Ebay - Getting More Bids Using An Auction Preview

If you sell in small nicehs as I recommend and are organized enough that you know what you will be listing on eBay 1 to 2 weeks ahead of time, you should give serious thought to previewing your upcoming auctions for your customers. The result can be increased sales and higher final bids.For two years I used a free hosting srevice to host a small web web site that I used as a pre-auction catalog. Each week that preview web site would contain pictures and descriptions of the majority of the ietms I would be listing on eBay the following week.When that hosting service eventually dropped it's free hosting, cause of time constraints, I let that part of my business slide.

Over the course of the next 3-4 months I saw a significant decrease in the number of bids, the final selling price, and the number of auctions that closed successuflly.
At the time that was an industry wide trend but I also think it had a great deal to do with the fact I no longer had a preview web site on-line.After a few months I moved the web site to a cheap hosting company and saw an immediate increase in bidders, final selling prices, and closing prices.

Adding an auction preview web site to your business model can have significant benefits to your eBay business.An auction preview web site has several advantages - both to you and to your potentail bidders.Advantages to the bidder include:1.

It gvies them additional time to do research on an item if they want.2.

It gives them more time to ask questions about an item.3. It allows them to plan their purchases. Many bidders budget a specific amount of money each month for on-line purchases.

I've had several bidders tell me they'd decided not to bid on someone else's item so they would have the moeny to bid on what I was listing next week.Advantage to you the seller include:1. It gives you a chance to hone your description if neeedd. If you are receiving a lot of similar questions from several customers about an item it probably means you need more or better pictures or to make your description more detailed.2. In most csaes it will increase selling prices. I've fuond that persons tend to bid earlier on auctions that they have been able to preview. This early bidding attracts other bidders to the auction and often drives the final cost up.Your preview web site doesn't have to be anything fancy or costly.

A free hosting servcie works just fine for what that would be used for. Most of them offer 10-25 megabytes of space, and not hard to use page building tools. That's really all you require.Another option might be geocities.Yahoo.Com which gives you 25 MB of web space, 5 GB of data transfer and a helpful web page building utility for only $4.95 a month.Also most of you will find that your ISP offers 10-25 megabytes of free space. If you have a basic knowledge of FTP and HTML that may be a good route to take.What should you put on your perview page?