Online Education Training – Sharpening Your Skills

Perhaps you own your own business and feel like you need to sharpen your skills. Perhaps you are in an industry that is moving so fast you can’t keep up with it. Keeping your skill up-to-date in the corporate world is essential to maintaining your position. Internet education can allow you to continue to work and gain workable skills at the same time.

Here Are Some Benefits To Online Education Training:

1. Certifications Available – Many online education training courses offer a certification or document showing you have completed the requirements for that training course. The certification, such as an Information Technology certification, can be presented to your current employer. Some employers will offer a raise if you have more desired skills. The more certifications you have, the less likely the company will be to “let you go” during layoffs or bad economy drops.

2. Wide Range Of Prices – Online education training courses are often less expensive than going for a degree. Community colleges are major components to online education training. For the most part, community colleges have smaller tuition amounts than universities. There is sure to be something you will be able to afford. The training courses offered online through community colleges have the same quality certifications though. This should not be a worry to you.

3. Topics You Enjoy – You are sharpening your skills in a profession you are familiar with. If you did not enjoy your job, you would not want to make yourself more marketable in it. So, you are more likely to be taking classes on things you enjoy learning about. In return, your retention of the topics will be higher. I think this is one of biggest benefits of education training through the internet.

4. Specific Amount Of Time And Goal Setting – It is easier for you to set short and long term goals when completing online education training. Program coordinators will sit down and plan out your exact time frame for completing the program. The programs move at a reasonable rate and as long as you stay to the grid, you will complete the program on time.

Online education training should be pursued by every single professional out there. Everyone can benefit from sharpening their professional skills. Without continuing your education, you could lose your position, be demoted, or not able to change careers to something you actually want to do.

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Attracting Home Based Business Leads – Easy As ABC

Do you aspire to make your network marketing business a profitable venture? For that, you will need as many home based business leads as possible. Why? Although working hard by yourself is good, you need to beef it up with joint efforts from your network marketing leads to achieve your MLM goals. Yes, in this kind of business, two or more heads are definitely greater than one. Without any home-based business lead, your network marketing business is doomed to failure.

But the question is, how will you attract those seemingly elusive MLM leads? You need strategies to make that possible. That doesn’t mean you have to be aggressive by harassing every person you meet on the street. Also, you don’t have to pepper your relatives, colleagues, and friends with messages persuading them to agree to be your home based business leads. And don’t make the mistake of spending money just to get your needed leads. These are not effective ways to get quality network marketing leads. Instead, harness the power of the Internet to make your business known to the world, gain everyone’s trust, and convince people that the opportunity you are offering will be worth their time and effort.

The following tips will help you jumpstart your home-based MLM business.

* Invest in quality and valuable content.

This type of content is what drives visitors to your site, which in turn converts visitors into home based business leads. Content can be in the form of articles, videos, photos, ebooks, blog posts, press releases, slide presentations, and reports, among many others. Put your content in your blog, submit it to article directories, and take advantage of other features of the Internet to widen your reach. Boost your content’s exposure with the help of social media strategies (this is where Facebook and Twitter become extremely useful). Also, it is important to optimize your site for search engines. That way, more people will find your website and content on the Internet.

* Redesign your website.

You aim to convert your home based business leads into loyal business partners, and what better way to do that than to revamp your site to make it more user-friendly and valuable to your visitors. Make sure that your landing page is geared toward your target leads and that your site contains call to action statements.

* Offer something valuable for free.

Of course, who couldn’t resist freebies? To generate home based business leads, give away free information in your squeeze page or lead seize page. Don’t forget to include in that page an opt-in form where your interested visitors can provide their name, email address, and other contact details in exchange for free information.

* Create a mailing list and an autoresponder.

You want to approach your target home based business leads in a more personal manner, right? The best way to do that is to build a mailing list and an autoresponder to follow up on your potential customers. That way, you make them feel they are interacting with a human.

Want to know how to attract home based leads?

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Home Based Business Start Up Funding Guide – Find Start Up Money Without Borrowing!

