Many a times we find people fail in business and going bankrupt. If we dwell deeper for reasons, we find that the people venture into business without putting together a business plan in place. For any business to succeed it is imperative that we have a good business plan before we launch into it. Over the years the online auction business has taken the world by storm. And to sustain and succeed in the competitive online auction business, we must act in line with the business plan we create for our business.

From my own personal experiences, I tried to put together what it takes to create a business and how should we go about with it, that I’m sharing with you today.

The online auction sites are an excellent to sell a product for a good price. What makes it so different from the conventional stores and malls is you have all the time in the world to surf the listings and more so, the bidding takes place for days not minutes. It is an excellent opportunity for budding entrepreneurs to make a successful business by selling real estate properties to use cars if you have the persistence and the will to do it.

The Fundamental Idea

Basically your primary role is to play an intermediary role of a catalyst helping people buy products of their choice. To get started, you don’t need to stock items for you can start placing drop shipper’s items on auction sites. This concept is by those who don’t wish to stock inventory of products sold for future delivery through mail order, catalogues and Internet Advertising. When you send single unit orders to the manufacturers or major stock distributors, they in turn ship the item directly to the customers found at online auction, benefiting them by savings on advertising and costs to middlemen. This way your stocking inventory risks are minimized with added savings on storage, insurance, overhead and keeping them until sold.

Advantages:

Starting a business with minimum capital. You lose a few dollars in eBay fees if your items don’t sell.

Disadvantages:

The hindrance is no public information on general sales methods and techniques used. Time is essence, you’re required to work all the time to run the business, since this is not a passive income method.

Mistakes to Avoid:

Keep in mind the days when auctions are in full swing, usually on Sunday evenings. A wrong auction expiration time could be fatal.

Give adequate attention to your listings. Provide complete information to the prospective bidders so that they can act fast. Avoid flashy designs and animated texts. They only make customers irritating, resulting in loss of business.

People usually don’t bid on Reserve. Avoid it. Obviously the customers don’t like to receive a message ‘Reserve not yet met’ message.

The fundamental rule for any business is having a Business Plan. The fundamentals must be strong. Have a definite business plan and work accordingly.

Stability is the key. Your business model must be stable. Keeping changing the suppliers and manufacturers otherwise you could get bogged down with a few only.

Pradeep Aggarwal is the creator of Auction Spectrum the online auctions hub. This site is dedicated to helping people start and run a successful online auction business by providing Internet Marketing Tools to build profit making websites.

Share This

There are two ways to buying on ebay or other auctions the easy way or the hard way! I prefer the easy way and leave the hard way alone altogether, as it is not required.

First of all you have to be a member of ebay or other auction so if you are not and would like to be a member then Visit my site at the URL in the Resources Box. Once you have become a member you can browse through the categories that you wish to by using the search box provided by ebay or other auctions.

It is fairly easy to use just type in what you are looking to buy e.g. Car then go to the right of the search bar and scroll through the categories list make your selection and then a new screen pops up with a page of the items for sale.

Browse through the lists or pages until you find what you are looking for and then click on the item that you like.
When inside the sellers description page you will find a description and other details of the item that is being sold and if the seller has more items for sale it usually says this at the bottom of the page.

It also tells you how many people have bid on the item and has a box for you to enter a bid. What you must never do is bid on the item until you have checked the seller out.

You check the buyer’s feedback by clicking on the seller’s feedback details usually in the box at the top right hand corner of the item description page. You must check this out. Normally you will see a figure in % like 100 %, 97.5 % or even less. This is the persons Feedback Score at that moment in time. You MUST NOT go by this Feedback Score

When you select Feedback you will see another page with several tabs and these tabs tell you whether the feedback is for selling or buying. You are not really interested in the sellers buying feedback you are only really interested in the sellers Selling Feedback. Click on that tab and read all of the comments to see what feedback has been given to this person as a seller.

