Over the years, I have been asked this question many times.

How do I sell tickets to my event?

Within the auction system, you have the ability to list an LTO (limited time offer – fixed price multi-quantity) listing.  What this feature does for you is to facilitate the sale of a ticket.  As the feature that it is created to be, this works great, but some of our clients have said, “I want to sell them through Facebook and my web site at the same time“.  Our LTO feature was designed for use within the auction site, not outside of it. But there is a way to integrate a third party tool into the auction system so that you can have a seamless ticket sales experience everywhere, including your auction!

I suggest: EventBrite (http://www.eventbrite.com)

EventBrite is the feature that focuses exclusively on event ticket sales.  In addition to their run anywhere ticket engine, they have detailed ticket sales reporting focused exclusively on the ticketing aspect of your event.  Their fees and features are all found on their web site.

How to implement into AuctionAnything

Take the EventBrite ticket widget code they provide to you.  Paste it into the Custom Message Module #2 on your auction system and then show that message module on the home page.  This will give you the seamless ticket sales option integrated directly into your auction site that you are looking for.

It has been a while since I updated readers about the charity auction that I am directly involved with.  As was a part of the first post, each year, I try to help out a local charity with their auction event.  This year, I am assisting Special Olympics with their Island Hop event.

Problem 1:  Too Many ‘suggesters’ not enough ‘do-ers’

How often has this happened on you auction committee.  Everybody is there with ideas, suggestions and “the best way to do it”.  Come time for rubber to meet the road, you find that a lot of those ‘suggesters’ hit the road instead of being a ‘do-er’ and following through.  You are not alone.  This happens in every auction committee and ours was no different.  Our first meetings were standing room only.  Our last meeting had 5-6 attendees.  Guess what.  We got more done with the 6 people who were doing all of the work anyway than we ever were with the 20-30 people who started out with us.  Since we didn’t have any new whirlwind ideas being tossed about, we focused on the tasks at hand and pulled together a good number of quality auction items.  Plus there were more cookies for each of us so that is always a bonus.

Problem 2:  Trying to Please Everybody

Risk is scary.  Change is nerve wracking.  How you handle that fear is important.  In the case of our committee, we tried to please everyone.  I was much more hard-nosed than the rest of the group, but then I don’t have the fear that it won’t work because this is what I do everyday.  In the end, I was able to bring them into less than what they were going to do and the made me soften up just a bit.  The net result is that their donors have stopped trying to “help” and instead are getting ready for the event and bringing their checkbooks with them.

Problem 3:  Chicken or Egg

Do you take all of your items online?  Do you have all of your items set for pre-bidding?  How many online winners are there?  What is the right formula?

Unfortunately, there is no right formula other than all of your items online with simultaneous in-person and online bidding.  However, not everybody can do that and not every committee is willing to fight back their fear enough to pull that off.  In our case, we ended up with 20% of our items closing online and 80% with pre-bidding and closing in-person.  I typically suggest a 50/50 split or 70/30 split in favor of items closing online, but I was out-voted.  Their commitment to me was that they understood that bidding online was going to likely be lighter than I had wanted primarily because the majority of items were for winning at the event and not online.  It is always a battle.  Do we jump in with both feet or do we dip our toe in the water.

The event is live now online and the gala is on the 22nd.

Ticket sales have exceeded previous ticket sales and that is great.  Let’s hope they get the word out for bidding so that we get the online bidding that I am looking for.

Often times in an auction you have 2 items that seem to go together that you naturally want to bundle with the thought that it will get you a higher dollar return, but is that always the best choice?

Questions to ask before bundling

• Is one of the items of a much higher value than the others?
• Do the lower value items increase the value of the item?
• Are the lower value items essential to the purchase of the main item?

Getting creative with your Auction marketing can be the difference between a successful and an average auction. “Engaging Results” just delivered a great way to encourage participation and created a secondary way to engage their auction bidders.

Text to Bid

Simply text the word Auction to 30364 and you will receive a bounce back message to your phone with the secret challenge phrase to register for the auction.  They have taken the filter off by allowing people who don’t know how to text or can’t text to just send an email and receive the codes that way as well.

