Bidding process and strategies

The more you know about the online auction process, the more effectively you will sell. The better you know your customers, the more successful you will be in your online business. In short, you need to know how your customers feel and behave. You have to get into your customer’s mindset.

The Bidding Process

Each item will show to have a minimum bid.

If you could match this bid, two things happen.

1. The auction site asks you to review your bid
2. Then it will ask you to give your password and user ID.

In a short time, you will receive a confirmation e-mail from the auction site.

Remember, there is no charge for bidding.

Bid Increments

There are bidding increment guidelines of auction sites which have to be followed. For example if an item is quoting Rs. 190, you cannot bid it for Rs.191. You only win if you have the highest bid when the auction closes. One great feature of Internet auctions, however, is that they will notify you if you are outbid and by how much.

Proxy bidding

This is an interesting feature of auction sites. Suppose you have a game collection to be purchased and you are desperate to have it and are willing to pay up to Rs.2500 for it. At this point, though, the bidding is only Rs.1200.

Thanks to proxy bidding, all you must do is click “proxy bidding” below the minimum bid amount and enter your proxy bid of Rs.2500. The computer will bid for you. Whenever your arch-rival bids on your game, the computer will automatically bid the next accepted amount for you. And each time the computer bids for you, it notifies you via e-mail. Your maximum bid is a secret. When and if the price exceeds Rs.2500, the computer will not bid any longer.

Here's how bidding on eBay works:

1. When you place a bid, you enter the maximum amount you're willing to pay for the item. The seller and other bidders won't know your maximum bid amount.

2. eBay places bids on your behalf starting with the next bid increment for the auction. We'll bid as much as necessary to make sure that you remain the high bidder (or to meet the reserve price). We'll keep bidding for you until bidding reaches your maximum amount.

3. If another bidder has placed the same bid before you or a higher maximum bid, we'll let you know that you've been outbid so that you can place another bid if you want. However, if no other bidder has a higher maximum bid at the end of the auction, you win the item even if your bid doesn't go as high as your maximum bid. You could pay significantly less than your maximum price. This means you don't have to keep coming back to re-bid every time another bid is placed

Reserve Auctions

A reserve is a price below which the seller will not sell and the amount is kept secret during the auction. One reason online sellers do this is to have a lower insertion fee to pay. Another reason is to create interest on the part of the buyers.
A downside to this kind of auction is that most buyers shun it since they get bugged off if the price they bid doesn’t meet the reserve price.

Bidding Strategies
Really serious online auction players and collectors develop winning strategies to make sure they get the items they are craving and they manage to buy items that they can then resell for a nice profit.

Here are a few strategies to consider:-

Strategy #1 Don’t bid high and early. If there are several people who are determined to acquire the item that you want, you will only be forcing the price up and up. Wait until closer to the end to make a determined series of
bids. When you are selling, you will see this happen again and again. Many buyers wait until late in the game to bid just because they don’t want to run the price up.

Strategy #2 -- A few paise more can make the difference. Most buyers bid in nice, round numbers like 5.50 or 10.75. But those who study the auctions learn that a few paise more can make a difference. Instead of bidding Rs.10.50, bid Rs.10.53. Sometimes these few paise will be a difference between winning and losing.

Strategy #3 Use the two window strategy. In the event of a bidding war, really serious bidders use this strategy to acquire a treasured item. First, make sure your clock is set to the time of the auction site. You wouldn’t want to miss out on your treasure because you lost track of time. You can open 2 browser windows (press the Control (Ctrl) and N key together will open a second window on your browser). You can use one screen to bid and the other to watch a flurry of last minute bids. To keep up with the bids, keep hitting the reload or refresh button on your computer. In this way, you know what all your opponents are doing. If you use this tactic, be aware that it takes precious seconds to fill in your ID and password so have that part of your screen filled in to save time.

Strategy #4 – Be patient. This is the fine art of waiting (also called as sniping in online auction lingo) until the last possible second to defeat the current high bidder. Be prepared, though. You may be on the wrong end of a such a strategy as well. Some people go to the extent of keeping alarms to alert them of in the ending seconds of the bid, but nonetheless effective.

So make use of these strategies and some of yours and try making some really good deals at online auctions.

For more information do visit this link:-
http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/bidding-ov.html