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ONLINE AUCTIONS FAR OUT PERFORM FIXED PRICE SALES by Ginnysgemsjewels
THE PROS AND CONS OF AUCTION VERSUS FIXED PRICE ONLINE SELLING FORMATS FOR UNIQUE ONE OF A KIND ANTIQUE AND VINTAGE MERCHANDISErnrnMost babyboomers grew up with going to the old fashioned farm or household auctions which were held because the owners died or were moving. Do you remember the excitement of raising your hand to place a bid and the ultimate excitement of the auctioneer's hammer hitting the desk and "SOLD" it was yours. Well the same feeling can be recaptured for all generations to enjoy on the online auction sites. Placing a bid on something you have just got to have and waiting for the gavel to go down and now YOU own it or you will as soon as you pay and the seller sends it to you. rnrnEBay and other sites started out with this same level of excitement over a decade ago and having been a buyer back in 1998 on eBay I spent hours watching (many of the auction did not even have photos) for the auctions to end to see if I got it. Unfortunately Ebay has chosen to go to the fixed price model and is looking to emulate the success of Amazon.com and uBid.com. This selling philosophy entails selling many of the same new merchandise at a fixed price. Yes many of the items will be cheaper than what can be found in the "brick and mortar" marketplace however by the time you add shipping the final price is quite comparable. The auction on the other hand is the only way that antique and vintage merchandise should be sold as the marketplace sets the value and in most cases it may be at a higher price than expected, plus the need to act immediately to get it or it may never be seen again is quite persuasive to encourage bidding.rnrnI along with many of you are what is called a boutique seller as we sell a very defined group of merchandise. I have sold on eBay for over eight years. About 99% of the auctions I listed were antique and vintage costume jewelry and have always done quite well having gross receipts of up to $10,000. month on about 800 (some are relists) auctions a month. My average percent to total of auctions sold was between 50-65%. I never sold with a buy-it-now or fixed price and found that many of my auctions got very high bids within the last few minutes and even seconds of the auction end. This is because the items are one of kind and harder to find and the buyers do not want to possibly miss out on getting it. If however the same merchandise had been set up as Buy It Nows, a fixed price or even an online shop probably my monthly gross receipts would not have been over $5,000. and with only a 15-25% of the total auctions would have sold.rnrnAll in all if you are selling one of a kind antique and vintage merchandise and am interested in making money and having quick turnover with the ability to keep your merchandise fresh, the answer lies in the auction format. Oh yes you can make more money on the fixed price or shop format per item but the percentage of successfully ended auctions will be quite low thus making your store and/or listings seem stale and not interesting in a very short time to the average avid buyer.rnrnNow why would eBay want to go primarily to a fixed price format??? For many reasons as outlined below. Earlier this year eBay made arrangements with bid.com (which sells 100+ of the same merchandise at a fixed price per unit) to give them FREE or at least lower preferential treatment as to their listing fees. Bid.com has over 2.5 million pieces to sell on eBay (this by the way will force all of the one of the kind pieces way down in the sort when searched). and eBay sees that one fixed price listing of more than one unit and since more than one of the same item may sell and since final valuation fees have been raised, eBay will make more money. Also having fewer auction listings on the site because of the multiple unit listings, eBay can lower their server and customer service costs. This is a very smart move for eBay which become an aristocracy to make however the small boutique seller such as ourself and even the buyer loses in this arrangement in three ways; First the boutique seller is being "punished" by the ebay fee structure due to the fact that our listing are all individual items, Second, the customer service for the small seller has become almost non existant for the Powersellers, let alone the smaller seller, and three due to this massive influx of millions of new merchandise articles from bid.com, the small seller's merchandise is falling lower and lower on the search and sort, meaning the small seller is getting less visibility. rnrnThere is an auction venue called Virtual Gems Emporium with the sole purpose of giving the boutique seller and buyer an exclusive multi-seller auction (fixed price and buy it nows are also to be found) venue for Antique, Vintage and New Costume and Fine Jewelry. This is the first of its kind and sp far so good. The response has been extremely favorable and the results have been impressive. It is just a start up and even with in mind it has surpassed its original projected marketing plans. Virtual Gems Emporium was founded on three basic philosophies. The first is to provide an "AUCTION BOUTIQUE" for one of kind jewelry pieces in an environment that is of the character and quality of "Just Jewelry". The second is to provide unprecedented customer appreciation and service and not forgetting who will make the site great. And the third, is to have the lowest fees of any other auction or fixed price site on the internet.rnrnThe Auction Boutique is accomplished by the fact that there is only JEWELRY being sold... and within the next month the appearance of Virtual Gems Emporium will have the look of a fine Beverly Hills Antique and Vintage Jewelry Shop using colors, graphics, images and more to be custom and special for a Just Jewelry Boutique. rnrnUnprecedented customer appreciation and service is provided in many ways and include many levels of service either through email, Live Chat, toll free phone numbers to real people and eventually being able to help customers make changes by actually assisting the customer online from our computers to the customers. Equal feedback is key and allows everyone whether a buyer or seller an opportunity to be treated fairly and all feedback from other sites will be moved to the VGE venue. Also much like eBay's power seller program, VGE has both BRILLIANT SELLERS and BRILLIANT BUYERS designations to identify which sellers and buyers have a positive and productive history on the site. rnrnLowest fees of any online auction or fixed price site. Virtual Gems Emporium has NO Final Valuation Fees and in comparison to eBay that is up to an 8.75% savings of the final sale price. VGE has many free listing options including no need for a subtitile since the auction title line is invariably unlimited as to how many characters can be used. No cost for buy-it-now and delayed start auctions. Very low cost to add bells and whistles such as BOLD, HIGHLIGHT, CATEGORY FEATURE, HOMEPAGE FEATURE and RESERVE PRICE. Also Virtual Gems Emporium has the ability for a cost to actually load a movie to showcase your auction listing.rnrnBased on our statistical data, there are between 500-700 unique users visiting our site daily and this has gone up up every day since it opened a few months ago. Virtual Gems Emporium NEEDS sellers to capture the attention of this buyer traffic, so we have two promotions currently in place. The first is to entice sellers to "test drive" the site with unlimited auction listings between now and October 30, 2008. This way the seller can see all of the advantages of the selling format and the ease to use. The second promotion is a $1,000.00 Jewel-A-Thon with a $500.00 Visa card given to one Buyer and one Seller and to be awarded at the end of November, just in time for Christmas and other holiday expenses.rnrnAll in all, Virtual Gems Emporium is working day and night to be all that you could possibly want from an online worldwide auction venue and the perfect opportunity to make some money and also to find what you have been looking for at a fair price. Come see us at www.vintagegemsemporium.com, registration is free and no financial information is exchanged so you have nothing to lose. See you there!!! rnrnYou have been invited to join Virtual Gems Emporium's newsletter and marketing email list(s). Click the link(s) to confirm your subscription:http://www.virtualgemsemporium.com and thank you.
http://www.virtualgemsemporium.com
Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com/Article/ONLINE-AUCTIONS-FAR-OUT-PERFORM-FIXED-PRICE-SALES/446284
