absolute “must”.

However, if you’re an established eBay seller, keeping an eye on the competition can be a healthy type of motivation. Especially, for those in a niche selling vertical, watching the competition can help you discover new selling strategies.

To research the competition using Terapeak, find a seller in your market sector and copy their seller id (name). Enter the id/name into the search bar of the “Competitor Research”.

On the right, you’ll see an option which allows you to choose the date range for search. I generally keep mine at the 90 days. However, seasonal sellers may need to watch trends over a year.

For this competitor research tutorial I’m using my eBay store – AskDanna. I’m a “Treasure Hunter Seller” so my data will be broad and varied.

What you see is 277 listed items with an average selling price of $35.36. Bids start at $7.28. and have a sell-through rate of 72.57%. Not too bad I must say! 🙂

My sell-through rate is always extremely high because I use Terapeak to perform marketplace research on every item that I have the opportunity to sell on eBay. Whether a consignment item or an estate/garage sale item, I do not invest time or money in it before I see the data!

The top 4 items that sold are:

• Ladies Hamilton Watch – $700.00
• Danbury Mint Ornaments – $305.00
• Louis Vuitton Bag – $255.00
• Lenox Nativity Set – $227.00

Take a look at what ‘kind’ of listings I did. 3 of the 4 items were auctions with low starting bids.

The highest price was a watch which was listed in my eBay store (notice the red door icon – this represents an eBay store) and a best offer price was accepted.

Learn from your competition. Learn from their success and misses.

Pay attention to:

• Listing Style – Auction vs Fixed Price
• Duration – Length of the listing
• SEO Keywords used in the titles and product descriptions
• Categories – Did they use more than one

Change the view to gain more information.

Notice a few of the areas have a gear in the upper right corner of each box. Click on these and a drop-down appears which will allow you to adjust the “Show” view within the frame.

Choices include:

• Total Listings
• Average Price
• Sell Through
• Table

I won’t go into each and every frame, but let’s review the “Day of the Week” frame (see image below).

The current view above shows the graph with blue and green bars “Total Listings”. This statistic shows that I do most of my listings on Sunday. Weekends are generally my listing days.

By my clicking the gear and changing it to “Average Price” you see the green bar at the highest on Thursday.

Note that Thursdays, the average listing price is $54.40. This is the case because with many of my collectibles, I choose a 10 day auction and start it on a Thursday.

If you hold your cursor over each bar, it will show you the highest average price in each area. To get a bigger picture, I’ve adjusted each frame that had a gear with the “Sell Through” option so that we could take a look at all of the stats in one screen (as seen below).

Now we can narrow it down. What we’ve learned from this seller, (aka: AskDanna) is:

• Biggest sell-through day is Friday.
• One day and ten day listings are the most popular.
• In the categories of Dolls and Bears, the sell through rate was 100%.
• The most popular selling-time-of-day is in the wee hours of the morning – 1:00 AM to 2:00 AM. Then there is another peak in late evening starting about 9:00 pm.

The views above are perfect for those that prefer to read charts. For those that prefer words, you can adjust the gears to “Show Table Views” (see below).

No matter which view you display, the information is basically the same. Terapeak just presents the data in a different formats so that it can try to meet the learning needs for all types of subscribers.

As an exercise in analyzing the competition, take a few minute and compare my current stats with the data shown in this example. You can follow along by going to Tereapeak > Competitor Research and type in my eBay user ID: Danna.

This is the same system you will use to view all your current and future competitors.

***Special Note About Time Zone Settings***

Results shown in the Time of Day chart in In-depth eBay search results will be displayed in Pacific Standard Time or Pacific Daylight Time (depending the time of year) by default.

The time zone preference can be updated using these instructions:

• Click on your username at the top of the page.
• Click on Settings.
• Click on the Edit button next to Your Information.
• Adjust your time zone preferences.
• Click on the Save button.

How to Use Terapeak for “Hot” Research

Next, let’s take a look at “Hot Research”. This is one of my favorite research tools within Terapeak. The Hot Research data gives you the top trends in each category and ranks them accordingly. Within the categories, the data gets very granular.

Navigate to Research > Hot Research.

When you first visit the page, you will notice the random order of everything shown.

Let’s break this down.

Start with the eBay.com. You will also have the option to include other international eBay sites in the “Hot Search”.

I usually just stick with eBay.com but the other choices are always there for you to review later.

