Getting robust sales research from eBay auctions has in the past not always been the easiest process. To get a large quantity of data, you'd have to run a program for a long period of time, sometimes overnight, and you may not have gotten all the statistics you wanted.

But, according to Gary Miles, CEO and Founder of Wise Research, which will soon release its "Wise Seller Elite" research product, "we're now looking at a new generation of eBay research services, which use data licensed from eBay rather than "scraping" eBay for the information." Sellers can now find a good deal of information on closed auctions much more quickly.

But just being able to find data is only half the battle for eBay sellers. You also need to know what information you want, and then what to do with that data in order to make more money. The Wise Seller Elite product offers a large number of tools to help you do just that.

One of the nicest things about the Wise Research suite of tools is that they offer different levels of products for varying research needs. The tools can serve everyone from the casual seller, who may not want to spend a lot of money on research, to the eBay PowerSeller, who needs very specific, granular information.

If you're familiar with some of the eBay research tools out there, you may remember the name "DeepAnalysis." What used to be known as Hammertap's DeepAnalysis program is now owned by BrightBuilders Inc., and both BrightBuilders and Wise Research have partnered to analyze data licensed from eBay. Each offers different versions of the DeepAnalysis tool. Wise Research http://www.wiseresearch.com develops products that are then sold to eBay sellers through retail vendors under private-label brands (like Hammertap), and also provides consulting services to major eBay sellers.

Wise Research offers DeepAnalysis 2.0 in different versions, Basic or Advanced, for 12-month licenses of $99 and $179, respectively. It also offers the Wise Seller Elite tool, which is currently available to an exclusive membership group. It costs $250 to join, but the future planned list price is $289. Wise Research will also offer an upgrade for any licensed user to Wise Seller Elite from the Basic or Advanced version for about $30.

If you don't want to lay out that much money upfront, especially if you are a small seller and/or don't have a big budget, Wise Research offers a more affordable option: the "Quick Pick Unit" (or QPU). A Quick Pick Unit offers information on a given eBay category with two reports and one file for just $9.

You can see a sample QPU report on the Wise Research site at http://www.wiseresearch.com/Software/QuickPick.asp. Select an eBay category in which you already sell, to refine your strategies, or you might check out a new category of items in which you are thinking of selling. The Quick Pick Unit gives you a wide range of robust data on the eBay category of your choice, starting with all the data on the auction titles, sales prices, start price, number of bids, auction type, etc.

I took a look at the Wise Seller Elite tool, which is Wise Research's most powerful research product. Because we are close to the new school year, I chose textbooks as a category to examine. Among other things, I learned that the highest priced item in that Textbooks category in that timeframe sold for $1110.01, and was the 2003 Kayton/PRG (Patent Resource Group) Patent Bar Review. I could see that the Kaplan USMLE (United States Medical Licensing) prep books were among the highest sellers in this category as well, selling for between $625 and $799 on the high end.

The Research Report Executive Summary gave me all kinds of statistics on all the auctions grabbed, 100,000 in all. (You can grab information on up to 100,000 auctions). I can see the average sales price (ASP) per Item in the textbook category was $18.81. There were $791,810.30 in Total Sales, with 42,087 Items Sold.

The research report is organized by tabs into the following sections: Research Report, Auctions, Sellers, Titles, Categories, Focus, and Summary, all packed with data.

The Research Report Tab gives you a summary of the category's statistics, such as number of auctions, total sales, and average sales price; as well as a breakdown of auctions using various features such as Bold or Gallery Picture and statistics about their success rates; statistics and graphs on the auctions' Starting Price Range and Ending Day, and more.

The Auctions Tab gives you all the raw data on the auctions themselves, where you can get into the nitty-gritty of the exact titles of the auctions, and even click into the auctions themselves to see the actual listings with photos. This is important, because it allows you to check to see whether the higher priced listings were presented better (better description, better photos, better seller feedback) than the lower priced items, or whether the higher priced items came with some extra features.

