|
100 Auction Secrets Revealed! By Aubrey Johnson & Barkingbird Productions AuctionTip #60: Products to Auction at No Cost One
excellent way to acquire product to sell is by consignment. When you do this,
you're basically an auction seller for hire. This can be done with
friends and family and it is very easy to scale this up into a full-fledged
business. Today in
fact, while looking through the local newspaper I saw someone advertising
similar services. They took it a step further as well by offering to acquire
any item for a party for a fee. If you have
the time you could try your hand at it. You've got potential customers all
around you. You could
place ads. Contact business owners and ask them if you can auction their
products, services or anything they need to liquidate. I can
think of hundreds of people who want to sell their excess goods, but are just
too intimidated by the process to fool with it. Typically,
from what I've seen, the consignee pays 15% or more on goods sold. My
experience with this has been very interesting and I do know that it's a lucrative
opportunity- and very low risk. You could,
for instance, set up a small, on the side, consignment operation to help
compliment your normal auction business. This
could prove to be a great source of repeat business and referrals. It’s as
simple as running some ads in the local newspaper. If this sounds appealing to
you, look into it. This is
one other way around the product supply problem, which will always be there in
one form or another until you are your own source. AuctionTip #61: Testing Your Auction Ads In marketing there is a concept known as leveraging. It simply means getting the most out of your time. Or more specifically: getting the most from your advertising dollar. In
order to get the most from your auctions the critical ingredient of testing
comes into play. Services
like Andale.com offer free counters and image hosting and will give you an easy
free way to do this. Keep up
with your page hits and bids you receive on Dutch auctions. Test
different ads against one another. You'll be amazed that something as simple as
a more persuasive headline can explode your bottom line: It's a
critical tool for keeping up with and improving your auction results. Testing
is one of most essential ingredients to your overall success. If you want to
know what works best, you must test. One of
the drawbacks of testing is that your efforts could possibly bomb. It’s natural
to find something that works and stick with it out of fear of losing. Push
through that fear and keep trying to find better results. Your goal is to
establish an ad that is a winner. AuctionTip #62: The Notorious Auction Buyer Personality Types Here are
some of the personality types you'll bump into: ·
The
Impatient Buyer-
People are impatient and want their goods fast. The "Antsy Buyer" is
the embodiment of this time honored sales principle. Be patient with them...
explain things. ·
The
Post-Auction Heckler- Post auction heckler's think that the bargaining begins when the auction
ends. Put your foot down. Tell them no unless you have time for it. ·
The
Unhappy Buyer- Some
folks will be disappointed with your product or service regardless of how good
it is. Someone cut them off in traffic and they're taking it out on you. ·
The
Deadbeat- The most
irritating bidder in the world is the one who tells you, "The check is in
the mail"- of course it never comes... 1-4% of your auctions end this
way. AuctionTip #63: Places Where You Can Get Clipart Don't be afraid to weave
some image and graphics into your auctions- it makes for a good ad if you do it
judiciously. If you ever need
anything to spice up your description go to: http://www.clipart.com AuctionTip #64: You
Might Want To Do This On The Weekend... Make a mental note to
yourself to post feedback for buyers once a week- leaving posts as payments
arrive will quickly drain the life out of your day. Buyers get antsy and
hassle you about this stuff. Tell them you leave it in batches. AuctionTip #65: Save Money and Time on Relisting If your item doesn’t
sell the first time you list it, you'll be able to relist it at no additional
charge if it's a straight auction- this doesn't apply to Dutch auctions. Once the unsuccessful
auction is over, eBay will send you an email with a link. Click the
link and follow the instructions. Even that takes time. If
you don't want to change anything to improve your chance of success,
use Andale's automatic relist feature. AuctionTip #66: Use Asterisks in Your Item Titles There are a lot of items
up for auction on eBay, and it’s easy for your item to get lost in the
thousands of others. Use asterisks in the
title. Here’s an example: *****
ANCIENT_ROMAN_COINS! ***** Catchy isn't it? It
flags your prospects down doesn't it? This is so simple to do and yet so
powerful. AuctionTip#67: EBay Is Bugging Out! Apart from the occasional downtime, eBay is notorious for it's computer glitches. Some sellers get headaches trying to list their auctions using Internet Explorer. If you have ever tried to post and get the "Page Can't Be Displayed Error"- then you'll know what I'm talking about. This can be very, very annoying.o:p> Here are a
few workarounds that will work for you if this happens: ·
Post
auctions using Netscape. ·
Post
auctions using Mister Lister. ·
Make
sure the html isn't buggy. One way
sellers mess up is by including <html>, <head>, and <body>
tags in their ads. This has been known to cause the problem, so don't include
them. By the way,
you can include the body tag in the ad just as long as there is no close to it.
The only reason you would want to do this is if you had some background image
to use. Enemy
number one with html ads on eBay is bad table design. Bad table
design has cost me hundreds of dollars last year. How? Well, bad table design
might result in your ad being seen in one browser and not the other. Or no
browser at all- or loading too slowly, and so on- weird and irritating stuff
none of us have patience for. If you're
new to html steer away from using tables in your ads, especially if the ads are
featured... just dress things up with plain and simple html. AuctionTip #68: Use Bold Text Option in Your Titles
|