You can easily have it show “All eBay Sites” across the board – including eBay motors. Keep in mind if you are researching car parts or accessories, this category can be found on eBay.com as well so in this situation you may want to include eBay motors and eBay.com in the search for a true USA hot product search.

Next, you can see the “Views” option.

“Hot Research Views” allows us to get really granular. This functionality is extremely helpful as it is so comprehensive.

Below, is an explanation of each view:

In the next section of “How to Use Terapeak”, you’ll learn how to dig into each “view” and more about what data the different views have to offer.

Additionally, you’ll learn about the “3 Hotness Levels” (Hot, Very Hot, and Super Hot).

HOT CATEGORIES

Starting with Hot Categories, you can see there are four columns (shown below).

These are:

• Sales Rank
• Category Name
• Hot
• Success

Notice, to the right of each of these words are up and down arrows. This functionality allows you to adjust the view from newest to oldest in each area. Below, see with the Sales rank adjusted to #1:

The interesting part about this is that the #1 spot is Sporting Goods > Cycling > Bicycles. Yet, it is only rated “Very Hot” not “Super Hot” yet it is number one with only a 27.29% success sell-through rate.

The “Category” will adjust the order from the top searched category to the least searched category on eBay. Notice this example has baby items listed as the most popular (see below).

While we’re here, let’s take a look at the “3 Hotness Levels” (Hot, Very Hot, and Super Hot).

Clicking the arrows will adjust the order to either Hot being the lowest or Super Hot being the highest (see image below).

I find it so interesting to review this area now and again because the “hotness” changes with the seasons.

As an example, I am writing this tutorial in the spring. The Super Hot products are items like: wind generators, Rhizomes bulbs, video glasses, and pool supplies.

What? Video glasses?

It’s funny when a new or popular product rolls out it will also become “super hot” on this list just like the example above.

Now let’s adjust to view the success in each sector (see image below). What is success? It is the category with the highest sell-through rate. Notice Vine seeds have the highest sell through right now and golf club components are next on the list.

What I love most about this “Hot” search is the ability to brainstorm selling ideas for my current and future inventory.

Learning from success is the best educational gift you can give yourself! Terapeak data is inspiring and motivating!

HOT MEDIA

Now, in “Hot Media”, just a heads up – this view is limited to only a few categories in the media area of eBay. DVDs, music, games, and books are the big data sets.

The results can easily be adjusted using the drop-down:

Simply choose which area you want to view, click the magnifying glass, and the view will instantly adjust.

For example, I’ll change it to Music Hot List:

This breakdown will show the last two months of the top selling hot products in the music category. Green arrows will appear showing green for increased sales or red, denoting decreased sales.

Here you can can track the title, artist, UPC, percentage of selling success, and the average price each item sold for.

This is a brilliant tool for the niche seller in these areas. Rumor has it that Tereapeak will be adding more functionalities in this area soon.

POPULAR KEYWORD SEARCHES

I LOVE the “Popular Keywords” data set! It’s a wonderful SEO tool!

In the image below, you’ll see this view also has the up and down arrows that can be adjusted by rank from highest to lowest as well as most searched by highest and lowest. C

Checking for eBay SEO keywords on a regular basis can help a seller determine which kind of items should they currently get listed on the site.

Notice the top 10 items ranking are:

• Playstation 4
• Tablet
• Xbox 360
• iPad
• Necklace
• iPhone
• Earrings
• Laptop
• Lego
• Bracelet

When I adjust it to view the top searched keywords to show me the most popular first, you’ll see the new keyword order:

And, that’s not all!

Each of these words on either of the view “Rank or Search” are clickable!

Granular data, specific data is where it’s at – especially for niche sellers!

For example (from the view above), let’s click on the word “bracelet” from the top of the list.

Once clicked, it will open up in a new window from Terapeak. This is such a great, time saving perk! Thank you, Terapeak!

So, in the new window we can now view the “Statistics” breakdown on the most popular searched keyword “Bracelet”

And guess what?

The views, along with Key Stats and Actions, can be sorted! Additionally, click the gears in the boxes to see even more data sorting options.

Keep in mind, once you enter this area the default is to show you the grand total across all categories.

That’s why when you view the screen above you are seeing the stats for the keyword bracelet across all categories in eBay.com – which is 5,051,837.

Now, that’s huge right?

Well, you can break this down to view the actual categories these are listed in (shown below)!

This will show you the actual breakdown with true numbers in each category. You can click through on each to discover even more usable information.

As an example, let’s see what’s under the category of books:

There are 669 listings in the book category which use the word bracelet. To drill down deeper, click through on the drop down menu.

