With an 80% sell through rate and the 9th highest sales revenue on the site, category #71228 (Crafts > Scrapbooking > Die Cutting Machines) is our feature hot category on eBay this week.

Die cutting machines create designs by pressing a shape or die into paper, cutting it into precise shapes or letters. Die cutting machines are popular with scrapbookers, but can be very useful to anyone looking to embellish photo albums, paper crafts, and artwork. Die cutting machines tend to be very simple to use, and much less hassle than tracing and cutting by hand.

The average price for products in this category is around $65.00, but machines can climb up to $800-1000 per unit.

Here is a 2 year sale trend for category #71228

As you can see, sales revenue has been climbing steadily in this category over the last two years.

More and more art supply stores are catering to scrapbooking and embossing interests these days, and as the products become available to a wider audience, the market for tools like die cutting machines is sure to keep growing.

(Results were found using Terapeak’s marketplace research tools.)

Topic: Create a Sales Strategy to Boost Your Profits – The How and Why With Market Research
Host: Terapeak
Date: Friday, March 14^th
Time: 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. PST

Visit the eBay Workshop Board

Whether you’re just starting out on eBay, a hobby seller, or a top grossing Power Seller, it’s important to consider your selling strategy and how your business goals affect your auction listings. This month’s interactive workshop will review different sales strategies, and how to make decisions based on these. Are you an ASP seller or an ASR seller? And how will this influence your listings? Join Denise from Terapeak to determine your selling strategy and the way it will help maximize your profits!

Let’s take a look at an interesting result from Terapeak’s Hot Category List from the last 30 days: Category # 11721: Vintage TLR Cameras.

Sporting a very unique look compared to modern cameras, TLR cameras were very popular in the 1950’s and 60’s. TLR stands for Twin Lens Reflex, meaning the camera has two lenses of equal focal length (one lens for the viewfinder and one lens to capture the image.) The advantage of the TLR over modern SLR (single lens reflex) cameras is that the viewfinder is not obscured during exposure, and maintains a constant view of the subject. However, unlike SLR cameras, many TLR models present challenges when judging depth of field, or taking close range photography.

There were 3,432 TLR camera and accessory listings on eBay in the last 90 days, with an overall success rate of 63%. Prices ranging from the affordable (an average price of $115.00) to the extravagant (a rare Rolleiflex Tele-Xenar model sold for $3500.00).

And as you can see from the trend, sales for TLR (twin lens reflex) cameras recently hit a two year peak.

Now that digital cameras have become so common, it’s great to see buyers still taking an interest in film based cameras, especially these vintage models.

GI Joe figures are a hot product category on eBay, and it’s only going to get hotter as a live action movie based on the popular toy and cartoon series has recently gone into production.

Director Stephen Sommers (the Mummy) is attached to the project and actors Marlon Wayans, Sienna Miller, and Christopher Eccleston have joined the cast.

Nearly 40,000 GI Joe listings ended in the last 30 days on eBay.com, 66% of which ended in sale, and worth over $690,000.
The 3 3/4 inch GI Joe action figure category showed up in this month’s Terapeak Hot Category list, due to a high success rate, and growing demand.
Here’s a trend of that category:

 The listings in this category have enjoyed above a 60% sell-through rate for the last years. This means that 60% of all listings sell, and that’s a steady category!

Hasbro’s other line of toys, Transformers, was also adapted into a film franchise that grossed over 300 million in the US box office. Demand for Transformers toys peaked at the time of the movie’s release last summer, and demand for GI Joe listings will likely follow the same pattern.

According to market research from Terapeak, in the last 30 days, the total number of listings for each format in all categories was very close (52,221 Blu-ray listings vs. 53,457 HD DVD listings), however, the number of HD DVD items listed was greater by a margin of 75%, as sellers have begun unloading whole movie collections in lots.

Blu-ray listings in the Consumer Electronics/DVD & Home Theatre category, had an average selling price nearly double that of HD DVD player listings.
Despite a higher average price, Blu-ray players had a 74.26% success rate compared to 63.02% for HD DVD players.

Sports fans and those living with sports fans know that Super Bowl Sunday is right around the corner. This February 3^rd, the Patriots meet the Giants in Glendale, Arizona. One billion people worldwide are forecasted to watch the game, with more than 75,000 at the University of Phoenix Stadium to watch live. Will the Patriots remain undefeated?  And how much would you have to pony up for one of the coveted Sunday tickets? We can look to recent eBay ticket sales to see!

Recent reports from Terapeak.com show that the average ticket price is $4,481 with a grand total of $1,855,304 worth of ticket sales over the past 30 days.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are playing the half time show this year (here’s hoping that there aren’t any more wardrobe malfunctions) – recently a signed guitar from the group sold for $850 on eBay. You can still score a CD for an average price of $6.65 on eBay, so there’s time to catch up on the hits before Sunday.

 Who are you cheering for this weekend? And have you purchased tickets through eBay before?To check today’s statistics, visit Terapeak! 

The Terapeak Webkinz Index – Dec 2007

Here’s a fun report using eBay research on Webkinz, those educational and interactive toys popular with the tween and younger set. If you’re not that age, you may also be a member of one of the demographics affected – a parent, grandparent or friend of a Webkinz fanatic!
Webkinz are consistently in demand on eBay, so we decided to track the Webkinz activity monthly in this, our first installment of the Terapeak Webkinz Index.

The following is a report on the top 20 Webkinz sold on eBay during December 2007. The Successful Listings are the amount sold on eBay, and the Price column is the average price across those listings!

It’s no surprise that over the Christmas season Reindeer were a top seller, and check out the top dollar fetching Turtle Webkinz! Black Labs may sell more than their yellow cousins, but the Yellow Labs fetched a few more dollars per item.

Want more information on eBay sales? Visit http://terapeak.com – send any questions to support@terapeak.com .

 We’ve just released an exciting new promotion at Terapeak and wanted to be sure our blog readers heard about it first! Here’s the update:

This year Terapeak wants to make it that much easier for your online retail business to profit. For a limited time only, yearly subscriptions to Terapeak Research have been cut in half – to enable online sellers to make a serious dent in their cost of running business!

 If you’ve yet to implement market research into your business plan, the New Year is the ideal time to evaluate how market research can make a positive impact on your sales. Do you have items in your inventory that are under-performing? Or are you looking for the next-big-thing to hit the internet? Using Terapeak research can provide you with insight into these questions and more.

 Terapeak generates reports based on your keyword search, using closed eBay listings. Use the reports to determine the average value of goods, sell-through rate, seller competition, niche markets, HOT items, the best time to end your auction listings, top-dollar keywords, and much more. The reporting pages on Terapeak are fast, easy to understand, and accurate – all of the data is licensed from eBay and sent directly to Terapeak on a daily basis.

 If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to improve your online business, take advantage of this limited time offer and subscribe to a year of Terapeak Research for half off the regular price! We are so sure that Terapeak research will improve your sales and make you life-long users of the service that we are cutting the yearly subscription fee to get you started. Get started by visiting http://www.terapeak.com/special/