How Do I Measure The EBay Competition?

Plainly speaking, you, as an eBay seller must keep an eye on your competitors as regards to their change of strategies, increase or decreasing sales volume, whether they are expanding and timing etc. I am not advocating unethical spying here but no matter whether you do it or not, beware, your competitors are watching your every move even if you are new on eBay.  

Watching the competition has its own value in business management and in every field. This provides you with valuable inputs to plan your business steps. Putting in place the results of observations in a usable format takes some informed understanding of your market.  

Measuring the eBay Competition

There are some simple indicators to measure the competition. I am limiting the scope of this article to primary and secondary competitors only.  

List out your competitors and categorize them as primary and secondary. This shouldn’t be difficult if you searched for each of your items within eBay search which results the entire eBay market perhaps. But as statistics put it, it is always the top creamy 10% that enjoys the 90% of business. Now you know just how many of them are real competitors; rest of them can be ignored.  

Now, segregate them into two groups: those stronger & above you and those that are not. Three criteria will help you do this in a substantially materialistic fashion.

1.      Total and percentage feedback score

2.      Number of categories and individual items each of them has

3.      Number of years in business  

Dissect each of these points from both the competing groups and organize the results into meaningful reasons to know what the first group has done to deserve the top position and why the second is where it is. But take care to give reasonable adjustment weightage to rather new comers to eliminate the ‘errors of estimation.’  

Get down to the details to analyze as to how long they sustained at the top or bottom. Try to quantify points like timing of their pitching up sales, expansion; amounts of discounts and gifts other policies etc. The two groups would be doing things in exactly the reverse way in overlapping areas. Now you know what step of yours takes you where.  

You can get a free ebay tool kit just by clicking on this link.