Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Niche Auction Sites
by Aaron Turpen
A special presentation courtesy of The eBay® PowerSeller's Book of
Knowledge: Second Edition
http://www.AaronzWebWorkz.com/ebaybook.shtml
For many sellers, finding the right items to sell is only half their
battle. Finding a place to sell it can sometimes be just as
challenging. After all, if you're selling a rare or hard-to-find item,
you will most likely find success at the larger sites such as eBay and
Yahoo. Sometimes, though, those sites don't work out as well as you'd
hoped. Or maybe you'd like to supplement the sales there and expand to
another site. In either case, you'll most likely be searching for a
niche to move into with your product.
This is where the power of the Internet really comes into play. The
Internet is broad, powerful, and heavily populated with people willing
to buy if they see something they really want. Like any mass media,
you need to target your intended audience to focus your sales and get
the best results. Luckily, the Internet seems made for this!
Online auctions are a great way to not only find customers, but
encourage sales. If you look for them, you can find auction "niche"
sites which specialize in a specific type of auction or a specific
type of item for sale. These sites combine the best of both worlds:
online auctions AND targeted buyers!
The first step is finding the sites you want to use for your auctions.
A good tactic for this is to use Google or The Open Directory
(dmoz.org) and search for the item (or similar items) to what you wish
to sell. Most likely you'll come up with quite a few hits. Narrow the
search as far as you can. Include words like "auction" or "sell" in
your search terms along with the item. Once you have the list as
narrow as you can get it, begin checking out the sites in the results.
Many of them will be retail outlets, "fan" pages, and hobbyist
"how-to" pages. Some of these are useful - especially the last -
because they may include links to good niche sites for selling at
auction. It may take some time, but eventually you should have at
least one (try for two or three) sites that specialize in your item
for sale at auction.
Now check the sites out thoroughly before you sign up or use them.
Peruse the lists from the buyer's prospective. Are there plenty of
listings? Do they seem to have a fair amount of bids, watchers, or
visitors? Now look at it from the seller's prospective: read their
information on selling. What will it cost? How long do the listings
last? What are their policies for returns, refunds, privacy, and so forth?
Once you have decided on a site or two to list on, begin blowing away
the competition with the skills you're learning here in this book.
You'll find that most of the sellers on these sites are fairly
amateurish - using ugly listings, badly taken pictures (if any
pictures are used at all!), and atrocious descriptions of their
product. Take advantage of this and make your listings shine in
comparison. You'll find that, at most niche sites, the sellers are
much less refined than they are at eBay and the competition is most
likely much less fierce. The tradeoff is usually the visibility -
after all, on eBay, the people visiting your auction are usually
measured in the hundreds or thousands whereas on niche sites, they'll
be more likely to be measured in tens. You can make up for this by
listing your items at a fair price to begin with - rather than having
to stoop to the ".01 auction" to get attention as you would on eBay
and risk losing your shirt when only one bidder tries for the item.
Another bonus to these smaller sites is that they usually have looser
rules than eBay and the bigger auction sites do. You may be able to
cross-post your item on more than one site because the delisting rules
are simple so if the item sells on one site, you can remove it from
another. This is a great bonus as you can spread the visibility of
your item and therefore boost sales of them.
So if you're selling something unusual, hard-to-find, or sometimes
even something that's overly-competitive on the larger auction sites;
you'll want to look into selling on the smaller niche sites that are
sure to exist for your particular item. In any case, a little
experimentation never hurt anyone and you might be surprised at what
you come up with!
You might want to check out the Aaronz Auction Newsletter "Big Boy
Alternatives" list of reviews of alternative auction sites to eBay®.
