How to Find Great Live Auctions for Resale Items

Hi, my name is Walt. I’m an auctioneer with 25 years of experience in the auction business and licensed in the state of MA. I own Quick Auction Service, a company that specializes in building and running custom auctions, I’m also the webmaster of my own site and have been on eBay for 8 years. Besides eBay, the types of auctions I run most frequently are antiques and on-site estate auctions, although I’ve run everything from business overstock auctions to charity & special event auctions.

I enjoy sharing my knowledge and stories of the auction business. My goal for article is to help folks get the absolute most out of their auction experience.

Whether your fresh out of the package or a seasoned dealer I think I can offer something in this article to help you with your auciton adventures.

There may be as many reasons to attend auctions as there are types of auctions to attend. Maybe you want to attend an auction to buy items for re-sale on eBay, or some other market. Maybe you want to furnish your home with wonderful antiques, or you want to furnish your home as inexpensively without sacrificing quality.Some folks are just looking for a fun night out. With a little perseverance all these things are possible.

There are antiques and estate auctions, auto auctions, overstock auctions, absolute and no reserve auctions, real estate auctions, specialty auctions where only one genre of items are sold, tailgate auctions, live auctions, online auctions, sealed bid auctions, silent auctions, charity and fund raising auctions and many more.

Can you really buy for pennies on the dollar at an auction? You bet! Many times I’ve seen folks buy and re-sell at the same auction on the same night for a good profit, although be advised, this should only be done after the auction is over.

There are a lot of ways to find an auction, but here are some tips on how to find and attend the best ones.

Visit the genre of shops in the area that apply to the type of auction you want to attend. IE: If your looking for a good antique auction to attend, stop in the local antiques shops and ask for what there are for good auctions in the area. Sounds obvious right? But listen to what they don’t say as well as what they do say. Oftentimes when a dealer speaks poorly about an auction he or she attends, it may be likely that they are trying to keep a good thing secret. Think for a moment, why would a dealer keep attending a lousy auction?

Newspaper ads: I personally like to find ads in the classified ad section rather than flashy display ads. Flashy ads are usually indicative of an auction that will be high priced, may have reserves, (a set price on an item), and usually an enormous crowd. While any auction can be profitable to attend, it is usually best to steer clear of the glitzy ones, at least for the beginner.

Here’s the minimum you want to find out before you go. If there is a phone number in the ad, call and ask for the terms of the sale. What forms of payment do they accept? Is it an absolute auction? An absolute auction is one that has no minimum or reserve bids on items. These are the best auctions to attend! Is there a buyers premium? A buyers premium is like a tax that everyone who makes purchases at that auction must pay above the winning bid price. Most auctions these days do charge a buyers premium, 10% is not unreasonable but I feel much more than that is greedy, and the auctioneer that charges over 10% is counting on most bidders not doing the extra math as the bids quicken in pace.

A fair auction will have ample time to inspect the merchandise, usually at least 2 or 3 hours. Find out when inspection starts and make sure to attend! Never attend an auction if you can’t make the inspection, not unless your prepared to gamble. Most auctioneers sell at a rate of about 100 items per hour, which is why they sell “as is”. They simply don’t have the time to give a detailed description of all the items. Since almost all items at auction are sold AS IS, there are sure to be some damaged, refinished, fake and incomplete items at any given auction. Beware of any auctions that offer very little or no inspection time.

Good auctions will usually have 150 to 400 lots. A lot may be one item or a group of items. The exception to this are specialty auctions, auto auctions, real estate auctions etc.

When you attend your first sale, take note of the 1/2 dozen or so dealers that buy the most often. See if you can find out about other area auctions they attend.

When you do find an excellent auction, attend it as often as possible. By frequenting good sales, you help increase the bottom line of that business. It’s difficult for many auctioneers to keep the quality of merchandise consistent, so good attendance certainly helps. And when an auctioneer gets to know you as a buyer, he/she will go out of the way to accommodate you, to keep you coming back.

