Finding eBook Writing Topics On eBay

by Jeff Smith

I was speaking to a good friend of mine who operates many businesses online and he just happened to mention that he gets many of his ideas from eBay. Even more intriguing, he told me that he could tell how much of a given product was selling on eBay.

Now, I don't know about you, but I've been trying to figure out how to tap into eBay sales information for months now - but there just doesn't seem to be any way.... Until, this know-it-all let me know the simple, yet highly effective method he uses...

First, it is worth noting that you can get a summary of the hottest categories selling on eBay. While this is somewhat useful in locating trends and broad areas of interest, there is a more useful way to use the auction center to test your own ideas.

Start by searching eBay for your keyword term + ebook. For example, if you are trying to test "dog training", then you would enter "dog training ebook" in your search. In most cases you will find at least one example, and in many cases you will find lots of different ebooks listed.

The next step is to select a few examples that match closely to your idea or topic area. Bring the auction up, and now for the trick... eBay provides great detail into auctions by member, including a complete detailed list of auctions and outcome by member. So, what you want to do is simply scan the members holding active auctions - selecting the option "search all auctions by this member" and viola, you will get a picture of activity from this member.

Using this information you can judge if there are two sales of their product each day or 20. The idea is not to get an actual, accurate count, but rather a sense of how many copies are moving through their auction.

You may be shocked by some of the results you see. Any existing ebook, report, course, training, audio or video that has activity daily - especially with multiple copies sold daily, will help to validate your market and topic area.

Resources mentioned in this article are:

eBay Hottest Posts: http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/whatshot.html
Terrnace Smith's "Sell Books and Videos"

Jeff Smith is dedicated to helping you turn your knowledge into highly desirable, hot selling information-based products (eBooks, booklets, seminars, courses, etc...)
Through his highly acclaimed site, you will find exactlywhat it takes to create and market high-profit info products.