"If you can measure it, you can manage it." Perhaps a cliche, but true nonetheless.

eBay is a business any way you look at it. Sure, it can be an immense deal of fun for both the buyers and sellers, but when you look at it from another view point; you will see that it is a business from the seller's point of view, the buyer's point of view, and eBay's point of view.

More than 40 million dollars a day in business is transacted on eBay. Selling items on eBay successfully is an art AND a science. The good news is that eBay offers many different forms of quantitative information Research to enable you to determine that you are selling the right items, to the right people, in the right way.

Some of the data and research is not free, but much of it is. The available resources include hot items by category, eBay Pulse, merchandising calendar, sales reports, marketplace research, buyer behavioral report, and the eBay solutions directory. These tools are quite easy to use, and the information that can be gleaned from them is extremely valuable.

The Data and Research tools are all accessible through your seller's account, by clicking on the 'Advance Selling' link. Learn to use those tools, and get your piece of that more than $40 million that streams through eBay each day.