Using eBay as a free market research tool

July 26, 2007 – 5:03 pm

If you run a shopping website or blog and want to drive more traffic to it one of the key things you must do is write about topics that are popular at frequently searched for. The only way to find out what is popular at any time point is from market research.

One way of doing this market research for free is using eBay, it maybe an online shopping portal but use it in a slightly different way and it will give you a wealth of free market research information.

Ebay tools

The first place to look is eBay Pulse. http://pulse.ebay.co.uk Pulse gives you a snapshot of what the most watched auctions are at any one time, and generally they are popular for a reason, you can extrapolate this data further by examining which categories are popular. If you use eBay pulse in this way it can be an absolute goldmine of market research information.

eBay keywords http://buy.ebay.co.uk is a directory of highly popular terms that people search for on ebay, if you are looking for SEO or PPC search terms for your website or blog articles this could be a very useful starting point.

If you are looking for more in depth tools to SEO your postings then have a look at this thread on the forum which has lots of useful free website tools you can use. http://www.forums.peazyshop.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=2108