You've got a great product or service, you just know it will sell and either increase your sales or your leads or both. But how can you be sure?

  Marketing your product and services can be expensive and many times not as productive as you may have hoped. Purchasing leads, advertising space, banner exchanges and all the other ways to get the word out about your new or existing services, don't always produce the increase in sales you thought they would. Many times you don't even break even with your initial investment.

  One of the easiest ways to test your market and make some quick sales is to use a little company called Ebay.

  Ebay is a very low cost way to place a item up for bid. Millions of people are on Ebay everyday looking for a good deal and unusual opportunities.

  You can reach an unlimited amount of prospects by placing just one ad that can cost you pennies on the dollar.

  The best way to place the ad is to try the following:

• Search Ebay listings for similar products or services
• If you see any that are similar to yours, adjust your ad copy so that YOUR ad will stand out. ( Don't place your ad until you do this first. You don't want your ad up and running only to find out that someone else has a better ad and lower pricing than you.)
• Run the ad for the full 7 days.
• Put your domain name within the ad.

  Now Ebay does prohibit links to websites etc. But you can place a domain without a link ie. inetgoodies.com

  I also highly recommend that you create a "My Ebay" page. This page does allow for links and other ad copy directly for your website. Plus many people will check this out just to see if you are professional enough to set this up or just looking to make a quick buck on Ebay.

  Now you probrably won't make a fortune doing this type of market testing. The main benefit of using Ebay in this manner is that it will show if there is an interest in what you are offering.

  If you are getting a decent amount of views to the ad, bids and even inquiring emails. Then it is a good indicator that your product or service will sell and have a higher ROI when using higher cost advertising.

  This is especially true if you have a new product or a better version of whats already out there. But you can try this technique on any product or service you have.

  Trying this with new offers saves you money. If the new item or service etc. does not seem to be bringing any interest. Then you can save all that time and money in producing it, packaging etc. This is a great way to get your new offer off the ground without spending a dime on production before hand.

  I have found that Ebay buyers are the most hesitant of internet customers. So, if THEY are willing to buy what you offer, the general internet community will be even more apt to be interested in your offer.

  As a side note - by using the My Ebay page on Ebay, you do get to place a link to your site which is an inbound link and to some extent will help your site popularity with the search engines.

Jim Hoffman is co founder of Inet Goodies an Internet Resource Group focusing on helping people succeed online through several partner sites. Find out one of the easiest ways to get traffic to your web site free. http://www.inetgoodies.com/words.html