What most people don't know (because they don't know how or where to look) is that EBay also provides a service exclusive to eager online BUYERS - I'm talking about the folks that have a specific item in mind that they want to PURCHASE IMMEDIATELY, and these buyers don't have the time to troll the internet, nor the millions of listings on EBay to find them!
This exclusive area for EBay buyers is called the "Want It Now" listings.
It's also a gold mine for any seller who's interested in furthering an online business. Any listing in the "Want It Now" area specifies what item is highly sought and even what they are willing to pay for it. Millions of eBay auctions are ignored or missed entirely by consumers and/or searchers, due simply to the fact that the Auction Headlines lack the hot keywords that people search for online.
As a technical & customer support representative, I receive emails from inquiring eBay entrepreneurs complaining about not being noticed on eBay...
"What can I do?" they ask me. Well, let's think about this for a moment. How exactly are you listing your item, specifically in the Title? What are you saying about your item? How are you describing it?
You must consider who would purchase your item, and what would they type into the "search terms" on eBay to find it. This is CRITICAL. These are also known as keywords.
If you don't know about the power of keywords, then you should start here.
You could use Yahoo's Overture to search the most recent and popular keywords. Or perhaps you could find another free key-word generator on the internet. Another source would be the EBay Pulse. That gives you the top 10 most searched terms in a given category.
Most EBay clients who have an auction running to sell an item find that they are never, if scarcely, even noticed... So why not have a look at the "Want It Now" section of EBay? A seller might then get hundreds of ideas about items to sell that he/she is already storing or has access to.
Now, reading all of the "Want It Now" pages of desired items may take several hours, or days. I know, because I've tried. And these listings change all the time. But I managed to find a quick solution to this, by way of a little-known program called "AuctionYen". I've tried this out and found that it brings back real-time results from the EBay's "Want It Now" listings, by category and most sought search-terms.
I also have a surplus of items in my garage, and dislike the idea of a bunch of early-bird strangers showing up at my home to pick out items that I'd like to get rid of, via garage sale. It's been much easier for me to search for the items that people want most, and sell to them directly via the AuctionYen method.