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Making the Mo$t From Online Auctions
by Jennifer Savage
http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/unschooling_productions_llc/

Here are some basic dos, don’ts, terms, and definitions to give you a head start in making the most money from online auctions.

The Dos

Serious Business: Be professional with your auction listings and policies. You wouldn’t participate in an auction with haphazardly written descriptions and poorly outlined policies. Buyers will expect the same from you.

Vital Data: Too many auction descriptions are long and rambling. Include the vital data, such as the item’s date, manufacturer, and condition. Avoid vague, superfluous phrases, such as “chance of a lifetime!” Also, don’t bury your sales policies or make them unclear and open to misinterpretation.Give an exact deadline for payment, explicit shipping requirements and charges, and more specific information if necessary.

Photos: Seriously consider including photos with your auctions, particularly if you sell items that require more elaborate documentation and authentication. Using either a digital camera or scanner, you can include images and thus help prospective buyers get a better sense of what they’ll be purchasing. Fortunately, uploading images is very easy. Many sites now offer image hosting as a service, or you can host your images through third-party services. You might even provide a small close-up of specific markings that will further verify the item’s authenticity or condition. Finally, don’t use canned marketing shots or photos from other auctions. Take a photo of the actual item so people know exactly what they’re bidding on and don’t have to waste time asking you for images of the real deal.

Q & A Time: As a seller, answer serious buyers’ questions about your items or policies. Also, show that you value potential buyers’ questions by updating your listing with missing or newly acquired information.

Be Prompt and Complete: Contact the buyer immediately after the sale’s “end of auction” confirmation arrives. A prompt response to the buyer helps assure them that you are not backing out of the deal. Along the same lines, if you specify in your sales policy that you do not send inventory until a buyer’s check clears, also note that you will deliver the day the check is OK’d. This will reassure buyers, who might otherwise avoid your auction.

Provide more correspondence than “Send me my payment. Thanks.” The buyer will appreciate being able to easily identify you and what they bought without fishing through his or her files.

File your buyers’ shipping information so that it is at your disposal when their payment arrives or clears.

Leave Feedback: You can leave three types of feedback for your buyers: positive, negative, and neutral. Think of feedback as the checks-and-balance system of on-line auctions. It’s how users grade and critique each other. Posting feedback isn’t mandatory.

Ease the Shipping: If someone is buying multiple items from you, be a sport and let them combine the shipping. That is, ship the items together in one package, not separately, to avoid excessive shipping, handling, and insurance costs. As a result, you might get a repeat customer and will more than likely win some good feedback.

The Don’ts

Manipulator: As a seller, don’t ask a shill to drive up the price of your auction with fraudulent bids.

Interference, Ten Yards: Even if you feel a buyer has cheated you, don’t interfere with their current auction or any auctions by sending emails to the auction’s other participants. Give the user negative feedback on the auction site if you are convinced he or she is a danger to other members. In general, people don’t like Net cops.

Free Consulting: Avoid asking other sellers where or how they obtained a specific item. Their source probably gives them a competitive advantage. Revealing it could detract from their business.

Feedback Padding: Honest users really can’t stand members who have other people drive up their user ratings with fake positive feedback. Be ethical. Feedback padding undermines the entire system of trust. Moreover, don’t contact random bidders, claiming you are still waiting for reciprocal positive feedback. High-volume bidders are smart and they’ll recognize the scam. Instead of positive praise, you’ll probably get negative feedback.

Feedback Reprisals: If you did deserve negative feedback for not completing a transaction, stand up and take it like an honest user. Don’t engage in tit-for-tat retaliatory negatives. If people actually look at the feedback on a bidder’s otherwise clean record, they’ll spot your “neg” and ignore it. Also, the bidder will likely post a response, pointing out your retaliatory negative.

Make You a Deal: Offering to sell an item after an auction closes without any bids is generally not a recommended practice. But if you do opt for this approach, be sure to proceed carefully.

Call It a Gift: Don’t let a bidder ask you to classify merchandise as a “gift” or “sample” on a customs form so they can avoid paying certain taxes. Inadvertently, you could be charged with mail and customs fraud. Needless to say, you won’t be doing business with that bidder again.

Auction Lingo

Appraisal: The act or process of estimating an item’s value via expert authentication and comparative pricing in the open market. Appraised values can change as the marketplace valuation of an item increases or decreases.

As Is: Selling an item without warranties in regard to its condition and fitness for a particular use. The buyer is responsible for judging the item’s durability and lifetime. Also known as “as is, where is” and “in its present condition.” Typically, this is a sign that no return privileges will be granted.

Bid Cancellation: The cancellation of a bid from a buyer by a seller. During online auctions, sellers can cancel a bid if they feel uncomfortable about completing a transaction with a particular person.

Bid History: A historical list of all the bids made on a particular auction during or after the auction.

Bid Increment: The standardized amount an item increases in price after each new bid. The auction service sets the increment, which rises according to the present high bid value of an item.

