When you’re trying to sell multiple items at once, it can be invaluable to enlist the help of an auction service: a business that assumes the responsibilities of managing your auctions for you. A program like Auction Helper (http://www.auctionhelper.com ) sends notices and invoices to high bidders and maintains records of your sales so you can add up totals at tax time. You can find out more about using such services in Article 6. The eBay Services: Buying and Selling Tools page (http://pages.ebay.com/ services/buyandsell/index.html) contains links to services that can help manage your sales, such as Selling Manager. UK Auction Help (http://www.ukauctionhelp.co.uk/sitemap.php ) provides a Web page full of tips for auction buyers and sellers alike, including suggestions on how to manage auctions and build volume.

Schedule Your Sales Experienced sellers know that, if you have an especially desirable item, it’s likely to sell no matter when the auction ends. However, they also know that auctions that end when the majority of bidders are available are more likely to gain the highest prices. Here are some suggestions for when to schedule your auctions:

- Sales that end on weekends are more likely to get bids because many more bidders have the time to shop.

- Sales that end on Sundays particularly, Sunday nights tend to get more attention at the end of the sale.

- Some sellers start sales on Thursdays and schedule them to last for ten days: that way, they’ll end on a Sunday, and bidders will have two weekends to shop and place bids. Recapturing the Spirit of the Chicago Entrepreneur Chicago, which is my home town, has a rich history as a center for manufacturing and commerce. Those of us who love to buy and sell treasures of all sorts benefit from that history.We fondly remember a place called the Maxwell Street Market, a huge open-air flea market where you could find virtually anything for sale, and which lives on in a smaller (not to mention cleaner) form every Sunday morning. As a child, Bob Kopczynski used to visit Maxwell Street with his father. Today, he and his wife Katy keep a little bit of Chicago history alive with his eBay business, which goes by the User ID of maxwellstreetmarket. Bob, who works full-time as a construction manager and runs his eBay business in his off-hours, first became interested in eBay when he was looking for computer equipment and souvenirs related to the rock group Van Halen.

Then, on a whim, he decided to sell a pair of tickets he had to the originalWoodstock music festival held in 1969. “I said to myself, I’ll put ‘em for sale up there on eBay, and we’ll just see what happens.” Bob was immediately clued in to the promise of selling eBay when the tickets, which normally would have sold for $30 or $40, fetched a whopping $150 online. He convinced his wife Katy to start selling on eBay, put up $250 to get started, and the rest is history. “When Don (Don Colclough, who is profiled in Article 5) and I started out, we were ridiculed,” laughs Bob. “People thought we were crazy.” Today, maxwellstreetmarket is very much an eBay business. Katy left her job as a schoolteacher three years ago. Now she works full-time at the business, handling bookkeeping and answering questions from buyers. Bob handles purchasing by scouring estate sales and flea markets and does photography. A neighbor, Nancy Armstrong, makes sure the sales go online.

At least five Kopczynski family members help with crating, packing, cleaning, and the many other duties that are required to sell anywhere from 20 to 50 items per day on eBay. The business has expanded along with the Kopczynskis’ suburban Chicago home. First, Bob and Katy worked out of their basement. They made enough on eBay to build a pool and a deck. Then they had to build a garage just so they could store their eBay inventory (Bob calls it “the garage that eBay built”). Now, they rent warehouse space in several locations. The Kopczynskis put a premium on credibility and customer service.

They have built a steady income by putting customers first. “I have a goal to make people feel comfortable,” Bob explains. “Eighty percent of people are still not comfortable with buying online, even though they love auctions. The big hurdle is, why would I send someone I don’t know money? I set a goal to become a licensed state auctioneer; I have to take classes and pay $500 every year to keep my license. I sometimes do auction off high-end items like cars or boats on site, but 99 percent of my auction business is on eBay. I mention that I am a licensed auctioneer in my eBay listings, and I think that tells people they can rely on me. It’s well worth the expense because it tells people I am well established.” The family’s eBay operation is a business in many other ways. For one thing, it’s part of KMK Management Co., Inc., Auctioneers and Estate Liquidators, a company of which Bob is President and CEO. Bob says one reason he decided to incorporate was liability; the corporation has limited liability if a customer decides to sue for some reason. “I pay a CPA to do our taxes, we do collect sales tax charged to Illinois residents. Besides that, we pay our employees’ payroll taxes, too.” The businesslike emphasis pays off in customer relations. Bob and Katy don’t run into too many deadbeat bidders. They estimate that only two to three percent of their customers fail to follow through with sales. More than 99 percent of the feedback they receive is positive. When they do run into problems with customers, they don’t make a big deal about it. “We’re not going to chase you if you don’t pay us. We’ll send you a couple of reminders, and then we tell eBay to pursue you.