In addition to adding users to their Text campaigns, they also have a different way of reaching out to their bidders to grab their attention.  This multiple channel approach offers you more avenues for people to talk about your auction.  Don’t worry if you have never done a text campaign before.  A quick search of Google for “text campaign providers” can get you going in the right direction.  At pennies per text, it is also one of the cheapest ways to keep in touch with your users.

Fall is a great time of year. The weather is hopefully starting to cool down, the kids are back in school and the rush is on to finish out the year on a positive note. Fall is also a great time to take stock of your business and what you plan to accomplish in the remaining months of the year. At AuctionAnything.com, we welcome the start of fall fundraising season, we look forward to welcoming back our annual event clients and we also take a look at the year so far and what we want to accomplish before year’s end.

So far in 2011, we have rolled out our new Blog, provided our clients with industry leading Facebook integration and our very own Facebook App, have optimized large portions of the application and worked on many custom development projects with our clients. We’ve also made many improvements to our technical infrastructure, from new servers and software to optimizing our software update and backup processes. But we are not done yet, and in the coming months we are looking forward to bringing you some exciting new product features and services. Here is a sneak peek at a few of the things we are working on for the remainder of 2011.

1. A new website – in the coming months, we will be taking the wraps off our brand new corporate website. This blog and lots of other great information and functionality will be rolled into a new state of the art web platform so that we can keep in touch with our clients and visitors and get the word out about AuctionAnything.com like never before.

2. New ways to upload images – you’ve asked for it and we are delivering a brand new way to upload images to your auction site. This new web-based image uploader is in the final stages of testing and development and will be rolled out soon to all clients. With features like auto-resize, instant thumbnail creation and drag and drop uploading, we think you’re really going to like this new method of uploading your images for your next event.

3. Custom data feeds – have you ever needed to get information out of your auction site but did not know which report to use? We are rolling out custom data feed support in the coming weeks so that you can get the information you need when you need it.

At AuctionAnything.com, we are always looking for ways to improve our client’s experiences with our software. In the next few months we will be busy adding new features, new services and a new look to our web site. As always, we welcome your feedback and look forward to helping you achieve your goals this fall!

The first question I get from new auction managers is

Which items are going to sell best in an online auction?

The correct answer to that question should be:  ”How the heck should I know?”, but after seeing thousands of online fundraising auctions, I can give you a few really good ideas.

1. Grocery Gift Cards - These almost always get higher bids than their face value.  The reason?  Everybody is buying groceries anyway so the real donation amount is the amount over the face value.
2. Hotel Stays - Everybody needs to get away for a while.  A couple of nights in a hotel, even in your home town, is always an easy sell.
3. Unique Experiences - Something that somebody couldn’t just buy for themselves.  An example:  Lunch at the local Pizzeria (anybody can get that part) with the Mayor (now that is more difficult).
4. Exclusive or hard to get items - Have a Broadway show or a new restaurant or a sporting event that people are dying to get into but can’t?  There is your exclusive item to drive attention and high bids.
5. One of a Kind Items - This could be something fancy like a Faberge Egg or it could be something like a class art project for a school or something iconic like THE Red Rider BB Gun from A Christmas Story but don’t buy that because “You’ll shoot your eye out kid”.
6. Dinner Certificates - Though these don’t go for over bid like Grocery Certificates, they still grab a high bid to retail ratio because everybody eats out.
7. Tickets - These could be tickets to a play, sporting event or concert that people wouldn’t normally buy because it is frivolous but when the money goes to charity, sure why not.  It is for a good cause.
8. Consumer Electronics - As I am typing this, the iPad 4003 just got replaced by the iPad 4004…oops now it is the iPad 4008.  People love electronics and while a bit difficult to get sometimes, people bid on these very actively.
9. Gift of the Month Club - Every month they get a reminder of how cool your organization is.  You name a product and there is a That Product of the Month Club for it.
10. Common Medical Procedure - An example would be braces or Laser Eye Surgery.  The key on this one is to make sure that it comes from a well known and reputable provider.