Bid Retraction: The legitimate cancellation of a bid on an item by a buyer during an online auction.

Bid Rigging: Fraudulent bidding by an associate of the seller in order to inflate the price of an item. Also known as shilling and collusion.

Bid Shielding: Posting extremely high bids to protect the lower bid of an earlier bidder, usually in cahoots with the bidder who placed the shielding bid.

Bid Siphoning: The practice of contacting bidders and offering to sell them the same item they are currently bidding on, thus drawing bidders away from the legitimate seller’s auction.

Bulk Loading: Listing a group of different items in separate lots all at once using an online auction site’s bulk loading tool.

Buying Up Lots: The practice of buying all quantities of an item during a Dutch auction. This is typically done for resale purposes.

Caveat Emptor: The Latin phrase meaning “let the buyer beware.”

Cookie: A piece of information sent from a Web server to a Web browser that the browser software saves and then sends back to the server whenever the browser makes additional requests from the server.

Deadbeats: High bidders who don’t complete the sale by paying for the item they won.

DNF: Discuss eBay’s Newest Features board. This is one of the more lively, if not cantankerous, message boards in the online auction community.

EOA Notice: End-of-auction notice. These are email notifications that are sent by the auction sites (as well as sellers) notifying the buyer that he or she is the winning bidder. EOA notices also include information about the auction, such as the final bid amount and how much shipping will cost.

Escrow: Money held in trust by a third party until the seller makes delivery of merchandise to the buyer.

Feedback: One user’s public comments about another user in regard to their auction dealings. Feedback comments cannot be removed or changed once submitted to an auction service. Also known as fdbk or fk.

Featured Auctions: Auction listings featured prominently on the main page and category pages of an auction site. Sellers pay for this prime placement.

Feedback Padding: One user posting fraudulent positive feedback about another user and his or her auctions.

Final Value Fee: The commission charge the seller pays to the auction service after his or her item sells.

FVF Request: Final value fee request.

Grading: The process for determining the physical condition of an item. Different items have different grading systems.

Initial Listing Price: The opening bid price a seller attaches to his or her auction.

Insertion Fee: A fee paid by the seller to the auction site in order to list an item for auction, calculated as a percentage of the opening bid or reserve price.

Lot: A single auction listing.

Market Value: The highest price a property will bring in the open market.

Maximum Bid: The highest price a buyer will pay for an item, submitted in confidence to an online auction service’s automated bidding system to facilitate proxy bidding.

Minimum Opening Bid: The mandatory starting bid for a given auction, set by the seller at the time of listing.

NARU’d: An auction user term to describe users whose memberships have been discontinued. NARU is the acronym for “not a registered user.”

Neg: Short for “negative user feedback.”

Net Cops: Auction users who actively attempt to report instances of fraud, such as shilling or bid shielding, to online auction sites.

NR: Short for “no reserve.” This indicates in the item description line that the auction has no reserve price specified.

Opening Bid: The seller’s opening bid, which sets the opening price.

Outbid: To submit a maximum bid that is higher than another buyer’s maximum bid.

Proxy Bidding: To submit a confidential maximum bid to an online auction service’s automated bidding system. The system’s electronic “proxy” will automatically increase the buyer’s bid to maintain the high bid. The proxy bidding system will stop when it has won the auction or reached the maximum bid.

Registered User: A person who has registered as a member of an online auction service. All online auction services require registration prior to buying and selling.

Relisting: The relisting of an item by a seller after it has not received any bids or met its reserve price. Typically, the first relisting is free.

Reserve Price: The minimum price a seller will accept for an item to be sold at auction. This amount is never formally disclosed.

Retaliatory: The user term for retaliatory negative feedback, posted by one user in response to another user’s negative feedback.

Secondary Market: The buyer market for secondhand goods. Online auctions serve the secondary market.

Shilling: Fraudulent bidding by the seller (using an alternate registration) or an associate of the seller in order to inflate the price of an item. Also known as bid rigging and collusion.

Sniping: Outbidding other buyers in the closing minutes or seconds of an auction.

Starting Price: The mandatory starting bid for a given auction, set by the seller at the time of listing.

Terms of Service: A legally binding agreement that outlines an auction site’s terms of service. All registered users must agree to a site’s terms before using the service.

User Info Request: A request for a user’s background information, which provides personal information, such as his or her phone number.

WBN (Winning Bidder Notification): Another term for “EOA Notice”.

This primer should get you started with your online auction business. Feel free to click on the link at the top of this article; it will take you to our personal auction page. We specialize in teaching others how to profit from online auctions. If you’d like some one-on-one counseling by email we are happy to provide it to you. Just contact us and ask.

Jennifer Savage may be contacted at http://www.buyherbalifeonline.net jennifer@savage.vg. Click here to view more of their articles.
Jennifer Savage is a wife and a stay-at-home unschooling mother of four. (Unschooling is similar to homeschooling.) She also enjoys her other pursuits as an author, public speaker, business owner, and fashion model.