For this example, I’ll click on Children & Young Adults. It shows 246 listings in the sub-category.

As with all other sections, categories, and views, you can sort and adjust to whichever data reporting styles best fit your needs.

WOW! Is this great stuff or what?

Another Terapeak benefit is that you can export the statistics to save as an Excel file or a pdf!

Awesome!

This is a great way to monitor statistics for future reports and/or case studies as well as present in company meetings.

Terapeak even has a little “pin tack” you can click on and this will add your search to what’s called a “Value Track”. More on this later.

BEST SELLING PRODUCTS

Under Hot Research, the next place for us to explore is “Best Selling Products”.

Once you click through to this area you will notice the gray bar with main titles:

• Keywords
• Category Name
• Sell-Through
• Average-Price
• Items Sold

This is valuable information for eBay sellers to not only pay attention to the keywords used but to see what the number of items sold.

Above, I adjusted the few on “Items Sold” to show the most sold first.

And in this example, it was “Case Covers” – 448,466 with an average price of $5.89 and a 73.56% sell through rate! Nice odds!

One thing I should point out in this area is that you can insert your own words for this search. I gave it a try using “LP Record” and only two results came up:

It seems the keyword phrase “LP Record Store” is popular! Who knew?

Personally, I would have never thought to add the word “Store” to my title before doing this research. This is one of the many reasons it’s SO critical to research before buying items to sell on eBay and before listing them on eBay.

Always keep in mind that Cassini, the eBay search engine will most likely return results that are exactly what the shopper is searching for. Meaning, by using the exact keywords and phrases that shoppers use to search on eBay, your listings are more likely to appear in the top search results – this is a solid eBay SEO practice.

Out of curiosity, I did a current search on eBay and there were 2,691 listings with those three words in the title “LP Record Store.” I promise you, in the future when I list records I will indeed be adding this word to my title!

BEST SELLING TITLES

The final section under Hot Products is “Best Selling Titles”

Unlike the other Hot Products categories, the “Best Selling Titles” section allows you to adjust the search from 1 day to 14 days. This gives you a very recent update.

You can also type in SEO keywords and phrases in the search box as well as define the time period.

I added LP Record to the search in a 7 day search and these were the results:

You can also adjust the:

• Total Sales
• Total Listings
• Sell Through
• Average Price
• Bid Order (lowest to highest)

In this case, the shipping supplies where in the highest spot across the board.

Hot Research Wrap Up

One last thing I’d like to point out in the “Hot Research” portion of this Terapeak tutorial is that many times these items will be posted on eBay’s Daily Deal.

When items are in the Daily Deal, thousands of products are sold in one day. Clearly, this depends on the item but eBay rarely misses with this type of sale. They know what eBay shoppers want.

As you are researching, it’s critical that you keep in mind a Daily Deal will play a part in the data which is served to you.

If you notice an item with a very high sell through rate, you may want to follow-through to view the seller because they could be a participant in eBay’s Daily Deal program.

If you’re not familiar with the Daily Deal, it means a seller has a huge amount of inventory and can fill the orders quickly. Sellers have to meet certain criteria to participate in it.

If you’ll look back on this tutorial, you’ll notice that “Coins” show up in some of these Hot Product Searches we performed. This makes sense because “Coins” are a regular item sold during Daily Deals.

This is fun area to explore! I promise you will not be bored with this delicious color coded page:

Notice the “High/Low” symbols below “Total Sales.”

Each circle of color represents the highest to lowest sales on eBay in each of the categories.

Pink or light red represents the highest sales, then the chart moves through the color spectrum to gray which represents the lowest sales.

Each of these categories are clickable. Each box holds the top category name and all the sub-categories are below it.

The beginning of this tutorial started with researching LPs and records. Let’s explore this category. Notice “Music” has a gray (aka low) dot while “Records” has a pink dot (aka high):

The awesome part about all this is that each category title and sub category title is clickable! Which means we can dig deeper into the research process.

For now, I will click on “Records”.

YIKES!

The system will not allow us to go this route. When I clicked on “Records”, this is the notice I received (see image below):

“This is a top level category. We’re sorry, but eBay does not permit detailed research on this category. Please select another category or use the Search report to research listings in this category. If you would like to search for other categories to trend, please specify some keywords.”

Keep this in mind that you may encounter this type of alert while you are using the category research tool .

The only work-around that I could find was to return to the research category screen and click on the main category – which in this case is “Music” (not the sub category of records).

