eBay started in 1995 as an online auction platform that has since become one of the most popular eCommerce websites. It offers customer-to-customer and business-to-customer marketplaces that attracts over 171 million active users in more than 190 markets worldwide. In the past years, an increasing share of eBay’s 1.6 billion listings are fixed-price listings instead of auction listings, reflecting the recent changes. In 2016, fixed-price listings made up 87% of eBay’s gross merchandise volume (GMV). eBay’s transition to fixed-price listings and its global reach has made it to one of Amazon’s top competitors in eCommerce.
Retail eCommerce sales in Germany posted double digit growth in 2016 and 2017, and is expected to grow until 2021 but at a slower rate. With a retail eCommerce sales worth $65.13 billion in 2017, Germany is one of the biggest economies with regards to eCommerce in Europe. eBay.de plays a significant role in this since as it is the 3rd largest online marketplace in Europe. Only Amazon Germany, Amazon UK, and eBay UK are bigger.
A huge amount of sellers means there is intense competition across product categories
With an average of over 465 product listings per seller, eBay is one of the most competitive platforms in the world. This had an effect on its search result page in the form of hundreds of duplicate listings. eBay Germany, like eBay US, introduced for this purpose the option to group similar listings effectively reducing the amount of listings displayed. However, this makes it more difficult for you to position your business on eBay because suddenly you are in a product page with your biggest competitors. This can be positive and negative at the same time since you might be able to win customers from your competition but you might also lose customers as well. An option to escape this dilemma is to focus on products with less competition. Algopix’s eBay Germany product research helps you identify such low-competition products by providing a competition indicator.
Algopix’s eBay Germany product research tool
Starting out on eBay’s marketplace is as easy as it can get since you only have to sign up. However, when you sell something, you will have to give a share of your profit to eBay in exchange for using their marketplace. Their share comes in the form of different fees that apply for inserting a listing, PayPal fees, and Final Value Fees (FVF) to name a few. You can also run your own eBay store for a subscription fee which will lower some fees – an important competitive advantage considering that 91% of eBay’s top sellers run an eBay store. Yet, this makes keeping an overview over all expenses related to selling on eBay a tricky task.
Algopix’s eBay Germany product research tool has you covered in this regard as well. Its detailed full expenses analysis provides you not only with information about any costs related to selling a product on eBay’s marketplace like taxes and marketplace fees, but also is able to calculate those expenses depending on your preferred fulfillment method. This also allows you to compare if Multi-Channel Fulfillment is cheaper than using traditional shipping carriers for your order fulfillment. Additionally, Algopix provides you with an estimated profit margin so you can make a fully informed decision about a product’s profitability.
Good inventory management starts with the right product sourcing decision
Many online retailers make the grave mistake to neglect thorough product market research before sourcing huge amounts of inventory. This means they overlook important information about a product’s demand level or costs, eventually leading to an incorrect pricing strategy and deadstock. This deadstock costs retailers money by blocking storage space for more profitable products and basically is lost capital.
You shouldn’t make this mistake, which is why Algopix’s eBay Germany market research offers detailed, and easy-to-read information about any product on 14 different markets worldwide. With information about the demand level, competition level, full expenses analysis, expected profit margin, estimated sales volume, and estimated gross merchandise volume for the last 30 days you can make fast, educated business decision ultimately saving you time and money.
Algopix’s eBay Germany seller tool
eBay’s marketplaces reach customers in 190 different countries worldwide and generated a total revenue of $9 billion in 2016 from marketplaces outside the US. This means almost 60% of eBay’s marketplace revenue comes from outside the US, like eBay UK, and eBay Germany, which displays the size of eBay’s global network. Not making use of this network can mean you are missing out on opportunities to increase sales and grow your business.
Many online retailers are cautious when it comes to selling on international markets because there are many questions and uncertainties that need to be addressed before committing to a new market. On a basic level, demand and competition levels need to be assessed for products you’re offering to get an idea of the market’s dynamics. Algopix’s eBay Germany seller tool delivers these metrics with an indicator of how high competition and demand is. Additionally, it provides you with last month’s sales volume and gross merchandise volume (GMV) so you can get a better understanding of the market’s demand and supply. On a higher level, questions surrounding the costs associated with selling on a new market need to be answered in order to make a rough profit estimation. Algopix provides detailed information about taxes, shipping fees, marketplace fees, and other costs related to the selected market. Additionally, it will calculate a profit margin based on the costs and the purchasing price so you don’t have to think about it and have more time interpreting the results.
Sourcing many products is a time-consuming task restraining you from achieving the full potential of your eBay store
Your skills to identify profitable niche products fast and in great numbers will determine your chances to succeed on eBay’s marketplace. But there are many different tasks that need to be handled in order run a business too. This leaves you with a limited amount of time that you can dedicate to researching new products for your sales mix. Algopix’s eBay Germany marketplace research can help you facilitate researching one product at a time or in bulk. Its intuitive product research dashboard delivers you the most important information needed to assess a new product. The bulk analysis feature allows you to accelerate your sourcing efforts by researching up to 200 products at once and obtaining the results in just a few minutes.
