Tips on promoting your auctions and yourself for Overstock.com Sellers
Selling Your Stuff
Tips on promoting your auctions and yourself
For
Overstock Auctions Sellers.
Below are some proven tips on promoting your auctions and making your home page stand out. Most of these tips can be done for free or at a very low cost and are proven to work by Overstock Seller.
Your Home Page: People like to read something about the person they are buying from. It goes a long way if you can provide your buyers with a little personal information. Keep it positive and give them the information that makes them know you care about your business reputation. Put a picture of something that represents you on your home page. Some sellers like pictures of themselves, their pets or something that represents their business. Leaving the red stick man sends the wrong message. Make your home page attractive you can find free graphic, animations and lettering on the web. Most of all be honest in your information remember they want to know a LITTLE BIT about you not your life story.
Your auctions: Once again honesty is the best policy, let the buyers know up front what your shipping policy, return policy and any other information you can provide to make the transaction smooth and fun. Here are some dos and don’ts for your auctions listings.
Dos
Hide nothing; make all information about the item and your policies clear in the listing.
Keep you shipping and Handling Fees reasonable, you may suck in the new buyers with low starting bids and make up the rest in S&H but they will not come back. Return customers are you most valuable assets and come in real handy with things are slow.
Avoid the 99 and 01 cent starting fees, you will get bids but spend a lot of time explaining why your S&H fees are so high. You will also get more negative ratings and few return customers.
Take good detailed photos of you item and offer as much information as you can.
Offer combined shipping and multiple item discounts. Some time giving a couple of dollars back can make you more money down the line with return customers.
Offer something free with the purchase. You can find all kinds of stuff that is very cost affective and people love to get something free. TOASA is in the process of putting together a list of web sites where you can go to get free or low cost stuff to help you sale.
Yourself: Here are a few tips on promoting yourself or business. Remember if you were to develop a customer base you can stop your customer service when you ship you package.
When you get notice of a closing auction with a bid send the buyer an email and let then know what payment types you take. Be sure to thank them for their purchase and let them know what time period you expect payment in.
When you receive notice or payment, their Money Order or Cashier’s Check sent them an email and acknowledge the receipt of payment, Thank them and let them know when you how and when you will ship the package.
When you ship the package include a business card, flyer, tips on bidding or how to protect their identification or some other type of document that has information on how to find your auctions, website, other sellers they can trust and any other information that makes them feel like you are there for them.
Try sending out an email to all you customers a month or so after the sale. The email could be about safety tips on bidding and buying on line, identification protection or something that is directed toward them and not a promotion. If you have done your job that will make them feel special and remind them you are around. Include links to your auctions, trusted friend, website, how to report a fraud and so on.
Some buyers also like to be notified if you have listed something new or special to identify them may take time but it will come.
Some free site, with more to come.
http://www.95mb.com/index.htm (Free Web Hosting)
http://www.amazingcounters.com/index.php ( Free Web page counters)
http://www2.flamingtext.com/ (Free animated lettering)
http://www.animationjungle.com/index.php (Free Clip Art)
http://go.to/animationworld (Free animation and clip art)
http://mygallery.timegonebuy.com/index.html (Free Auction Galary)
http://www.frontiernet.net/~dmishle (Low cost web page design, also a TOASA Member)
http://www.dollardays.com/ (Low cost item to give away)
