Auction Sites

Auction sites are websites devoted to providing this service over the internet, and they come in a variety of different formats. Because of the lack of restrictions imposed (such as space, audience, geography, etc), online auction sites have become increasingly popular and have boosted e-commerce sales figures significantly over the last five years. Buyers and sellers are both attracted to the fact that they can now both enjoy the competitive nature of an auction from the comfort of their own homes in real time.

There are a number of different types of online auctions:

English - The most popular and simple of all the auction formats, involving ascending bids for products whereby the highest bid wins at the end of a set period of time. Online auctions typically use this method as that is what people are more familiar.

Dutch - The price starts high and descends until a buyer is happy to accept it; a reverse of the English explained above. This is often used for the selling of different services. A large number of people believe this to be a fairer proposition than a typical auction as prices can't get driven up by bidding wars. For this reason they may present a better opportunity for buyers.

First Price Sealed Bid - whereby a one-off bid is made by all parties, with each bid being kept secret, and then simply the highest bid wins.

Vickrey - this type of auction involves the highest bidder only paying what the second highest offered for the product. It encourages honesty, with bidders tending to give the closest value to the item.

Bidding Fee - more commonly known as the 'pay per bid' or 'penny auction', this kind of auction is still relatively new and involves customers prepaying for bids, with the option of being able to increase bids during the process. It is a competitive form of auction, which has sometimes been compared to gambling (because of the risk of bidders spending a significant amount of money and receiving nothing in return). However penny auctions continue to be popular among consumers, and some of these auction sites offer a 'buy it now' feature so bidders can recover any bid costs when they don't win.

Many auction sites are available online, to suit every need of the consumer. A large number of these sites are generic in nature and will offer a wide range of goods, with customers able to locate whatever they want by entering keywords into the search box. Goods are stored alphabetically or within certain categories, with details of how many are available.

Customers can often choose whether they want to bid on goods, or whether they want to purchase without bidding. This now makes online auction sites more accessible to mainstream audiences; if a customer wants to buy a specific product online, an auction may offer the most convenient way of doing this. Prices are competitive and stock is generally plentiful.

Other sites offer much more niche goods, such as jewellery, guns or coins (many of these relating to particular hobbies). Again, the consumer has the choice of bidding or buying straight away.

However, there are many other sites now established on UK search engines, offering a range of services such as live jewellery auctions with 3 minute events, others for rare, vintage and collectable goods, person to person auctions and those dedicated to second hand products. Many sites are newly established and ask for buyers and sellers to support them and help to cement their growth and reputation.

With such ease of access and use, and catering for all needs, online auctions in the UK today are increasing rapidly.

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Simple Fundamentals to Selling Items on eBay

One of the easiest ways to make money on the Internet is by selling items on eBay. It does not matter if you are selling collectibles, antiques, toys, electronics, or just things that you do not want in your garages any more, there are a few key things that you should be aware of before you try to sell anything on eBay. This article will outline the some of those selling basics.

First of all, you need to know exactly what it is you are going to be selling. This is extremely important, if you do not know what the items is you are selling, it is quite hard to write a proper description, know its value, or even know who might buy it. You will need to know what the item does, what it is used for, what features it might have, how to use it and its potential value. Make sure to do this for every item you are going to try to sell on eBay. It might sound like a lot of work but with the help of Google, it can go by quite quickly.

Once you have figured out what the items are you are looking to sell on eBay, you will need to check to see if these items are in demand. This will take a bit more research. The reason for this is that there might be many things you want to sell but if there is not some kind of demand for these products, they will not sell. If you want to make money with eBay, you have to try to sell things that will actually sell.

Now that you know all about the items that you will list on eBay, the next thing to do is to find out a bit of information about your potential customers. By looking on eBay for similar items as well as in and around Google, you can find out what type of person might be interested in your items. This will make it a lot easier for you to target your descriptions, pictures and prices for these potential customers. By doing this, you are increasing the likelihood that your products will be seen by the people who will want to purchase them and result in more sales.

Next we move over to eBay itself. You will need to read their rules for selling items to ensure that you are not violating anything. Also, you will want to familiarize yourself with the entire process from both the seller's perspective as well as the buyer's point of view. Knowing what hoops the buyer has to go through in order to buy your items will help you make the selling process go much easier as well as possibly catch problems with customers before they happen. From your side of things, looking into how to create, setup and optimize your account before you actually take the actions will make everything go smoothly. You do not want to find out 2 months down the road that you missed a critical step in the process that has now come back to bite you in the behind.

Once you know all about eBay it is time to move onto payment processing, so you can actually collect some money for your sold items. The easiest and most convenient payment process for eBay is PayPal. It is completely free for people to open an account and it allows you to accept PayPal money transfers as well as most major credit cards. They have been around for a long time and are used a lot for buyers and sellers on eBay.

Last but not least, you need to make sure that you have a good digital camera on hand. So many items do not get sold because the pictures are blurry and you just cannot tell what the item is or the shape that it is in. So if you want to buy one(from eBay even) or borrow one from a friend, make sure that it takes good quality photos of your items.

If you follow these few basic fundamentals when it comes to starting to sell items on eBay to make money, then you will start off on the right foot. If this sounds like too much work or is too complicated, the other option is to use an eBay Consignment Service. All you have to do it send them some quick information about your product with a few photos. They will determine if it has a chance of selling and then will do all the work of listing and selling the item for you. For a small fee of course but it is a small price to pay for someone else to do the work for you.

This article is brought to you by SINGLES.

5 Tips to Find Reliable and Legitimate Drop Shipping Companies

Nowadays finding a list of legitimate drop shipping companies is a hard nut to crack as online scams are increasing day by day. There are huge number of companies out there claiming to be legitimate drop shipping companies but actually they are middle-men trying to shrink down your profit to earn their commission between you and legitimate drop shipping companies. Therefore, if you want to maximize your business profitability, you should look for legitimate drop shipping companies as it can be very crucial for your success.

Here are some helpful tips to find legitimate drop shipping companies:

Online Research: Internet has made research very easy for everyone. Thus, if you are looking for legitimate companies, you should research online and shortlist some of them by checking their history. After that you can do some background checks to verify the current repute of a company. This way, you will be able to filter out a list of reputable and legitimate drop shipping companies.

Participate in Trade Exhibitions: Trade exhibitions can be a great place to meet reliable drop shipping companies as only legitimate companies would participate in them and in this way; you would also get an opportunity to meet your suppliers in person to get yourself satisfied if they are legit.

Get Information from Trade Associations: Trade associations can provide valuable information to find out legitimate drop shipping companies. These associations are representing all legit businesses and if you are looking to find out about some company, trade association can be a best place to get verified information.

Consult Better Business Bureau (BBB): Better business bureau can also be another good option to find out about legit companies. Secondly, they can also provide you an information, if there has been any recent complaints filed against that company by any customers. This way, you can easily find out if a company is legit.

eBay Certified Solutions Provider: You should go for a company which is eBay certified solutions provider as they only provide this certification to legit companies after doing complete verification. This way, you will not have to do any research about a company if it is an eBay certified.

If you will follow above-mentioned tips carefully, you will not only be able to find out a list of legitimate drop shipping companies easily and you save your business from getting scammed but it will also increase your business growth as you will be able to sell real wholesale products at retail prices.

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