These days we should all be used to online auction sites.
Those years we lost a little while ago saw a massive increase in the number of online auction sites. After a while, they all started looking and feeling exactly the same.
There wasn’t much that separated them from each other than their site name being some pun about online auctions.
What did come as a surprise was how many different kind of groups were using them. From schools to community groups and collectors, there were lots of people using these sites.
We never really thought we’d ever need to set up an account with an online auction site. But we did.
A couple of our industry friends suggested running an auction or two to help us with content and promotion. And that it would be something fun to do every few months or for special items.
Genius we thought! But then we discovered the work involved in finding an auction site.
The Search Is On
Yuka and I spent time looking at what different sites offered and if there were any costs for running an auction, or if there were any nasty hidden fees. It took us a longer than I ever expected.
It turns out lots of the sites that say you can run a free auction actually mean you can set up an account for free and do some basic things. But then you had to start paying up to have the auction listed on the site, or included in searches of the site, or make minor changes to the storefront.
On other sites they didn’t have great reporting or didn’t allow relisting items that didn’t get auctioned, or they offered minor cosmetic extras but then you had to cough up “commission fees” which could really hurt your profits.
Let’s face it most auctions are not going to make you a millionaire unless you got some famous painting or have a collection of old toys, comics or outfits.
And who has that just lying around the house?!
The Light At The End Of The Tunnel
Yuka found this site ebid.net
It was easy to set up an account. They provided clear instructions on setting up the auctions and listing items in auctions. They didn’t have hidden fees, or try to take a cut and you could run basic auctions for free!
You could relist items easily but with a free account you couldn’t relist more than a couple of times and various options to help sell your items couldn’t be used at the same time with a free account.
What really surprised me was that for a pretty small one-off fee, you could get every service they offered. Seriously! It was a one-off fee and it wasn’t going to cost us meals or our precious daily coffees.
We found the online auction site for us
ebid.net while not as slick as other sites has all the tools you need to run successful online auctions. They have an excellent listing search tool and make it easy to ensure you list your items under categories and sub-categories that optimize the likelihood people will see your listings.
Helpful, easy to understand guides about photographs, using categories and sub-categories effectively and item descriptions really helped us a lot.
They have features to help you promote and market your auctions, individual items and your storefront. And if something doesn’t sell, you can relist it, alter descriptions to improve its sale ability, and even give people the option of making offers while it’s listed for auction.
ebid.net was easily the best, easiest and most cost-effective way to organize, prepare, market, promote and run online auctions.
And they do it all by offering a very reasonable one-off fee. Oh yeah that fee is lifetime! It’s a one-off fee that for the lifetime of your auctioneering desires or until the site/company winds up, you’ll get all the features they offer.
You can select different levels of ‘membership’ but since the one-off fee was so reasonable, we didn’t bother worrying about what level of membership gave us different benefits.
Do yourself a favour and save yourself the headaches – if you want to run successful online auctions then head straight to ebid.net
Bonus Content
From all the research we ended up doing we learned a few things. We came up with a list of things to look for when you’re searching for an online auction site to suit you.
But believe us – just go to ebid, set up an account and get that auction going!
Anyway here are our tips for things to look for when selecting an online auction site.
Tips for Selecting an Online Auction Site
- Make sure the link for the sign-up page includes the core site link for the auction site you want to sign up for. If it doesn’t then it should raise a red flag that this site is potentially fraudulent and scraping emails and personal info for sale on the digital market.
- Too many uses of the word “free” – don’t use them because you’ll end up having to pay to run auctions or they’ll take a huge commission on each item auctioned. The free bit was signing up.
- Having to pay for basics like a storefront or to added to their search listings means you will pay more over time.
- They don’t offer guides on making auctions more successful then they aren’t really interested in helping their users be successful and don’t care about protecting their users whether they are sellers or buyers.
- They don’t offer protection for sellers is a big red flag. If they aren’t going to protect you from people who charge back after you’ve posted the item, then they don’t care about your success which ultimately affects them.
- The auction mechanism doesn’t allow for re-listings or allow you to stop an auction then don’t use them.
- They don’t offer ways to promote your auction or items being listed, then they aren’t supporting you, and it’s a good sign that you’ll have to pay for this.
- If they tell you there are payment delays then you should be suspicious about their activities and whether they’re scamming you and buyers.
- They should require verification of your account and depending on what you are trying to auction, age verification for you and your potential buyers.
- If they don’t provide guidance on how to do key things like having high quality photographs of your items you’re auctioning, if they don’t tell you the dimensions of key things like banners, then you’re going to find it hard to be successful, and they’re probably going to spam you about how they can help you for a ‘small fee’.
- Save time and headaches and use ebid.net – we’ve spent the time doing the research and they really are the best in our opinion.
Good luck with your auctions and may you make your millions with that Picasso you’ve been hiding in the basement.
DISCLAIMER: all the people appearing in our photos and videos are adults – we have verified their identification and proof of age. They have provided enthusiastic consent to be involved in our productions, as well as SIGNED A model release. Any concerns should be directed to us immediately here.