This Home Based Business Start Up Funding Guide is a free resource, developed to help you find the start up money you need to finance your home based business. The funding sources reviewed here are not intended to act as a comprehensive listing, but rather a quick start reference guide, to get you on the road to start up funding success. For a more comprehensive listing, please seek the guidance of a Certified Start Up Business Consultant, specializing in alternative financing strategies and cost reduction methods. Start Up Contests Start up contests may be worth your time. You can potentially win start up cash to fund your business, recognition and free publicity, or valuable business services. Here are a few dot com contest sites:
StartUpNation – “Leading Moms in Business Contest”
Business – “What Works for Business Contest”
Ideablob – “Business Idea Contest”
Start Up Grants Although it may be somewhat challenging to qualify for a government grant to start your business, consider private sector start up grants. This will require diligent research, but there are some private sector grant opportunities available to new businesses. Some don’t even require a completed business plan – just a great idea. Check out the $1,000 Entrepreneurial Spirit Grant opportunity offered by Idea Cafe (BusinessOwnersIdeaCafe.com), to assist you in your quest for home based business start up funding. Form a Strategic Alliance Formulating a mutually beneficial strategic alliance, with a non-competing business in your industry or field of expertise, can save you thousands of dollars. If you have specialized skills or expertise in your field, join forces with a company which compliments your business. For example, if you plan to start a bookkeeping service from your home, you may want to connect up with a certified public accountant. Or, if you are a Certified Start Up Business Consultant like myself, you may have strategic alliances with an attorney and accountant. These relationships benefit you greatly by reducing a large chunk of your operating costs, thereby lowering your home based business start up funding requirements. Bootstrap Financing Methods All of the ideas we’ve discussed are free sources of funding, to assist you in your bootstrap financing plan. Are you desperately searching for start up money to finally realize your dream of successful business ownership? Are bank loans just not an option for you? There are hundreds of absolutely free resources that you can take advantage of, to help your home based business obtain the all important start up funding it needs to succeed. I talk with people everyday who just didn’t think that they had enough money to start a business. You can find the money you need to start your business TODAY – even if you have poor credit or don’t own a home. Start by claiming your free copy of “The Bootstrapper’s Start Up Business Planner”, by visiting my website. ©2009 Kimberly Kelly – All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Permission to reprint this article is granted strictly on the condition that it be reprinted in its entirety, with all live links and author bio intact.

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Home Based Business Leads the Easy Way

A lot of marketers suffer from lack of leads, yet generating home based business leads can be simple. Often this can be linked to lack of marketing knowledge. Out of desperation network marketers resort to business leads because they feel it’s the thing to do. Many times they are encouraged by their companies and their mentors to buy their home based business leads. The constant rejection and lack of results, when it comes to novice marketers, is usually to blame for failure is sponsoring new reps causing business failure.Your network marketing company wants you to succeed but many are stuck in the old days of offline marketing and have no idea how to market on the internet. The old ways of offline marketing still work but, not when you are building a business on the internet you are working with a whole different animal.Pushing your opportunity on any on the internet will not get you many home business leads and will cause more grief then results. People can get very annoyed with you and label you as a spammer on the internet when you keep pitching your business, you end up ruining your internet reputation. Pitching your business on the internet just makes it harder for you. There is a better way to generating home based business leads for your business and that is to actually stop pitching it. 95% of marketers with a business opportunity try to get leads and prospects by pitching. What makes you and your business so special for anyone to want to be your lead and join your business when they have thousands of choices.Why not start standing out, and do things different then the majority of network marketers out there promoting their business opportunities? Offer valuable knowledge by putting to use different marketing strategies, write blogs, articles and informative videos. You will start branding yourself as a leader of the industry and people will want to find out more about you and how you can help them. They will start asking you about your business because they will be drawn to you and want to work with you. That is when you tell them about your business opportunity and they become your home based business leads.This is called branding yourself, and offering value, you separate yourself from all the other marketers offering business opportunities. People become magnetically drawn to you because they have something of value to offer you can teach them to stand out of the crowd.