Then, we just wait 10 or 14 days and relist it.” The matter-of-fact approach to the business applies to sales, too. Bob has a policy of selling everything on a no-reserve basis even highly desirable items for which he may have paid $100 or more. “I’ll put up a Tiffany lamp at a starting bid of $1.99 with no reserve. Almost all of our auctions are conducted that way. The no-reserve policy quickly eliminates competition that sets an opening bid. My items tend to sell higher than ones with a reserve. Personally, when I’m shopping on eBay, I pass up any auction that has a reserve. You don’t always get your cost back. You don’t always make money on everything you sell. But it’s a matter of volume and turnover that’s what counts. If you pay $200 for something and if it sits on a shelf for six or eight months, it’s no good. Volume is the magic better to get the money quickly and build up lots of sales.” Bob doesn’t specialize in one particular type of item, although he personally collects vintage toys, radios, and musical instruments.

He says he is “continually surprised by how much some things will bring.We even sell empty toy boxes people who know what they are and who collect toys will pay for them.” Bob estimates, in fact, that a high percentage of his own customers are antique and collectible dealers who buy on eBay and resell items in their own brick-and-mortar stores. “I would like to have 90 percent collectors and dealers as my customers because they will pay a higher price, and they’re not likely to turn out to be deadbeats.” In order to turn around 600 to 700 items a month, Bob uses an auction management service called Auction Helper (http://www.auctionhelper.com ). “The auction management service does the shipping. They send an e-mail to the high bidder that says, “Click here to get your invoice and your seller’s address.” The buyer has a printable invoice with all of the details printed right on it.” Bob’s number one tip to would-be eBay businesspeople? “Don’t get hung up on making a ton of money on every single item,” he says. “You have to let it go. Not everybody makes money on every investment. If you had brick and mortar store stuff, you’d run into losses too something might get damaged, or your employees might take stuff. It’s the same on eBay. You just have to let it go and move on to other sales.”

Be Community-Minded Why has eBay continued to grow and prosper while other online auction sites (not to mention a host of e-commerce retailers) have gone to that great Recycle Bin in the sky? It’s not the ups and downs of the economy, which are always present. It’s because of the strength of eBay’s user community, and eBay’s ability to build that community. The eBay Community isn’t simply a place where you can submit feedback and view feedback of other users. It’s the best way (along with articles like this) to get inside information from other experienced sellers tips you’d need weeks or months to learn otherwise. You can also find out who your competition is by talking to other users and searching the message boards and devise ways to stand out from the crowd by being a group participant.

Share Information You learn a lot about selling on eBay by talking to the entrepreneurs who already sell there. That might sound obvious, but working at a computer tends to be a solitary operation. (I’m speaking from experience.) After a few successful sales, you think you can do it all yourself, without anyone else’s help. You are likely to be cured of this notion the moment you scan the current messages on the eBay Café or on the product-specific message boards. You’ll regularly find such seller-specific questions as “What do I do about this deadbeat bidder who…,” “My bidder showed up and refused to pay for the ___ when he saw it,” or “How do you handle 40 or 50 sales per week?” In many ways, the best source of information about specific problems or situations you encounter on eBay is by consulting your fellow eBay users. You might also encounter eBay sellers while waiting in line at an estate sale, or in a crowd at an auction. Consider creating a name tag that says “eBay User” instead of your “real” name. Wear it to sales events such as auctions or flea markets. You just might meet some fellow eBayers with whom you can share tips and experiences.

Know Your Competition Why is it that when a gas station appears on one corner of a busy intersection, another one appears right across the street? They don’t necessarily take business away from each other. In fact, they tend to draw people to the same area, and both outlets get more business than they otherwise would.

It’s the same with auctions. Sure, you’ll see others selling the same things you are in the same categories. Be happy for the crowded activity. If you were all alone in a category, would you get as many bids? Probably not. How many times have you seen pages full of the same kinds of sales items, often with nearly identical descriptions? It can be instructive to look at how the sales are presented and to analyze which get the most bids or any bids at all. For example, many vintage gloves go up for auction without getting any bids. Another benefit of visiting the message boards on a daily basis is getting to know other sellers. It also pays to scout around the other sales in your area of interest after your sales go online, not only to make sure your sales are presented correctly and all of your images appear clearly, but to know if anyone is selling the same things you sell and doing a better job of it than you are.

Relax, It’s Only a Sale When you begin to think in terms of making hundreds of sales rather than individual sales, and of selling on eBay for years to come rather than on a week-to-week basis, you don’t take each sale so seriously. You’ll benefit in the long run by not getting bogged down in problems and details, as described in the sections that follow.

Shed Your Reserve (Price, That Is) You probably know from your own eBay buying that “no reserve” (usually designated NR) auctions get more attention than those with a reserve. Does that mean you should sell everything without a reserve? Different sellers take different approaches.When you’re starting out, your impulse is to protect your investment with a reserve price on all your sales. Many sellers go no reserve for all sales except their most expensive. When my mother asked me to sell some of her antiques at auction, she insisted that I put a reserve price on them so she could be sure to recover what she had originally paid for the goodies. However, when you’re dealing in volume and turning your eBay sales activities into a business, it only makes sense to go with no reserve as often as possible that is, for all sales except those items for which you originally paid a substantial amount. Time and time again, auction sellers have told me that they get the most interest and the highest prices for items that they offered for little or no reserve. I once wrote about a woman who found a depression glass coaster at the bottom of an auction box full of other items. In other words, it cost her almost nothing. She put a reserve of $10 on it and an initial bid of $1. She ended up with more than 20 bids and the glass sold for more than $200.