This is what you really need to examine because the comments here should determine whether or not that you buy from this seller. Don’t take all the comments as gospel because what you also have to remember is that most people will put a positive feedback comment on because they do not wish to receive a negative comment in return.

A lot of the comments may be automated and you can tell these apart from the others because of the way the comments are displayed. Automated comments usually have all sorts of characters and patterns before and after the comment.

What you are looking for is the comments by people who are not themselves general sellers on ebay. These people also would not like negative comments returned to them if they had placed a negative comment about this seller. So how do you find out?

What you do is read as many comments as possible and after a while you can tell which ones were happy and which ones were not. For instance if someone puts a comment like this “As good as their word on refunds”. Can be interpreted as the person bought the product and it was not suitable but the seller gave the purchaser a Refund which in it self deserves a positive feedback comment because the seller refunded the buyer. (After all it is great when you get your money back if your not happy with the product or service).

The buyer should also get a positive feedback comment as the buyer bought the product or service in good faith and paid for it even though they got a refund.

On the other hand if someone leaves a positive comment such as, ” Delivery ok but would not buy again”, could be interpreted as “Delivery great but would not buy again because the product or service was not suitable or damaged or mis-described”.

This means that the seller could possibly be over describing the product or service or just plain mis-leading the potential buyers.

This is what you have to read all of the comments for and then analyze them carefully. Only do this to relevant buyer or seller comments depending on whether you’re buying or selling. It does not matter what you are doing Buying or Selling as long as you analyze the correct comments. e.g. Buyers comments from other sellers if your selling items, Sellers comments from other buyers if your buying items.

Once you have done all this work you still do Not want to buy yet. (What after all this work!) :o(

That’s right you still have a little more work to do. DoH!

What you must do now is go back into the items page and see if there are other similar items for sale and see what prices they are going for.

Having done this and done the same checks on other sellers if the items are of a similar price you can then make a more informed decision about buying the product or service.

This only leaves one more thing to do and that is to bid on the item. Do yourself a favour and do not bid on the item if it has days or several hours to go. The reason for this is simple bid early you then have an agonizing wait to see if you win or have to put in a higher bid.

If you wait until the last ten minutes or so of the auction ending for this item you will have a better idea of what the final price will be. If you’re quick (within the last couple of minutes or so) there is a very good chance that you will get the item that you want at the price you bid without having to raise your bid.

You only need to do this if there are several bidders on the item or service that you want to buy. If no one else has put a bid in then you should definitely get the item if you place your bid on it in the last few minutes.

Just a word of caution here though! there are a lot of people out there who wait until the final moments in order to place their bid in the hope of getting it cheap if no one else has put a bid in. So you may get pipped at the post. :o(

There is a name for this type of bidding and they even have programs for it. So that the professional ebayer can put bids on several items at once without even being on ebay at the time the auction ends for these items. This Technical term is called Sniping and if you wish to learn more just look up Sniping in Google or Chris may even have an article about sniping here at EzineArticles ;o)

Don’t forget to leave a positive comment about the item you have purchased if you are happy with it. Leave out the comment until you are satisfied with the item. If there are any problems with the item get in touch with the seller and give them a chance to sort out any problems.

Once the problems are sorted then you can leave a good positive feedback comment. That way everyone will be happy, don’t forget to ask for positive feedback for yourself. You may need it one day!.

If problems do not get sorted then notify ebay or whoever first to see if they can help, if they cannot then give the seller one last try. If you still have no joy then leave a carefully worded negative comment so that other ebayers know what you think of this seller.

But you will have to be prepared to receive negative feedback in return especially if the seller is fraudulent and or deceitful or even just spiteful!

Thankfully there are more good people than bad out there! Just be careful!

There you are and you thought buying on ebay or other auctions was simple! It is really, once you get the hang of it ;o) and it’s great when you get the bargain’s that you want at the price you want without getting fleeced.

