How To Create A Successful Forum Auction

By Author: KC TAN
Total Articles: 3764
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As forums are getting more and more popular for the Internet users to buy and sell products, many Internet Entrepreneurs start to put up auctions for their products such as Websites. This article highlights the critical factors that determine the success of an auction thread in a forum.

The first important factor is the right audience. In my opinion, there is no one forum that is suitable for all products. Depending on your niche, you will be able to maximize your auction results by placing in the correct forum. For example, you may want to sell a web designing related site in a graphics design or Webmasters forum instead of a general chatting board. Being said that, you should also try for new places to place your auction and you will be surprised to see unexpected results.

After deciding the places to post your auction, you should now consider the time to start your auction. In a forum, this is a critical issue especially there are times where the number of sellers far exceed the buyers. Hence, pushing down your auction listing to the subsequence pages. One great time to start your auction is on weekdays before ...
... lunch hours. Try that out to see if it fits in your forum niche.

For most products from fishing rods to intangible ones like Websites, a recommended auction period is one week. This will capture the weekend crowd and would create more exposure to different group of buyers.

As important as in other auction platforms, a catchy headline is a must if you are panning to sell your product. Headlines should be clear stating what are you selling and why must I see your listing. The main objective is to get the audience to click on your listing first at this point of time. It is also advisable to exclude your starting bid if it is at the higher margin. However, if you have a low starting bid, be sure to mention that in your headline.

There are many passive buyers who seldom buy but they always keep up with the new auctions to see how it goes. The only way to capture this new buyers is to build up trust with them. Hence, you can also look for forums that have feedback ratings enabled and this feature will help you greatly in your future auction or any other listing.

To conclude, selling your products in forums require a fair bit of experience and trust that you build up in that particular forum along the way but with the above pointers, you will have an edge over other members that just put up an auction without planning.