It also allows you to check for other anomalies, such as possible signs of shill bidding. I checked one of my search results and discovered both the buyer and seller of the highest-price auction were NARU (suspended by eBay). It's possible that this was one user with multiple accounts trying to pump up the selling price of his or her item. It's important to look for these signs before making business decisions based on the data.

The Sellers Tab gives you a rundown of the competition in that category: who's selling what, and for how much. (Unfortunately, because of eBay's policy on licensed data, the seller IDs are encrypted, so you won't be able to suss out the actual sellers on eBay, although you might be able to figure out who they are from other clues).

The Titles Tab lets you sort by, yes, title...and one thing that is interesting about this is you can see which items, such as which identical books, sold multiple times in that category.

One set of data that can be especially helpful to sellers is the breakdown by Auction Type: you can see what percentage of auctions with Buy It Now, Reserve Price, Dutch, Store items, or personal offer resulted in a successful sale; what the average sales price was for auctions of these type; what the total dollar sales for these types of auctions was; and more. This data can help you decide what "a la carte" auction features were effective, and which were not worth it. (As you know if you sell on eBay, all those fees can really add up!) And the ending-time data can help you determine how to tweak your auctions' timing in that category to increase sales.

The Focus Tab allows you to do research by keywords, upgrades, closing times, pricing or auction type.

The Summary Tab lays everything out in one spreadsheet: all the auction statistics are laid out by auction type, features used, ending times, etc. This is a great overview.

Parts of the reports are quite sophisticated, with bar charts that also have a plotted red line of auction success rate running through them. If anything, all the charts and graphs seemed a bit overwhelming, like more information than I could put to use, but the Wise Research guide does caution that sellers may need expert help, in the form of its consulting services, to make sense of all the data. For high dollar, volume sellers who can justify the cost, that may be a wise strategy. Tweaking even one small option, such as using Bold on more auctions, might make a big difference in their bottom line.

One of the most interesting things I learned from using the tool was how some conventional eBay wisdom seems to be off the mark, at least in some categories. For example, it's often stated that Sunday is the best day to end an auction, but as the Seller's Guide in the Wise Research Help files affirms, Sunday is not necessarily the best ending day for an auction. In category 1449 (a Judaica subcategory under Collectibles: Religions, Spirituality) for example, Sunday was the second lowest successful day to end an auction in terms of auction success rate, at 33.04%. Thursday was the best, with 37.57%, followed by Friday, with 36.39%.

When I looked at my textbook data, Monday had the highest percentage of total auctions compared to other days of the week at 16.54%, with 16,757 auctions ending. However, if you look at the auction success rate, then Saturday was actually the best day to sell textbooks, with a 45.26% success rate, compared with Sunday's success rate of 42.04%. (Auction success rate, also known as sell-through rate, is the number of auctions sold versus the total number of auctions listed. For example, if there are 100 auctions ending on Monday, and 50 of them sell with a winning bid, then there is a 50% auction success rate.)

Another result from Wise Seller Elite research that may surprise you: according to Miles, in several popular Consumer Electronics listing categories, the best times to end an auction are between midnight to 6 a.m.

All in all, I found the Wise Seller Elite product jam-packed with information, and I think it's a valuable addition to the world of eBay research products. It can help you as a seller to look at all the various factors that impact your bottom line, from how the competition is doing to what add-on features make the best sense for products in your category. If you're not sure if it's right for you, the Quick Pick Unit option for $9 is a good bet. I do think the tools are geared toward experienced eBayers who have the background to interpret the numbers and use them more wisely.

You may also want to check out Wise Research's recently opened affiliate program, open to all registered Wise Research members, which pays out a 25% commission on referred sales.

Wise Seller Elite seems to have everything but the kitchen sink (although you can get stats on kitchen sinks). Now, as to what to sell, that's up to you.

Clarification (published 8/25/04): Bright Builders is a member of the eBay Data Licensing Program and uses historical transaction data from eBay, and Wise Research works with Bright Builders.