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IbidFREE Auctions

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If you just want to buy items, then the next step is easy for you; look around for what you want. Browse IbidFREE's many categories or use the search box to find it a lot quicker. Pay attention to the seller's feedback. This is a handy tool for you, the buyer, to know how trustworthy the person is that's selling you the item you're bidding on. Personally, I like to buy items by using the "Flash Buy" feature, that way you are definitely getting the item with no way of being outbid. But there's always the chance of you being the winning bid and getting an item a whole lot cheaper.

Find an Item to Sell

If you want to sell items on IbidFREE, your journey has just begun. The most obvious "next step" would be that you need an item to sell. So figure out what you want to sell; either something around your house or something you bought off of IbidFREE at a good price. Yes, that's right, plenty of people resell items that they originally bought off of an online auction. You can take advantage of this by looking for great bargains and then marketing the items better when you sell them or buy items in bulk and resell them individually. Or you can go to real auctions, flea markets or garage sales to find bargains.

Prepare Information for Your Auction

Ok, you've got your item or items, now you need to do some research. You need to get some information on what you're selling for a few reasons:

You'll look like you know what you're talking about.
It saves customers from asking you questions about your auction.
It reassures your customers, that you actually have the item.
A near empty description, usually turns customers away.

So search around the internet to find more information on what you want to sell. Find out how much it's really worth, look on the item's box, packaging or any paperwork that comes with it for more information. You can even search closed items to see if anyone else sold the exact item you're selling, just click the "Search Auctions" link on the left. You can see what how they described the item and see if it was a successful auction: if the item sold or not.

    Next, you're going to want to take a picture of your item. People need the assurance that you actually have what you're selling and they want to see what kind of condition it is in. So grab your digital camera or your film camera and snap a few good pictures of your item. Then load or scan them into your computer for you to use when you put the item on IbidFREE.

    Then you can put the item in the box or packaging you'd use for when you're going to ship it. You might not want to tape it completely shut, you may need to look at the item to answer a question from a customer during the auction. Now I'd suggest you weigh your item, box and all. You're doing this so you can give an accurate estimate on how much shipping is going to be. You can go to a few sites, like FedEx, UPS or USPS, to get a shipping quote.
    What I like to do is to enter a zip code that's pretty far from me and go from that. It'll more than cover shipments that are closer, just in case your weighing & measuring was a little off, and you won't end up eating the difference if the shipment does end up being that far away. I like to put this shipping price for all US shipments and then make a note, if the customer is from a different country, telling them to leave me a message for a shipping quote. International shipping rates are WAY higher than rates to your own country, you don't want to end up paying for the shipping out of your own pocket.
    The reason you want to give your customers a shipping quote, if they've shopped on online auctions before, they might want to be sure you won't overcharge them when it comes to shipping. Some sellers have sold items really cheap, but when you go to pay for it they've jacked the shipping price way up and you didn't get a good deal after all. So this step is just to once more reassure the customer.

Get Your Auction Listed on IbidFREE

Now that that's out of the way, let's go over the process of getting your auction listed on IbidFREE. Log into your account by clicking the "Login" link at the top right. Now scroll down to the "Auction Options" section and click the "Create an Auction" link. First off, you need to choose which type of auction you want to post. I'll go over the steps for a "Standard" auction but here are some other choices:

Multiple Quantity (AKA a Dutch Auction, where you have more than one of the same exact item and you use one auction to sell them all.)
Reverse (Similar to eBay's "Want it Now" listings. You post things you're looking to buy and sellers contact you with offers.)
Blind (AKA Silent Auction, where, if you're a bidder, you don't know if you've won or if you've posted the highest bid at a certain moment until the auction is over.)
Linked (You give people a link to a different site where they can bid or buy your item.)
RFQ (Request for Quotations - Very similar to the Reverse Auction.)
Barter (You can ask for trades or bargain a price.)
Turbo (Is made to attract bidders and be quick buys - Limitations: No reserves allowed and all items start at $1.00.)
Fixed Price (Isn't really an auction, you just sell your item at a price you select.)

Click to continue and then make sure your contact information is correct. Now you'll want to enter your title, this is what people will see when they're browsing or searching through IbidFREE for things to buy. So you want the title to be very descriptive on exactly what you're selling. You're limited on the amount of text you can enter, so choose wisely.
Then you're going to have to select a category you want to sell in. This helps customers find your auction if they're just browsing. IbidFREE groups all auctions together that are selling similar items, kind of like aisles in an actual store.
Then choose how long you want your auction to last. The maximum is 31 days, but you can choose anywhere in between 1 and 31.

PRICE

Next you'll want to enter in your price, your research will pay off here too. First enter your opening bid, the price that will be listed as what you're asking for your item initially. If you don't enter a reserve price, then your opening bid is what your item will sell at if you only get one bid. This is why selecting the right opening bid is so important:

You don't want it too low (You want to actually sell at a decent price, if you only get one bid, so that it's worth the effort)
You don't want it too high (This may scare off anyone from bidding at all)
You want to find that happy medium (A price that's high enough that if it sells at this price you won't feel like you got ripped off. A price that's low enough that it'll attract buyers to bid, and not just once)

You CAN save yourself a little work, with selecting an opening bid, by entering a reserve price. But this can sometimes scare customers from bidding, because they have no idea what your reserve price is. It's handy to use, to ensure that your item will sell at least for your reserve price, but it's a toss up on if you'll get a decent amount of bids or not. So usually I'll only enter an opening bid, so my potential buyers can be assured of the actual price.
    You can change the bid increments if you want. For instance, you could make all bids in increments of $5, that way the first bid would be $5, the second $10 and so on. Or you can leave that blank and the bid increments will be the default increments.
    Another handy tool is the Price Drop Floor, you set this to lower your price automatically if you're not getting any bids. You can set your opening bid at a higher price than you actually want for the item, but if your auction gets no bids within a certain amount of time the price will start to drop. You set the "Price Drop Floor", the lowest price you want your item to drop to, and the intervals at which the price will continue to drop: hourly, daily or weekly.
    Then you can choose if you want your auction to relist automatically if it doesn't sell, you can set it to relist up to 6 times. And lastly you decide if you want notification emails of your auction's status or not.