Home Based Business – Why This is the Best Option in the Current Economic Crisis

With the current economic downturn, now predicted to get much worst, many people are finding themselves without a job. Employers across the country are laying off their workers by the thousands and people are beginning to panic. Anxiety is starting to set in as people are running around trying to find work, but you don’t have to be a part of that scenario. This might sound ironic, but now is the best time to become a Home Based Business Entrepreneur. More and more people are realizing this truth and are beginning to jump on board this rapidly growing trend.If you are lucky, and still have a job, you might still be hard pressed to pay the bills at the end of the month. So then the tendency, like most people, is for you to find a part time job just to make ends meet. This will have a huge effect on your life and will call for a high sacrifice. You will have less time to spend with your family and little or no time to socialize with friends. Eventually this will lead to total exhaustion, which will take a toll on your health and the end result is that you might still be living from pay check to pay check.A Home Based Business can be the answer to your problems. Thousands of Home Based Business Entrepreneurs are making five and multiple five figure income from their home. They also have the time freedom to do the things they really want to do. They typically spend more time together and go on more family vacations, and you too can enjoy the benefits of a Home Based Business.There are a lot of fraud claims out there on the internet, but with careful research you will find a few good ones.There are two distinct home business out there, MLM, which usually cost less to start but takes much more effort to get going and can take years to see a positive return, and Top Tier Direct Sales, which typically cost a bit more to start but you can see great returns within 2-3 months.

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Investment Property Mortgages – Are UK Rising Interest Rates Pushing Investors Out Of The Market?

Investment property mortgages are often referred to as buy to let mortgages. Investment property mortgages are used where an investor is purchasing an investment property with the intention of renting it out to tenants in return for a monthly rental income.Many people are now involved in buying and selling investment property and as a result, the range of investment property buy to let mortgages has significantly grown. The investment property mortgages have become more widely available with some lenders offering buy to let mortgage products with up to 90% loan to value. If you can purchase investment property by using just 10% of your own capital this can result in the landlord being able to buy more investment property than before when the industry standard for buy to let mortgages was 15%.Investment Property – Do your ResearchWith more sophisticated products available for investment property and the demand for rental property continuing, landlords are tirelessly looking for ideal investment property for sale. Finding investment property for sale can be a time consuming exercise but the most successful investors will constantly be on the look out for the best deals on discounted investment property. An established investor will always be researching areas identified as property hotspots where they can be the first to invest in an investment property. Investment property in regeneration areas can be equally as good but remember it can take time before these investment properties deliver a substantial return on your investment. Investment property in good areas, with strong rental demand will always be a winner if you are looking at good investment property potential.Investment Property – Flat or HouseShould you buy a flat or a house as an investment property? A question often asked but there is no right or wrong reason. Property investors buy investment property for different reasons. Some may buy investment property in their local areas whereas others may buy investment property further afield. A house as an investment property may present a wider choice of tenants. For example a house bought as an investment property could appeal to a single person, a small family, professional couple, elderly couple etc. A house is more likely to be freehold so avoiding annual service charges. A flat bought as an investment property is more likely to appeal to professionals who don’t necessarily have time to maintain gardens or have children. So for these reasons it is important to identify the best investment properties in the area and where the biggest demand for tenants is.Investment Property – Student LetIf you are looking to buy an investment property in a university town, then a house could present a good return on investment for student lets. Plus, there are now many more buy to let mortgages available for investment property that is being let to students.

Using Personal Finance Books As Motivators

There is no question that many people struggle with their personal finances. It seems like more and more you hear about the average credit card debt going up, with people having more and more problems paying their mortgage or saving for retirement. It is not a huge surprise, because the culture seems to promote spending money, and makes it seem like you are an outcast if you do not try to “Keep up with the Joneses.”

However, there is a segment of society that people can turn to if they are looking for support and ideas and how to get out of this endless cycle, and that is personal finances books and websites. There are hundreds of books (probably too many) promoting the benefits of strong personal finance, with suggestions on how to live your life in a way that helps you plan for the future and make sure it is secure. These types of books can help in a couple of different ways.

One, they give you ideas to help you live more frugally and responsible with your money. They can also help you figure out the best places to put or save your money, since this is often an area where people feel overwhelmed. Oftentimes, you might want to start a retirement account, but you don’t know how, so you simply do nothing. With the right materials, you can find out that it is not nearly as hard as you think it is, and you can get it done. It can help you realize that doing things 85% correctly is better than not doing anything at all.

Another way that these books can help is to provide you with encouragement and motivation. If you are at home on a Friday night because you don’t want to spend the money it takes to have a night out on the town, it can get you down, and make you feel like you are missing out on life. However, if you have these books as motivation, it can help you realize that you may be sacrificing now so you can live a more rich life later. It can provide that spark that you need to make those financial changes in your life, and make sure that things are staying on the right path for you to reach your financial goals. This is especially true if you do not have friends that are helping you on that path.