This page will now show the breakdown of the sub categories. Below, we can see two locations for the word “Records” in the frame to the right and the bars within the main search.

And guess, what? They are both clickable!

However, the one on the bottom left produced the same alert previously shown. The one within the frame on the right, now with a purple dot under the category of “Wholesale Lots”, allows me to click on the new “purple” ranking.

Huh? What does this all mean?

eBay has a huge category area and each of these break down into sub-categories and sub-sub-categories.

Depending on the main category, a few sales verticals (categories) are broken down into even more levels.

In this demonstration we can see the system will only allow us to view the Wholesale Lots of records. Every category, sub-category, etc has a number.

If you know the number from eBay you can also search it on Tereapak.

Notice the number on the top right of the wholesale records category:

You can also adjust the search days up to 30.

Remember how we searched record LP at the start of this tutorial? That is the option when running into a situation like this. If the system will not allow the search in a category to appear, then return to the item “Product” research page and use some keywords.

Keep in mind that not everyone will be using the same words in their title. Experiment with a few different keywords like such as Record LP, Vinyl Record, Vinyl LP, Record Album and so on.

The next option on the Research dropdown is “Saved Searches”.

This is where all the searches that you saved will appear. If you are monitoring items, categories, or even your competition you can save all these types of searches.

This is a huge time saver! Whenever you need to reference it, the data is always right at your fingertips!

While doing any of your searches, you will see a few different ways to “save” the search.

Notice the “file” symbol to the right of the search bar:

Simply CLICK on it and a pop-up will appear asking you to give the file aka “saved search” a name:

Once you type in a saved search name “LP Record Search” (above), the system builds a set of search keywords based on the words you input.

Next, you will see two options – Manage Saved Searches and Save.

***SPECIAL NOTE***
Be sure to click SAVE before viewing manage or your search will not be saved. If you click Manage it will take you directly to the searches you already have saved previously.

Once you save your search now you can take a look at the searches saved in the system when you click on the dropdown from Research > Saved Searches.

Once done, you can now view the list of searches:

Above, you see I have saved two searches: 1) LP Record and 2) LP Records. I liked being able to compare my search with and without the “s” on the end. This might seem like overkill but it’s important to look at a search from all angles. Meaning, when shoppers search eBay some will use the singular version of a word and others will use the plural version. eBay and all search engines calculate that data separately so if you want accurate data, you’ll need to use both the singular and plural of whatever terms you’re researching.

Now, let’s explore the options in this “Saved Search” area.

When you click the magnifying glass, it will open up a new window and takes you directly to the saved page which shows the current statistics. This is a great way to open a few windows actually when you want to compare differing statistics sets.

Example: saved searches could be created for each of your “competitors” for a quick review tool during a busy day!

This page also keeps a record of the date you created the search and will allow you to “show or hide” filters either directly to the top of the saved search or you can show or hide directly on each.

As of April 2016, the only filter options to show or hide are the saved date range or alerts.

The saved date range filter would be a great way to save searches such as: 1 day, 7 day, 30 and /or 90 days:

When I saved each search, I named them based on how many days I did the search for. This makes it easier to identify them for quick reference in the future. This is a great way to monitor up-to date statistics along with realistic current market values on items.

The next part of the screen is the “Alert” – which can be turned on or off. This can be set-up as a reminder to receive weekly email alerts directly to your inbox. It’s very easy to set-up.

Just click on the “Bell” and it will turn blue. Next you will see the days of the week to pick from.

Note: The current system will only allow you to pick one day of the week – not multiple days.
The rest of the items on this page are self explanatory like “Rename” and Delete.

Now, remember earlier I made a mention about “Value Track” the Push-pin or tack symbol can be found along the view bar when doing research:

It is clickable. And no, you are not pinning it to Pinterest. But, you are “Pinning” the search to an automatic alert system that will set-up an email to be sent to you once a week as desired. The system allows you to save up to 25 “Value Tracks” as needed.

Now, this brings me to the last part of the research dropdown and that is “Bulk Research”:

Here is where you can find your “Value Track” list. This area allows you to upload a CSV file list. This is perfect for the large inventory sellers needing to monitor many SEO keywords. It will save the time from creating individual searches.

This page is very self explanatory and I’ll be honest, I’m not an active user in this area but I see the benefit for the mid to high range seller who needs to monitor larger statistical data sets on a regular basis.

Now that I’ve covered all of the areas of the research power on Tereapeak, I hope you can see and appreciate the value it holds for all types of eBay sellers.