DESCRIPTION

Now you'll want to enter your description. If you followed the steps above to research your item, then you should have a pretty good idea of the information you're going to enter. You can change the fonts, font size, font color and a lot more, by using HTML, to make it more eye-catching. If you choose to use your own HTML, you'll have to click the "HTML Edit" button first.

PICTURES

Now you'll want to upload your picture to a hosting site. Make sure it's a picture of the actual item you have in your possession and not just some random picture you found on the internet. That way people will be able to see the real condition of the item. You can see they ask for a URL for your picture, this just means you have to host the pictures yourself through another site. Don't worry you can do this for free.
You can host your pictures at a site like TinyPic and then use the URL they give you for your main picture or enter them into your auction description using some basic html. Or if you have a lot of pictures, you can host your pictures at a site like Putfile and then just put a link to your photo album in your auction description. The second option will save your customers a lot of time when they try to look at your auction. If there's too many pictures, it'll take too long to load your page and people might just close your auction without really looking at it.

PAYMENT & SHIPPING

Now you want to enter the payment and shipping information. You need to choose which methods of payment you'd like to accept for you auction. The options are:

PayPal

This is this quickest option; people can send you money over the internet and it's a secure way to be paid.
All your customers need is your email address and they can send you payments.
You can link your PayPal account to your bank account and have your payment wired to your bank account for free.
Also if you want to accept credit cards then you need to have an upgraded PayPal account. Unless you have some other way of accepting credit card orders.
I usually wait until I have the money in my bank account before I ship the item.

Personal Check

You'll have to wait for this to be mailed to you.
But, to be assured the funds are available in the customer's account, I always wait until the check clears before I send the item.
I'd also check to be sure this check is real. There are too many online scams out there these days. Look on the back of the check to see what security features should be present.

Cash

I would only use this if you customer is local, sending cash through the mail isn't safe.

See Description for Details

If you have some other way you want to accept payment or specific instructions, then make a note in your description and select this option.

Personally, I like to make all payment options available on my auctions, except maybe the cash option. That way people aren't discouraged if you don't accept a certain payment method. Not everyone has PayPal and you never know which payment method your customer may prefer.
Now you'll want to enter your shipping information. You can select who will pay for the shipping. If you made a note for international shipments or special shipping instructions in your description, then select "See Description for Details." In the description, I usually tell my potential buyers to send me a message for an international shipping quote or if they live in Alaska or Hawaii. I'd recommend you come up with at least a domestic shipping price, possibly by using the methods I talked about above. People need to know what you're going to charge them overall and which shipping services you offer. Then you select where you're willing to ship to and what shipping services you'll use.

PROMOTE & REVIEW

In this last section you'll want to look over your auction as a whole and maybe use some promotional tools. Some of the extras you could add are (these are all free):

Bold (This will make your auction title bold when viewed in the list of auctions)
Featured (This will show your auction at the top of the list when you show up in the search results or if a customer is browsing the category you listed an auction in)
Premiere (This will add a special icon to your auction and at some point your auction will show up on the main page)
Highlight (This highlights your listing with a color you pick)
Special Icons (You can add one of these icons to your auction to help draw attention to it when viewed in a list of other auctions)

Another great way to get your auction noticed is to use IbidFREE's "Reverse" or "RFQ" auctions. Keep your eyes open for these, someone may be looking for exactly what you're selling. These are pretty much like want ads in a newspaper. Now you can review your auction and make any changes if you want. Once you're ready, just click the "Finish" button and you're done. Now you can sit back and wait for the bidding and buying to begin.

I like to click the "Membership Home" link on the bottom left and watch the progress of my auctions. Once you're in that, just click the "Manage Your Auctions" link in the Auction Options section. It will show you:

How long until your auction is over
How many people looked at your auction
If you have any bids

I hope you've learned a lot and will be more efficient and confident when buying and selling on IbidFREE. If you want to check out the items I'm selling at the moment or just want to read my feedback then click the "Search Auctions" link on the top left. Then enter Bendo13 into the "UserName" search box and that will show you all my auctions.

Other Uses for IbidFREE

I use IbidFREE a couple other ways for site promotion, if you have your own website you want to promote. If you've ever submitted your site to free online classifieds then this will be all to familiar to you. IbidFREE has their own classifieds where you can post just about whatever you want, to help draw attention to it. If you want to promote a site or a storefront, then I'd post in the announcements section. Otherwise, there's a bunch of different categories for you to choose from.
Another handy use for IbidFREE is their forums. They have a section called "The Plug" which is perfect for promoting your site or online business.

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Want to buy and sell online without any fees? Want to make a business for yourself, find great deals or maybe both? Then take IbidFREE for a test drive. First, you're going to want to sign up for an account, don't worry it's free! You'll need to register for an account whether you want to buy or sell on IbidFREE. You just need to enter in some basic information:

Read & Accept their User Agreement
Name, Email Address & the Rest is Optional for Now
Choose a Username

And that's it, go check your email. You should get an email soon with a password and all your registration details in it. Don't forget to check your junk mail folder, just in case.