People who sell stuff. Tell me your secrets! (please) (in General)

Last year we raised almost $900 for the Child's Play charity. This year I want to improve my selling technique to help get the most out of the rares and other items people donate.

So, I'd really appreciate hearing from people who have sold a lot of items and have learned the best way to get the best prices. If you feel that revealing your techniques will make it harder for you to sell in the future, please consider CMing me. I promise to keep your suggestions confidential (excepting, of course, that my new way of selling will tip people off :-) )

Last year I had limited success with auctions. I also found that selling selected packages (like ELB + large bundle of seekers) didn't work that well. Additionally, I spent a lot of time writing up engaging and humorous sale descriptions in an attempt to get people more interested/excited about the sale.... but it didn't interest people so I felt I had wasted my time.

In the end, the best method seemed to be simply dumping a lot of items into a single FS/WTB thread, and let people bid in a free-for-all.

Of course, now only the seller can post to those threads so I'm not sure how effective they are anymore.

So we have:
* Short 1~10 hr Auctions (to encourage "buy it before time runs out!)
* Long 10~24 hr Auctions (to allow as many people as possible to bid)
* Large batches in FS/WTB (Lots of eyeballs on a single thread)
* Small batches/single items in FS/WTB (Didn't work before, why would it work now?)
* In-chat live auctions? (maybe exciting, but harder to get a lot of bidders at the same time)

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So here's the question to you big sellers and former campers and (like Todd used to do) the "I'm quitting" resellers.
What is the best way to sell a bunch of really nice items for the best price? What methods worked bast for you?
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I tend towards long (12~20hr) auctions and large-batch FS threads but am happy to try something else if it will make our donation larger.

I have found that this is the best method, for me, personally:


1) Create a FS/WTB with all the items in it for a massive sale and beef it up! Make it look pretty. For example:

'For Sale: A fantastic Elven Long Bow, once worn by my nearly invincible team 'Double-D UC' and tuned to have a 100% Chance to Hit when used by a professional Archer*!'

*Archers are considered professional once they have dedicated 1/4 of their strength training routine time to their proferred skill.

2) Make a second thread to continue the sale if there is interest, or if people are bidding up on an item and you would like to continue that increased bidding. Often people do prefer to have the extra time to bid and outbid with another. A third thread is NOT recommended, as you begin to seem as though you are greedily attempting to siphon as much money from your buyers as possible.

3) After your FS/WTB thread is completed, the items that have not received what you would deem 'reasonable' bids should be dumped into Auctions after an announcement stating so. Sometimes people who wouldn't normally bid will use this opportunity to snipe it for a minimum price which they would indeed settle for.

24 hour Auctions seem to work best for me, as everyone gets the opportunity to view the item, but are not discouraged from bidding due to the lengthy time remaining.


Allowing short payment plans often gives incentive to those who would normally be unwilling to buy, but this may not be acceptable depending on when you need the $$$.



However, this process is simply what I've seen to work best - the decision is, of course, ultimately yours how you will choose to sell your items. I simply hope that I can help in some way.


Oh, and your engaging sale descriptions were very nice, but I simply didn't need the items you were selling last time. Otherwise I'd have bought. *shrugs* Just bad luck, I suppose.

when you have items, make a raffle, its for charity so im sure people will play in.

just make sure you get more money in the end than what it is worth. so one person could win an ELB for 50k, and that leaves 20 other people without 50k but its worth it.

just put up certain rules, at least # tickets need to be bought for the numbers to be drawn.

so an ELB worth 1 mil, you make sure you get 1.1 mil at least.

so you make a ticket 40k, and have 40 or so slots. and say that the minimum to be bought is 30 tickets, you may want to allow a second ticket per person, but for an increased price.

downside is, this takes time and is usually done for fun.

you can also do that with just money, put up 1 mil, and make sure you get back 1.1 mil or something, still works.

Flamey, has that method worked well for you?

Post in the FS/WTB section rather than using auctions. Make sure to tell people this is for a charity. Seeing as how it's for charity and all I'm sure a bunch of people will give you more money than what the stuff is actually worth.

Make sure to tell everyone who the high bidders are, cause whoevers got the top bids probably want people to tell him how generous he is being and get praised. And a lot of people will bid tons of money to get their name up there and get recognition or whatever you want to call it.

Basic marketting strategies... I'll keep the advanced techniques for myself.

i haven't ever tried it, never really had to sell anything.

I imagine it would work for this because it is charity.

you can try putting a twist on it, if its a big item this'll work.

you know how you can get 10 mil weapons, that will only sell for 5 mil, because people don't have the money to buy it for 10 mil?

well go by this technique, say you're giving the item out for free, and the buyer only has to pay to forge it up to the current NW, so that would be 70% NW to be sold at, that works i've seen it, but only once, because only one person i know has used it, so still successful.

here is the link: Why spend 1 mil on a base Morgul Hammer when you can get it for free???

I'm sorry, but when I saw that original FS/WTB thread, I just laughed.

I believe it works, it shows people, and looks at it from a perspective that they wouldn't of.

laugh if you will, wasn't me who created the method :) and chuck got it out of a magazine of some sort, or something like that.

It was just a fancy way of saying "I'd like to insta down my MH".

insta down? he got rid of it, i believe, unless i'm mistaken.

It was just a fancy way of saying "I'd like to sell my MH"

yep, I managed to sell the almost 6 mil NW MH for 3.9 mil, which is a fair price given the current pricing scenario in CB2. This, btw after i'd managed to pocket Morthak's 9 MW MH for much less in auction. Whether for charity or in the usual course, you need to make the item you are selling attractive to the buyer, and to show them that they are getting a better deal than otherwise possible.

Thank you for your comments everyone. Both in this thread, and in CM.

:-)