The longtime drawback to auctions online, like eBay’s and Yahoo’s, has been their refusal to do anything about sniping. With auctions ending at a set time, sellers and buyers alike lose out when sniping, or last-second bids usually conducted with software, take place to win the item.

Since the online auctioneers don’t seem interested in making a sensible adjustment, like extending the closing time by a few minutes when a snipe takes place, users have no choice but to resort to fee-based software and Web-based tools to have a legitimate shot at winning auctions.

The Wall Street Journal tested five sniping options. Four Web-based ones competed against a platform-based package to bid on girls’ party dresses.

The AuctionSniper.com service won three out of the four auctions against the other sniping products tested, while the Silent Snipe software (Mac OS X and Win98) won the fourth.

For people hunting down the elusive Xbox 360 game console, sniping may be the best chance of winning one in auction while keeping control of how much one truly wishes to bid for it.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

In my experience, the auction lots where I created a useful collection of related items got more bids and closed at higher prices than auction lots that were all one thing.

For example, instead of listing an auction lot of a simple strand of rose quartz oval shape beads, why not create an auction lot of a neat little “designer collection” of beads?

In this case, you could group some of those rose quartz oval beads with garnet rondells and freshwater pearl beads. These three stones work really well together, and this auction allows the winning bidder to have a lot more creative fun than he or she would with a group of all the same kind of bead.

Combo auction lots like this tend to be more valuable and useful to bidders. In a single auction and for one shipping price, they can get a variety of items instead of just one.

Another advantage of making combined auction lots is that your auction listings will contain more keywords that are being searched for by a much bigger group of bidders. For example, our designer bead collection auction could be found by bidders searching for rose quartz beads, bidders searching for garnet beads, and bidders searching for freshwater pearl beads.

That’s a significantly larger group than just bidders searching for rose quartz beads. And a good portion of bidders from all three keyword searches will be watching and considering your designer bead collection auction.

Now here’s where it gets really good:

Not only do you have a higher demand for your combo auction lots – you also don’t really have any competition for the exact auction lot you’re offering. Other sellers might offer rose quartz ovals, or garnet rondells, or freshwater pearl beads – but not all three together in one temptingly color-coordinated auction lot. If a bidder wants this bead combination, your auction is the only one available to bid on.

So according to Economics 101,

high demand + low supply = higher closing price.

You can make tempting kits or package deals of other auction lots no matter what your niche is. Here are a few ideas:

* assorted colors of polymer clay plus some basic clay tools

* inkjet cartridges plus two packs of fancy printer paper

* padded shipping envelopes plus tape

* scrapbooking pens, stickers, and a paper cutting tool

To bidders, these combination auction lots are much more appealing and valuable. If you’re a regular seller of combo auction lots, you’ll quickly gain a following of eBay buyers who always check your current auctions to see what irresistible new combinations you have available.

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There are three important pieces to the marketing puzzle when using auction websites: your user name, your profile, and your products.

When signing up, pick a user name that reflects your business. Your business name is preferred, but anything close (even your website name: yourbusiness.com) will do well. For example, my username on eBay is “AaronzWebWorkz.”

The next focus is the “profile” page, which you will set up as a part of the signup process with these auction websites. In this profile, you are able to talk about yourself (read: “market yourself”) and link to your website. This is fairly straightforward. Make sure that your links are correct and that you haven’t made any spelling or grammatical errors. Short and sweet works best. The majority of those who do come to this page will read your information. If you make it too long, though, they might skip it. After all, most people who load these profiles are looking for other auctions, not your life story.

The final issue to deal with is your products. Even if you sell services (as I do), you can use these auction sites. If you are new to the auction site, read several other auctions and go through the posting process (without hitting the final “post” button) to see how the auctions are structured. Once you have an idea of how you should go about posting your items and what kind of knowledge you’ll need, start writing your product information. Do this by typing them into a text editor (Word, Notepad, etc.) and running them through a spell checker. Then re-read them once or twice to make sure you didn’t miss anything or fudge the description. Once you’re ready, go back to the auction site and post your ad. I’d suggest no more than one or two to get started. Once you have a handle on things (and have made a couple of sales), you’ll be ready to post more often.

The auctions themselves are unimportant. I usually take a service that I perform for a minimal cost and post it at a bare minimum cost. For example, I do domain name appraisals normally at $5 each. I post them on eBay at $1 each as the starting bid. These don’t take much time to do and are something that many people look for. Even selling at only a dollar, after eBay fees, I usually make about sixty cents profit. That doesn’t sound like much, and it isn’t, but I’m not in it for the money. A look at my server logs says that the thirty minutes a week I’m spending on my auction marketing is sending about 200 visitors to my site (per auction). This number has been steadily building since I began using this form of marketing a few months ago. The more you market, the more referrals you’ll receive!