You can find that at http://www.AWWStore.com/news/oah/
About the Author
Aaron Turpen is the author of "The eBay PowerSeller's Book of
Knowledge" and the editor/publisher of two successful newsletters, in
their fourth year of publication, The Aaronz WebWorkz Weekly
Newsletter and Aaronz Auction Newsletter. You can find out more about
these and other great resources from Aaron at his website
http://www.AaronzWebWorkz.com
A special presentation courtesy of The eBay® PowerSeller's Book of
Knowledge: Second Edition
http://www.AaronzWebWorkz.com/ebaybook.shtml
For many sellers, finding the right items to sell is only half their
battle. Finding a place to sell it can sometimes be just as
challenging. After all, if you're selling a rare or hard-to-find item,
you will most likely find success at the larger sites such as eBay and
Yahoo. Sometimes, though, those sites don't work out as well as you'd
hoped. Or maybe you'd like to supplement the sales there and expand to
another site. In either case, you'll most likely be searching for a
niche to move into with your product.
This is where the power of the Internet really comes into play. The
Internet is broad, powerful, and heavily populated with people willing
to buy if they see something they really want. Like any mass media,
you need to target your intended audience to focus your sales and get
the best results. Luckily, the Internet seems made for this!
Online auctions are a great way to not only find customers, but
encourage sales. If you look for them, you can find auction "niche"
sites which specialize in a specific type of auction or a specific
type of item for sale. These sites combine the best of both worlds:
online auctions AND targeted buyers!
The first step is finding the sites you want to use for your auctions.
A good tactic for this is to use Google or The Open Directory
(dmoz.org) and search for the item (or similar items) to what you wish
to sell. Most likely you'll come up with quite a few hits. Narrow the
search as far as you can. Include words like "auction" or "sell" in
your search terms along with the item. Once you have the list as
narrow as you can get it, begin checking out the sites in the results.
Many of them will be retail outlets, "fan" pages, and hobbyist
"how-to" pages. Some of these are useful - especially the last -
because they may include links to good niche sites for selling at
auction. It may take some time, but eventually you should have at
least one (try for two or three) sites that specialize in your item
for sale at auction.
Now check the sites out thoroughly before you sign up or use them.
Peruse the lists from the buyer's prospective. Are there plenty of
listings? Do they seem to have a fair amount of bids, watchers, or
visitors? Now look at it from the seller's prospective: read their
information on selling. What will it cost? How long do the listings
last? What are their policies for returns, refunds, privacy, and so forth?
Once you have decided on a site or two to list on, begin blowing away
the competition with the skills you're learning here in this book.
You'll find that most of the sellers on these sites are fairly
amateurish - using ugly listings, badly taken pictures (if any
pictures are used at all!), and atrocious descriptions of their
product. Take advantage of this and make your listings shine in
comparison. You'll find that, at most niche sites, the sellers are
much less refined than they are at eBay and the competition is most
likely much less fierce. The tradeoff is usually the visibility -
after all, on eBay, the people visiting your auction are usually
measured in the hundreds or thousands whereas on niche sites, they'll
be more likely to be measured in tens. You can make up for this by
listing your items at a fair price to begin with - rather than having
to stoop to the ".01 auction" to get attention as you would on eBay
and risk losing your shirt when only one bidder tries for the item.
Another bonus to these smaller sites is that they usually have looser
rules than eBay and the bigger auction sites do. You may be able to
cross-post your item on more than one site because the delisting rules
are simple so if the item sells on one site, you can remove it from
another. This is a great bonus as you can spread the visibility of
your item and therefore boost sales of them.
So if you're selling something unusual, hard-to-find, or sometimes
even something that's overly-competitive on the larger auction sites;
you'll want to look into selling on the smaller niche sites that are
sure to exist for your particular item. In any case, a little
experimentation never hurt anyone and you might be surprised at what
you come up with!
You might want to check out the Aaronz Auction Newsletter "Big Boy
Alternatives" list of reviews of alternative auction sites to eBay®.
You can find that at http://www.AWWStore.com/news/oah/
About the Author
Aaron Turpen is the author of "The eBay PowerSeller's Book of
Knowledge" and the editor/publisher of two successful newsletters, in
their fourth year of publication, The Aaronz WebWorkz Weekly
Newsletter and Aaronz Auction Newsletter. You can find out more about
these and other great resources from Aaron at his website
http://www.AaronzWebWorkz.com
