StormPay Auctions

If you just want to buy items, then the next step is easy for you; look around for what you want. Browse StormPay'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 "Buy Now" 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 StormPay's auctions, 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 StormPay at a good price. Yes, that's right, plenty of people resell items that they originally bought off of online auctions. 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 completed auctions to see if anyone else sold the exact item you're selling, just click the "Advanced Search" link next to the search box up top. 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 your StormPay auction.

    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 StormPay

Now that that's out of the way, let's go over the process of getting your auction listed on StormPay with no listing or ending fees! Click the "Sell" tab on top of the main page. You'll see a short note that states:

"All auction listings go through an approval process. Please allow up to 12 hours for your auction listing to be displayed."

So, if you don't see it listed it right away, don't worry. This is just to insure that all auctions are legit and posted by their rules. First off, 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. StormPay groups all auctions together that are selling similar items, kind of like aisles in an actual store.

PICTURES

    Now you'll want to upload your pictures. 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. The first picture is free, no extra charge, and I highly recommend you have at least one picture of the item you're selling. If you want more pictures, it'll cost you a tiny fee for each one. All pictures loaded through this process will be resized to at most 400 x 300 pixels.
    What I like to do, to save a little money, is to upload one picture and then do one of two things once I get to filling in my description: You can host your pictures at a site like TinyPic and then 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.
    Then you can choose if you want to have a gallery, for a small fee, picture or not, I usually do this on my auctions. When you choose this option, StormPay will put a small thumbnail of your main picture next to your title when it's viewed in the list of auctions. This will help catch potential customers' eyes and hopefully get them to check out your auction.

TITLE

Once you've found the correct category to sell in, click the button at the bottom to continue. Now you'll want to type in a title for your auction. This is what people will see when they're browsing or searching through StormPay Auctions for things to buy, so you want the title to be very descriptive on exactly what you're selling. You're limited on text space for your title, so choose wisely. If you really want to put in a longer title, then you can add a subtitle for a small fee.

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.

PRICE

Next you'll want to enter in your price, your research will pay off here too. First enter your starting price, 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 starting price is what your item will sell at if you only get one bid. This is why selecting the right starting price 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 a starting price, 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. There is NO fee to use this. So usually I'll only enter a starting price, so my potential buyers can be assured of the actual price. You can also enter a "Buy Now" price. This is a set price, once a customer selects to "Buy Now" on your auction, the auction is over and they will pay you the price you entered. A lot of people like to use this feature, including myself, because it's a definite that you're going to win that auction. There's NO fee to use this either. You can also make your auction a "fixed price" auction; there's no bidding. All you do then is pick a "Buy Now" price and that's what it will sell at.
Then you select how long you want your auction to last, anywhere from 1 - 10 days or until your item sells. If you want your auction to last 7 days, 10 days or until your item sells, then you'll have to pay a small fee.

PAYMENT & SHIPPING

Now you'll want to enter your shipping information. First choose the locations you're willing to ship to. If you choose for the buyer to pay for the shipping, 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. You can also add sales tax if you'd like.
There's no need to decide on which methods of payments you'd like to accept because all funds will be transferred through StormPay.

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, for a fee, are:

Scheduled Listing (This auction won't be posted once you finish, you pick a specific date and time for the auction to be list.)
Attention Grabber Icon (You can put a small icon next to your auction's title to help catch customers' attention.)
Bold Title (This will make your auction title bold when viewed in the list of auctions)
Highlight Title Background (This highlights your listing with a color)
Category Featured (This will show your auction at the top of the list when potential customers browse the category you listed in.)
Gallery Featured (Your item will be displayed on the special Featured Gallery page)
Home Page Featured (With this your auction will show up on StormPay Auction's Homepage - This could increase traffic to your auction a lot!)
StormClix Featured (StormClix is a "Paid to Click" advertising program run through StormPay. That way your auction will get a lot of views. You can decide if you want 100, 500 or 1,000 views)

Now StormPay will let you review your auction. First it'll show you exactly how your listing is going to appear to everyone. And then they'll show you how much it's going to cost you to list your auction, if anything at all. It's usually free unless you added on some extras. When the item sells, there are NO ENDING FEES. Once you're ready, just click the "Submit" button and you're done. Now you can sit back and wait for the bidding and buying to begin.

I like to click the "My Account" tab up top and watch the progress of my auctions. Once you're in that, just click the "All Selling" link on the left side. It will show you how many auctions you have listed and which ones sold and whether or not they're paid for yet. I hope you've learned a lot and will be more efficient and confident when buying and selling on StormPay Auctions.

Interested in StormPay Auctions? Want to make a business for yourself, find great deals or maybe both? Let me give you some tips to get you started with using StormPay Auctions. You may have heard of StormPay being used as a payment processor, but they also have auctions. 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 StormPay. You just need to enter in some basic information:

Name, Address, Phone Number & Email Address
Choose a UserName, Password & Secret Question (Just in case you forget your password)
Read & Accept their User Agreement and Privacy Policy

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