by Michael Wong

Are your sales rather slow? Do you have some unwanted stock you wish to get rid of? Then sell them at online auctions.

I run an online art gallery, artdacor.com, and sales were rather slow, so I decided to see if I could sell some of my oil paintings at one of these auction sites. I noticed that "ebay" are one of the busiest sites on the web, so I decided to check them out.

What I found was a huge auction site, with over 900,000 items on auction, in over 1,000 categories. They have held over 31 million auctions since they started in 1995. You will find auctions on just about everything you can think of. To be able to sell or bid for an item, you have to register. Once you register, you are extended a $10.00 credit limit. This limit allows you to immediately list items for sale. Insertion fees and final value fees will accrue in your account until the $10.00 credit limit is reached. You will then have to place your credit card information on your eBay account to make a prepayment towards your account.

When you list your item for sale on eBay, you are charged an insertion fee. This will vary from $0.25 to $2.00, depending on the opening value or reserve price of the item you are selling. You may also select options to promote your listing, such as "Bold Text in Listing" - $2.00, "Category Featured Auction" - $9.95, and "Featured Auction" - $49.95.

You can decide how long you want the auction to last, anywhere from 1-7 days. Once the auction has ended, final value fees are charged to your account depending on the amount of the final bid and the value of the bid, from 1.25% to 5%. However, you will not be charged a final value fee, if there were no bids on your item, or the final bid did not meet the reserve price you set.

I have placed about half a dozen paintings for auction at ebay and I was quite pleased with the results. All but one of them sold for the minimum asking price. One painting I offered for $200.00, ended up selling for $492.00! There seemed to be a bidding war between 2 people, which I found quite amusing. I also found the buyers to be honest and polite in general.

One benefit I found was that most buyers are quite happy to send checks or money orders, and not expect to pay by credit card. This is good news for those merchants who don't accept credit cards. Checks were mailed pretty quickly and once you have sent off the item, that's it. Ebay have employed a good system to encourage honest buyers and sellers. Once a sale is complete, you can make a comment about the other person, be it good or bad. Therefore anyone who deals with them in future will know what to expect of them.

Most people expect to find bargains at these auctions, so you should expect to set a minimum bidding price to tempt buyers. All in all, I would recommend you try these auctions to get rid of your unwanted stock. The costs are pretty low and the turn around time can be pretty quick. It has worked for me and I am sure it can work for you.