Copyright 2006 Author P.D.Evatt

Author P.Evatt has more Tips, Articles, Internet Marketing Tools, Tips, Advice, Resell Products and Ebooks free or for resale at:

http://BizeMarketing.com/Marketing

Share This

Nowadays most people are aware of what Online Auctions are all about. Most of us have, at some time or the other bought or sold something on Online Auctions. But very few people know that Online Auctions can be a very profitable home-based business. A lot of people worldwide have made a lot of money with their online auction sites.

To start a home-based Online Auction business is very easy. Unlike other home-based businesses, it requires no investment. All it requires is a few moments of your time to get started. The advantages of starting a Home-Based Auction Online are -

No investment is required; hence there are no financial risks like other businesses.

There are no fixed working hours. You can choose to work when it is convenient to you.

No technical skills required.

You can get your Online Auction Business started in less than 10 minutes.

Wow! That sounds real easy does not it? Well it is. No wonder that people all over the world are making thousands of dollars with their home based online Auctions.

Now let’s get down to the details of how to get started with your home-based Online Auction, first and most important, you have to get an idea how Online Auction works. To get an idea you can visit various online auction sites like:

http://www.ebay.com
http://www.auctions.yahoo.com
http://www.ubid.com
http://www.onsale.com
http://www.qxl.com

It’s easier to understand how auctions work if you have first hand experience of buying an item on an online auction. You become familiar with how to register with an auction site, how to place your bids and how to make payments and receive delivery of your goods.

What You Buy is Up To You:

Even if you want some item very badly, do not buy it because it is the last item of its kind available on the auction site. It might be over priced. You can try to best to get what you want at other online auction sites.

Late is Best:

It is always best to leave your bid till the last few minutes before the closing of an auction. This prevents the price from being driven too high.

No Time? Then Automated bids are the Best:

If you are hurried for time then automated bids are the best way for you to place a bid online. You can use automated bidding sites like eSnipe http://www.esnipe.com.

You can open a free account on eSnipe. When you want to make a bid all you have to do is type your bid amount. eSnipe automatically places the bid for you before the closing of the auction. You pay eSnipe a small amount if you win your bid, otherwise you pay nothing.

Lookout for Wrongly Spelt Items

Many items on a home-based Online Auctions are wrongly spelt. You can use this to your advantage, as there will be less people searching for wrongly spelt items.

Buying and paying for an item online teaches you how things work from a buyer’s point of view. This gives you a good idea about what kinds of customer services you can offer buyers on your own online auction site.

List Unwanted Items

Now lets get into how to start setting up your own home based online auction. Look around your home. You’ll see many things that you have no use for. You can also ask your friends for unwanted items. Make a list of all these items on your site as well as their photographs. There is nothing like a photograph to instantly grab the attention of the buyers.

Description of Items On Sale

This is very important as it give your buyers a good idea of want they will get. Make sure that you give all the technical and detailed descriptions of items on sale.

Offer A Guaranteed Refund

To convince your buyers about your honest approach to business and your integrity, offer to refund money if the goods sold by you are less than satisfactory.

Feed Back Forms

Positive Feed Back forms are an absolute necessity to show your prospective buyers that you have satisfied customers. And to have satisfied customers your quality of service has to be very good. Positive feedback reassures your prospective customers of your integrity.

Set a Reserve Price

Always sell items on your home-based Online Auction site for what it’s worth. Never ever sell it for less than its value. To do this you need to set a reserve price, below which you will not sell. Make sure that your reserve price is not too high, as it will scare customers away.

Different Payment Modes

Make your site more customer friendly by offering a number of payment options, like credit cards, Pay Pal (www.paypal.com) etc. Make sure that all payments are secure.

Now that you have all the necessary details on how to start your home-based online auction business think of catering to a niche market. This will reduce the competition from other online auction sites.

Remember that it is within you to earn thousands of dollars with hardly any investment.

Good Luck

Pradeep Aggarwal is the creator of Auction Spectrum the online auction hub. This site is dedicated to helping people start and run a successful online auction business by providing Internet Marketing Tools to build profit making websites.

Share This