The next stop on the Terapeak bar is “Source”

This is the tool you would use to “product source” for an item you may desire to sell on eBay.

For example, say you’ve already done the product research as we saw earlier. A popular item was bracelets. For this demonstration I’ll type in “baby bracelet” and click search:

Within seconds, the Terapeak system will pull up baby bracelets at wholesale prices.

Amazing and impressive I must say!

Here is another cool enhancement. When you move your cursor over each photo you will have two choices:

1. Do Product Research
2. Source on Alibaba

If you click the “Do Product Research” button it will automatically set-up in Tereapeak pulling in a few keywords from the title as shown below:

You know the drill from the points made at the beginning of this tutorial. Same rules apply. Learn from the sell-through rate and average price. Keep in mind the number of listings is based on and how far back the search went. Was it recent or 90 days?

Also, the big thing to keep in mind is what kind of keywords did it actually pull into the search? This may need to be adjusted. I also noticed this issue when clicking the orange bar to “Source on Alibaba”

Notice, Terapeak returned a “baby blue” bracelet and not a “baby bracelet.” Keep this in mind when using the sourcing tool.

***IMPORTANT Note***
I always get asked if Alibaba is a legitimate service. I have personally bought items on Alibaba over the years and have never had a problem. The key part of having a successful transaction on Alibaba is not to be in a rush and spend quality time communicating with the seller. Ask questions and repeat and review answers. Remember many are not English speaking so there can be a misunderstanding. This can be avoided with good communication via email and/or using Skype if needed.

How To Use Terapeak For SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

It’s SEO time! Search Engine Optimization is one of my favorite topics – as you may know if you’ve read my complete guides for eBay SEO and Cassini – The eBay Search Engine.

Tereapeak’s SEO tool is quite unique.

Found at the top of the page at the end of the row:

The first step on this is to type in what you would like to sell. For this example I will type in “Magnetic Baby Bracelet”. Terapeak’s system uses each individual word as a keyword.

Notice my words are each in a small boxed frame and I can easily click to remove them or type in more words shown in the gray. Below that, Terapeak shows all the words associated with my keywords. These keywords are culled from “Item Specifics” on eBay.

When you click on each of those words, it adjusts the display and shows CURRENT items – not sold or completed but current listings on the site.

If you want to research the list you can click the orange “Research” button shown above and it will then start the process within Tereapeak pulling in completed listings using the product research page in the standard view as shown below:

Another thing I want to point on from the SEO page is the ability to adjust the view. Notice the boxes to the right, just below the search bar you’ll see 4 symbols:

The last one adjusted the view to a “Table View” as shown above. The previous screen from this page was the “Grid View” – those are the only two viewing options.

The first two items on this are:

The ability to change the search to the other eBay sites and the second graphic is simply a “click to copy title to clipboard” which will save the words in your clipboard and then you can easily paste it elsewhere as needed.

Jumping back up to the top area, the two I haven’t yet mention are “Dashboard” and “Find”.

The dashboard allows you to pull in your items from eBay when you connect it to your eBay account. There is a lot to learn from this area and I am not going to go into this because so much of it is optional and based on personal preference. It’s very easy to use and self-explanatory.

The “Find” tab is a another one of those “fun” type tools within Tereapeak and is, also, straightforward:

Type in a product you would like to look for and take advantage of the “Advanced Filter” options. When you click on that it will show additional items you can customize to the search.

***NOTE***
This ADVANCED FILTER tool can also be found in other areas when you do your search. Keep a watch for it and take advantage of the customization benefits which increase the amazing value of using Terapeak.

The final items you’ll notice at the top right of the page are videos with FAQ pages that you can give a thumbs up or down.

Another fun factor of Terapeak that is super easy to use is – notice the icon to the left the the research bar:

This is a “Filter” and it will allow you to adjust the search to the many, many choices shown above. You can clear the filter, apply the filter and when done, simply click the “filter symbol” again and it will be hidden from the view.

How To Use Terapeak Wrap Up

Whew! Is your mind spinning now? LOL

When I first started using Terapeak I was like a kid in a candy store but it was a little bit overwhelming.

So, what I did was take a couple weeks to explore a little bit at a time and soon I was whizzing through all the research like lightening! But, more importantly, by using the information I discovered and applying it to my product buying and listing practices, I watched my eBay sales start to grow almost immediately!

So, go explore and grow your business!

Click below and get started with Terapeak now!

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