Goodbye eBay Marketplace Research, hello Terapeak
September 11, 2008
One of the most important steps that I recommend to all of my clients and everyone I know that sells anything, regardless of whether it is on eBay or not, is to research your niche. Really, it’s more than just your niche, it’s your products, how you list them, when you list them, for how much, what format… this list goes on.
eBay introduced it’s market research tool to help sellers, and saavy buyers understand the eBay marketplace by providing a peak into the tons of data within the eBay system. This included the hot catagories and products, what features to use ie gallery, bold etc., and when to sell. eBay not only use this data themselves, but they sold it to other companies so they could create data mining tools as well.
The amount of data available was astonishing. The question really was how to use it. Terapeak, purchased eBay’s data and provided a free website to slice and dice eBay’s marketing place data. They did it so well, that eBay began buying back their data from Terapeak.
Still, eBay decided to sell their Marketplace research tools as a seperate subscription and also offer it to eBay store owners. I imagine that they saw the writing on the wall as new 3rd party developers began popping up and creating their own research tools. So, eBay has decided to phase out the eBay Marketplace and recommend Terapeak as the preferred vendor.
This is a huge slap in the face for other vendors like Hammertap, which is Terapeaks closest competitor. But none-the-less, this works out great for those that choose Terapeak. Why? Because we are going to save money…!
If you are not already a subscriber, actually, even if you are already, you can take advantage of a nice savings. I was paying on monthly basis for Terakpeak. Now, they are offering a 60% discount for anyone that signs up and pays for a year in advance. I’m not sure how long they will be running this special, but it’s definately worth checking out.
If you are already paying on a monthly basis, you cannot directly upgrade your account. You actually need to cancel your account, signup for the yearly account and then get your discount.
If your not sure what TeraPeak is all about, check out their free version. The full version gives you some very nice features and in an upcoming product launch I’m going to show you how to use TeraPeak to make some serious money… more on that later. For now, my recommnedation, buy a yearly subscription to TeraPeal now.
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