This post was contributed by Chad Rubin, a TOP 250 Amazon Seller, CEO of Crucial Vacuum and Skubana. Skubana is an all-in-one ERP system that fully integrates with your eBay & Amazon sales channels giving you true insight in your profits, and real-time inventory updates.

Good, you know how to optimize your listing.
Great, you know how to market your product.
Awesome, your products are selling well and have earned a nice flow of cash.

But then you feel it – the boredom of monotony. Selling is fine, but the real fun of e-commerce is selling MORE than your competition. Sorry – CRUSHING your competition.

Our past posts have had a strong focus of micro view into your business: optimizing your Amazon listings, repricing your products, utilizing your customer reviews and more.

But now we’re taking a macro look at your business. How do you benchmark yourself and compare yourself to other businesses? How do you peek at your overall market and crush the competition. Here’s where things get interesting:

There’s a whole website designed for that.

Checking Your Brand’s “Pulse”

Marketplace Pulse is the go-to tool for gauging your brand’s success in its market. This website will end up in your “I Can’t Stop Checking This Site” list of bookmarks. Typing in your business’s name, we explore a mini biography of your Brand that both provide insight and a small stroke of your ego.

Go ahead, and enjoy what they have to say about you. We’ll just look away.

Back? Cool.

Just as you received a small anecdotal bio of your business, you can view the same for everyone else.

It’s Not Stalking If You’re Learning Something

First, let’s learn from your direct competitors – you know those pesky folks who attach to your listings and battle you for the buy box.

Now you have the insight into which categories their products are heavily invested in, the brands of products they usually stock and where they are ranking.

Here’s the best part: You can see what their top selling Amazon products are. Check their highest revenue generators and stalk those listings.

Those three blog posts we mentioned at the start of this post? Use those best practices to analyze what your competitors are doing WELL and do it even BETTER. Why are they winning with these products? What makes these products perform better than your competitor’s competitors?

And in this case, your competitor’s competitor is not your friend – it’s another to track, hunt and dominate.

Don’t Stop At Amazon

Marketplace Pulse just recently added support for eBay. Have an eBay store? Expand these practices to eBay and crush competitors there as well.

You’ve built your business from the ground up. You’ve learned how to sell, market and show your consumers why your product is deserving of their money – but now, you have to show your consumers why your competitors’ DOES NOT.

Marketplace Pulse is an exceptional research tool and we’re not kidding about adding it to your bookmarks. While working on optimizing your business, you should always check how your competitors optimize theirs and benchmark your brand relative to the competition.