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If
you are making the move from casual bidder to bona fide seller,
listing up to 50 items or more per week, it's crucial to have a
sales system and schedule in place. This way, you'll have time
for other business responsibilities, such as building up an
inventory, preparing items for auction, writing descriptions,
and so on. Here are some helpful suggestions on how to set up
your own sales model.
Computer
Literate
If you are shooting for the big leagues, you should probably
retire that ancient 386 computer. Invest in a Pentium-233
computer with a 56K modem, Super VGA video card, and 17-inch
monitor so that monitoring your auctions is not ridiculously
slow and painful. Also, if you really intend to make money,
consider paying for a more full-featured business account from
your ISP. Such accounts are not that much more expensive than
the cheapest consumer accounts, and provide better connectivity,
customer support, and features, such as Web site hosting and
added file space.
Listing
Schedule
Depending on the volume of items you'll be selling, create a
strict listing schedule. For instance, you may want to list
every other day at one specific time and use off days to prepare
descriptions, take photos, pack and ship items, etc. If you
intend to auction hundreds of items each month and list every
day, list exclusively in the morning, afternoon, or evening. An
added benefit of always listing at one set time is that your
auctions always will close at the same hour. This allows you to
send your end-of-auction confirmations in bulk, which can be
done seamelessly using Vendio's Post
Sale Management tool, available in AW's Auction Manager
service.
Speaking of Auction Manager, this AW
service features a "Schedule" option, which allows
sellers to specify the starting time of their auctions,
regardless of the time they submit the listing. In other words,
their auctions can be automatically listed while they are
offline. Moreover, AW's downloadable bulk lister Auction
Manager Pro v2.0 works in conjunction with Auction Manager,
allowing sellers to schedule the start times of hundreds of
auctions at once and bulk list them automatically at the date
and hour specified.
Auction
Database
Active online merchants who sell at online auction will require
an auction database where they can monitor their ongoing online
auctions from start to finish. In the early days of online
auctions, a spreadsheet program was the best bet. Sellers would
laboriously create a set of "fields" to track their
sales, entering in the auction item, auction lot number, listing
date, closing date, listing fees, purchase cost, reserve/minimum
bid, final bid, final value fee, buyer information (name, email,
address), payment method, shipping date, shipping, handling, and
insurance fees, and more. Worse, they would have to update the
data by hand on a daily basis--that is, if they had the time and
were truly motivated.
Thankfully, in the last year auction
services companies, such as Vendio, have developed robust online
solutions that automate the online auction process, from listing
and tracking to inventory management and fulfillment. For
instance, if you list your auctions through AW's Auction
Manager, it automatically enters their titles and lot numbers
into a secure database. Better yet, changes in your auctions'
price, bids, and hits (tracked via counter) are automatically
recorded and displayed on your account's password-protected
Control Panel screen, eliminating the need to manually record
the data in an offline spreadsheet. Moreover, all closed
auctions can be viewed separately as they end, so the seller
quickly can review their performance and restage them if they
weren't successful. (We'll discuss online inventory management
services below.)
If a seller's auctions close
successfully, Auction Manager's Post
Sale Management tool allows sellers to send customized
winning bidder notifications with one click. It also notifies
the seller when the buyer has responded to the WBN and tracks
the delivery of the item, and more. In short, automated online
post sale management tools can greatly expedite the fulfillment
process, allowing the seller to get on to the next sale and make
more money.
Incoming
Inventory
If you are buying inventory for resale, request that sellers and
suppliers deliver it on a specific day. This affords time for
prelisting activities, such as measuring, gathering source
materials, taking photos, and writing descriptions. It is also
wise to create a separate database for your inventory
independent of your auction database. This way, you'll have a
catalog of your items for reference during and after sales.
For this very purpose, online
inventory management tools have been added to best of breed
online auction management services. For example, AW's inventory
management solution enables sellers to keep all of their
inventory information cued online for immediate listing through
Auction Manager. Here, sellers can keep records of their
auctions, manage inventory using folders, preview their
inventory, and launch auctions right from the inventory area to
eBay, Yahoo Auctions, and Amazon.com Auctions.
Product
Descriptions
If you sell the same type of item often, you can save time by
writing a general description which can be pasted directly into
the auction's item description field. You can then easily modify
the specifics of the description so it applies to that
particular item. If you auction many different items on a
regular basis, consider staggering the listing of similiar items
so that you don't saturate the market and limit your results.
Also of note: AW's Auction Manager Pro
v2.0 now lets sellers set defaults for the repeating information
(i.e., your product descriptions) that goes into their listings
on eBay, Yahoo Auctions, Amazon.com Auctions, via the Profile
Manager.
Email
Use a dependable, full-featured email program, such as Eudora,
Microsoft Outlook which is integrated into Auction Manager, so
that you can filter emails from buyers into preset mailboxes.
This way you can quickly service your buyers' needs. Keep all
emails from buyers until you have received positive feedback
from the sale. Also create mailboxes for your own end-of-auction
notices, invoices, payment confirmations, and shipment
notifications.
Create templates for all email
communications, such as your EOA notification, which should be
sent the day or day after your auction closes. Of course, if you
use an online auction management service, such as Auction
Manager, that offers an automated post sale component, it will
likely send out EOA notifications automatically.
Outgoing
Inventory
As a rule, pick separate days to pack and ship all the items
that sold during the week, such as Tuesday/Wednesday and
Friday/Saturday. Make this schedule clear to your buyers in your
auctions and email communications. This will save you time and
prevent unnecessary trips to the post office. Also, as a rule,
require your customers to pay mail insurance on more valuable
items. And if you accept payment by check, state up front in
your sales policy if checks must clear before you'll ship. (See Formulating
a Sales Policy.) Finally, if you intend to sell in high
volumes, consider buying a postal scale with which you can weigh
your packages. For the sake of efficiency, you might also
consider renting a digital postal meter so you know exactly what
to charge your customers.
Hard
Copies
Create a system of hard folders in which you can file important
paperwork generated from your auctions, such as copies of your
end-of-auction notices, hard invoices, and postal and insurance
receipts. It is also wise to staple receipts to any paperwork
relating to that auction.
Back to Auction tips &
tactics
by Vendio Services
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