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

Sellers trust that they will be paid, and buyers trust that they will receive their items, well packed, and as described. As with any business, bad service is a possibility. If you browse eBay’s community boards, you will see hundreds of complaints – some reasonable, and some not so reasonable. A bit of auction savvy would eliminate more than half of the complaints.

If you follow these suggestions, you’ll do well on eBay or any online auction site.

1. Never bid without knowing the shipping and handling fee. Most auctions have the fee listed. If the fee is not listed, then you should contact the seller and ask. Consider how much you want to spend, including shipping and handling, and bid accordingly. The seller can’t be accused of overcharging if you were aware, or unaware, of the fee and bid anyway. You can’t haggle with the seller once the auction ends.

2. Understand that the postage mark may show a smaller fee than what you were charged for shipping. Most sellers charge a shipping and handling fee. This fee can include the cost of tape, postage, bubble wrap, and boxes. If the postmark is less than what you paid, don’t assume the seller is trying to cheat you.

3. Read the entire auction listing. Don’t skim the description, and assume all is well. Your bid is a binding contract. Many buyers fail to fully read auction listings, resulting in headaches and heartaches for all involved.

4. Buy before you sell. New sellers sometimes get discouraged due to lack of bids. People are more willing to buy from sellers with feedback. Establish yourself as a reliable buyer before you try to sell. People will then be more willing to buy from you. This is especially true if you’re selling high price items.

5. A big complaint of buyers is receiving badly packed items. As a seller, your job is to make sure the item is well protected. Even if the package is covered by insurance, most carriers refuse to honor insurance claims if the damage was due to packing error. Save yourself trouble, and negative feedback, by carefully packing your items.

The next time you buy or sell at an online auction, remember these suggestions. You’ll be glad you did.

Michelle Strait is an editorial consultant based in New York. Visit her site: http://www.michellestrait.com to read essays, book reviews, and to learn about her services.

1. Banner Advertising.
When purchasing banner impressions, make sure you know if your banner will be the only one on a page then check that page to make sure it is compatible with what your website is all about. If your banner will be displayed as one of many within a rotation, make sure you ask the seller for additional details about his business such as the average number of visitors to that site. It’s best to purchase banner advertising on a website that is within your targeted audience.

2. Pay-per-click search engine advertising.
There are many new PPC search engines out there and many use auctions to get you to use their service. It’s common to find $100,000 worth of PPC advertising for auction. Sometimes, you can get these auctions for $10! Is it worth it? You bet. All that exposure on a new website for only $10 is a deal that cannot be beaten. You can list over 100 terms for your website and easily get your website seen by a targeted audience. The only drawback is the reality that many of these search engines will not be around for more than a year or two.

3. Guaranteed website visitors.
This form of advertising takes many forms and you need to make sure that you understand the sellers terms before you place your bid. It is common to find auctions promising 1000 to one million guaranteed visitors to your website. How? Well, some auctions are using webpage exchanges or autosurf programs to deliver visitors. These programs do deliver people to your site and your site will be seen, but the actual number of people that spend a significant amount of time on your site is uncertain. Again, if you can get 10,000 visitors to your site for under $10, it’s probably worth it simply to get some exposure for your website.

Dr. LaBuda is owner and operator of MagicEbid, magicbid a webmaster resource center and advertising auction and Whybidmore Collectible Auction, http://www.whybidmore.com

You could create an electronic book or report that relates to your online business, then auction it off at an online auction. You could increase traffic to your web site by placing an ad for your web site in the electronic publication. Some online auctions will even allow you to link directly to your web site.

Electronic publications won’t cost you anything to ship. You could send them via e-mail or allow people to download the electronic publication from your web site. You can also auction them off for a lower price. When they visit your web site you could offer them a higher priced product.

You could also get traffic from people who don’t bid or don’t get the winning bid. You could direct them to your web site to download and read a free sample of the ebook or report before they bid. If they want more detailed information about the ebook or report, you could also direct them to your web site.

You can also get traffic to your web site by auctioning a physical product. Print your web site advertisement on a flyer or brochure then insert it into each product package you ship.

Before you start auctioning any product at an online auction, read the terms and conditions. Some auctions may not allow the auctioning of electronic products or directly linking to your web site where you have other products for sale.

Over 40,000 Free eBooks & Web Books when you visit: http://www.ldpublishing.com/ As a bonus, Bob Osgoodby publishes the free weekly “Your Business” Newsletter – visit his web site to subscribe and place a FREE Ad! http://adv-marketing.com/business