Yahoo Small Business – The Many Benefits

When a person starts a small business, there are many preparations to be made to ensure the overall success of the business. Some of these preparations include setting up a webpage, developing a domain, implementing emails for the business, getting internet access that is appropriate to the needs of your business, as well as developing a marketing strategy. If you implement the use of Yahoo Small Business, you can get all of this and more! In this article, you will be introduced to a number of benefits when it comes to using Yahoo Small Business.One of the main benefits of using Yahoo to assist you with your small business needs is the Yahoo Small Business Web Hosting service that is offered. With Yahoo, you can enjoy a multitude of wonderful features. The first being that you can design your website with a great deal of flexibility! You can also implement the use of the many professionally designed templates, or pull a template from a 3rd party.In addition to this, Yahoo Small Business Web Hosting service gives you a lot of web hosting space for your products. Each month, you are permitted to have an unbelievable 200GB of bandwidth in which data can be transferred to your customers. You can also enjoy a large 5GB of web space to effectively design your website.When you sign up for Yahoo Small Business Web Hosting, you can get a free domain name in order to brand your website. If you already have a domain name, that is no problem! Yahoo will allow you to bring your own name with you! In addition to outstanding features that come with your web hosting subscription with Yahoo, you can enjoy the comfort of knowing that there are specially trained professionals available to you every hour of the day of the week if you have questions, concerns, or issues with your service or website.Many small businesses enjoy the Yahoo Small Business Web Hosting service because the subscription runs on a month to month basis, and there are no contracts involved in which you must commit to a certain term of service. Furthermore, the prices are quite competitive. You can have all the benefits of this service for as little as $7.77 for the first 2 months, and then $8.96 per month thereafter! This is an exceptional value!When using Yahoo Small Business, you can enjoy a variety of marketing features. Marketing is a key component to the overall success of your business. One of the most popular methods that many business owners use is advertising in Yahoo! Local. You can display your business logo, describe your business, advertise your products, and more by implementing the use of this effective marketing strategy.Individuals who take advantage of the marketing tools in Yahoo Small Business can submit their website to the Yahoo search engine. Many business owners also submit their website to the Yahoo Directory, and promote their products in Yahoo Shopping. By using these various marketing tools, a business can gain exposure, increase their search engine ranking, and potentially earn an outstanding income. Yahoo Small Business works to make every effort to ensure that each business is successful in their endeavors.Internet access is often very important when it comes to the productivity of the small business. While there are numerous providers of internet service available today, if a business decides to use Yahoo as their one stop business solution, they can enjoy the collaboration of Yahoo and AT&T. This collaboration can provide you with an inexpensive way to ensure high speed internet access with great reliability. For as little as $14.95 a month, one can enjoy exciting features such as enhanced business security, effective and reliable connections, and many tools that allow you to communicate with your clients, customers, and coworkers.Email is an essential part of every small business. When you utilize the email service that is provided by Yahoo Small Business, you can enjoy many features, which include:- Unlimited Space on the Email Server- Your Domain Name on Email Addresses- Free Email Newsletter- Spam Solutions- Name Brand Antivirus SoftwareBy using this Yahoo Business Email service, you can assign personalized email addresses to individuals that conduct work within your small business. If you want to create a professional, high-quality solution to your email needs, Yahoo provides outstanding services that make this possible.As you can see, utilizing Yahoo Small Business can prove to provide many benefits to your small business. You can depend on this service to provide highly technological solutions for your business with outstanding reliability and customer service.Create a yahoo web site for yourself and see the excellent benefits and features that you can have for a great price. The Site Solutions tool alone will amaze you with how easy it is to build a web site. These features are a great beginning on why anyone should choose Yahoo Small Business.

Best Home Based Business – What Are the Best Home Based Businesses to Make Money Today?

What is the best home based business to get into right now? Ebooks and any digital product is the best way to go. What does this mean to you? It is the easiest and simplest way to make money with a tight economy. Here is how to get started in this business you can operate from home.A digital product can be an ebook, training seminar, course, or game. This means you do not physically touch the product. You do not at all need to store any inventory in your own home either. Another cool thing, normally you will not ever need to ship the product either to your customer.The best home based business is becoming an affiliate of the companies that are selling these products. Go to places like ClickBank and set up an account and go window shopping on products you would like to buy and sell.You will be given a code to use that has your own set of numbers and letters for your home based business. This code will change your life! Every time a customer buys from you, your code is embedded in the web browser address when they click to buy. This means you get credit for the purchase.You can be given text ads, banners, and so many more tools to help your home based business grow and be promoted. Take the text ads and place them in free classified ads. When a customer reads the ad and is interested, they will click and land on the site you are promoting. This is one of the best home based business opportunities to get into and start immediately.Now, let’s get your best home based business to grow even more. You need to have a website. There are plenty out there that are under $10 a month. A lot will give you thirty days free to try it out. Have one site for each category you are promoting and selling in your home based business.If you are a person that likes music, then you may decide your best home based business is an online music store. Take all your affiliates for music and put them at home on your online business website. Now, your customers have a wide variety to choose from. Take some of your ads, not all, and start pointing them to your website to build traffic. The more traffic you get to your site, the higher your site will rank in the search engine and can be found more easily.The next step, if you wanted to sell another category say books, then have another website for just books. Now, connect the two websites together and when your customer is at one site, they can see you have another site and go shopping there also. When a customer buys something and checks out, there is a thank you page that can redirect them to the other site. They could even bookmark it for later.So, the best home based business does not even cost you any money at all to get started!