No Reserve Auctions
Published on April 3, 2009 by steve in TM Auctions
This post in the first in a series of tips we will be publishing to give web auction site owners and auctioneers some pointers to making their auction site a success. Whether you use our web auction software TM Auctions or another web auction platform, the first hurdle is always engaging your buying audience.
No Reserve auctions, particularly $1 No Reserve auctions are a simple concept – the auction has a pre-determined minimum bid, and any bid matching or exceeding that minimum bid will result in a sale. So if you start an auction with a minimum bid of $1, and only one bid is placed, the item will sell for $1.
You might think this is a huge risk on the part of the seller, but its much more of a calculated risk. Obviously you should avoid listing something you think you would lose money on. So does that mean you should list junk items in the hope of gaining some feedback/reputation? No!
In fact the No Reserve $1 category should contain only quality items. Just take a look at the items listed in this $1 No Reserve category. Any day of the week, we can confidently say that the more expensive looking items will attract the most bids – whereas the cheap stuff is probably rotating without a single bid.
Not only do quality no reserve auctions receive the most bids and deliver the most profit to the seller, but they increase the site’s popularity. If you put on your buying hat, would you be comfortable bidding $1 or $100 on your very first bid? Buyers will often test the waters in no reserve, and quickly gain confidence with the system and with the sellers.
See also our article on Reserve Auctions.
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