Common Misconceptions Of Auction Websites

Users new to online auction websites often require some time and help before they completely understand the auction platform and start winning auctions. It's not any fun for a new user to struggle on indefinitely. You should enjoy yourself while taking part in online auctions. It's natural to feel daunted going into your first couple of auctions, so here are some common misconceptions of auction websites, as well as some tactical advice for you beginners that you should consider when devising your plan of attack.

1. Setting unrealistic expectations

This can't be stressed enough, but users need to set realistic goals when participating in online entertainment auctions. If someone is new to an online auction, he or she shouldn't expect to win a laptop on the first try with only the cheapest bid pack available. Not saying it couldn't happen... it definitely could and it has happened. BUT, it is highly improbable. Know and expect that you'll be bidding against users with far more experience.

While everybody loves an underdog, we encourage new users to start using auction sites by participating in smaller auctions first. After all, you've gotta crawl before you can walk, right?

2. Going for the big catch

It's not wise to immediately go after the most popular item on an auction site. There are a lot more competitors vying for the popular products, and many of them are our highly skilled veterans. Once acquainted with the site, you'll then understand that going after popular products warrants certain measures to protect your bid investment. It is recommend that you commit to only one such auction at a time and that you don't get too involved without considering using the "Buy Now" feature (if you don't win, that is).

Don't spread yourself too thin when bidding on the big-ticket items. Be willing to devote more time and money to increase your winning. It's been found that any participant willing to spend about 1/3 of the value of the item in bids greatly increases his or her odds of winning the item.

3. Jumping right in

By limiting your understanding of the system, you are setting yourself up at a severe functional disadvantage. As with anything you invest your money in, do research before jumping into entertainment retail auctions. Each auction is going to be different from the others, so read and understand the Terms & Conditions on the site, familiarize yourself with the "Buy Now" option, the automatic bidding tool, and pricing structures. We also recommend carefully watching other auctions to see how they unfold. All this will help you to understand "the nature of the business" and to help build your overall bidding strategy.

Online auctions should be a fun and exciting experience for customers. A stronger grasp on the online auctioning system will help enrich your experience and facilitate a better, more fun shopping experience.

Making Money Online Out of Auction Websites - Moving Your Business Online

An introduction

First of all you need to know why is important that your offline business is to be moved online or enhanced by making an online side of your business. The main reason for moving your business to the online mode is that you can reach a whole new range of customers and you can reach them much faster and easier. This will give a boost to your business and your profits will grow.

Getting your tools together

For this you need to get hold of the proper tools. First of all you need a domain name for your website. Think on a good name, something to represent your business, your auction business maybe. You will have to get this domain, from a domain registrar, and there are tons of them out there. They usually sell the domains, at around 10-20$ a year.

The second thing you will need to is to get a hosting space for your website. For starters you can get a shared hosting, though a vps would be better. The best and most expensive is to get a dedicated server, but at first you don't really need it. After this you have to link your domain name to your hosting. Either do that yourself or hire someone at 10$-30$ an hour to do this.

The last part is to get an online auction software. There are plenty of resources available for this already. There are free scripts, which work good until you bump into a problem and since they are free you don't have where to complain when that happens. Also there are paid options available which work better since you are getting a lot of support for your payment. This second option is better for non technical users which just want their auction website to be online without any technical knowledge.

They usually look for turnkey solutions, something ready made. Here is how WordPress comes in hand. Its a very good cms, and basically these days all sites are migrating to it. You can use an auction theme for WordPress and you will be amazed on what this can do. By using WordPress you can also forget about seo, because it does that automatically as opposed to classical auction scripts. By only using a plugin (you should know WordPress benefits from thousands of free plugins) you can maintain your website at high seo standards. The plugin will do this for you.

You can see more in the resource box about WordPress auction themes since they are the php auction scripts of today and of the future. And they come with a bunch of monetization features, like taking a percent or a fixed fee out of the final price and many more.

Launching your website

After all of that you can just launch your website and expect visitors. Don't forget marketing and publicity is also important on these kind of online businesses. Also paid web advertising is a solution for that.