One of the most important factors to consider in pricing is your competitors. They are what your customers are most likely comparing your products to when making a purchase.

Knowing what they are doing will help you adjust your pricing and product offering.

One thing to note here is that you should differentiate handmade sellers from resellers who sell mass produced products. This is because you can never compete with resellers on price. Here are some ways to tell whether the seller is likely a reseller:

• Carrying a wide range of unrelated products
• Product photos are very different in style
• Missing or generic about page
• Generic selling points (e.g. “we aim to provide the highest quality …”)
• Watermark on photos

First, search the keyword that you are targeting, and pick the shops with good amount of sales/reviews. This can differ from niche to niche. But a general rule of thumb is picking shops with over 100 reviews. You may need to raise that number in competitive niches like ‘soy candles’ and lower it for less competitive niches.

Second, select 1-2 products from each of the shops. Choose the products that are the most similar to your ones.

Finally, analyse and take note of these two things:

• Price
• What do they offer (including the product itself, the features, packaging, shipping, guarantee, etc)

It’s important to keep these information in mind as they are what your target customers use to determine which shop to buy from.