Advertising Manager: Types and Responsibilities

One of the many organizations consists of persons responsible for advertising, publicity, sales promotion, marketing and public relations of commercial, public and other undertakings. The persons may, in fact, be business proprietors, directors or executives who have to wear several ‘hats’. They may be called advertising or publicity manager, but equally they may be sales or marketing managers who include advertising as one of their duties. And it is becoming increasingly common for public relations officers or managers, communication managers and public affairs managers to embrace advertising. This means that whatever the title they may happen to have in an organization, they will be responsible for advertising.

Main Types of Advertising Manager:

Despite the proliferation of titles and ‘hats’, there are three distinct classifications.

i) The advertising manager who is chiefly an administrator acts in liaison with advertising agents and other outside services.

ii) The advertising manager is one who leads a creative department which may or may not use an advertising agency.

iii) The brand or product manager is one who is responsible for advertising, sales promotion and merchandising for one or more brands or for particular groups of products, such as foods, household goods, pharmaceuticals, etc.

Responsibilities of the Advertising Manager:

i) To work closely with those responsible for shaping future policy whether it concerns new or modified products, rationalization or diversification, changes in distribution methods, or entry into new markets or market segments. In other words, it is unlikely that a company will go on making and selling the same product in the same old way, and the advertising manager must have the confidence of those in the board room, drawing office or laboratory who will influence his future work. He should also be able to contribute to the future developments. He may become involved in setting up product pre-tests and test marketing exercises to decide whether the product, the marketing strategy or the advertising media and techniques are likely to be successful or are capable of improvement or amendment.

ii) To interpret the company policy to advertising agents and other outside services so that their work is produced in accordance with the policy of the company. This is a delicate operation, a matter of clear communication to others who do not have the benefit of his intimate inside knowledge gleaned over a period of time. Unless he is able to convey his company’s requirements in easily understandable terms, time, money and patience can be wasted on producing unacceptable campaigns, copy, layouts, photographs, print films, exhibits, and so on.

iii) To determine the appropriation or advertising budget and to make allocations for different media and purposes.

iv) To control expenditure. With monies spread over a diversity of campaigns, media and techniques, the advertising manager has to be a master of budgetary control.

v) To co-operate with the advertising agency. This is absolutely essential, and it is a very good saying that an advertising agency is only as good as the client allows it to be. Agencies are not miracle workers. While their ingenuity must be encouraged they cannot work in a vacuum, and the advertising manager must be responsive in feeding his agency with all the facts, samples and other background material on which the agency can go to work. The advertising manager also has to remember that agency personnel are not always in direct contact with him, but have to work through departmental heads.

vi) To control or undertake ‘product publicity’, that is press relations for his products. He may have his own press officer or use the services of a PR consultancy. If his company has a separate public relation department, he will work with that department.

vi) To assess the results of advertising, doing this where possible by means of conversations from inquiries to sales, shop audit results showing shares of the market held in relation to advertising expenditure and other methods.

These responsibilities indicate something of the breadth of the advertising manager’s job. It calls for a liberal education, business experience and sound training in advertising.

The Finer Points of Internet Auctions

WHAT IS A PENNY AUCTION?

Penny auctions have exploded in popularity with the massive growth of the internet. However, few people know the true origins of penny auctions.Beginnings actually stretch back to the Great Depression. Those were hard times for everyone, but even harder for farmers. Farmers struggled to bring in steady income because of droughts and crops not selling as well as they had previously. As a result, the banks would foreclose on the farmers who couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments.

The banks weren’t satisfied with just repossessing the house, they wanted to raise as much capital as possible, so they resorted to selling off the possessions of the owners of the repossessed houses. There was not much the farmers could do about it so they began bidding ridiculously low prices, pennies, on the items while threatening others who dared to bid higher than a few pennies.

The auctions of today hardly resemble their tremulous beginnings. Being part of a penny auction today is exhilarating, fun, and addictive. It combines the selling format of auctioning with a little bit of chance factored in.Auctions are a game of strategy but also a game of luck.

The premise behind penny auctions is giving people the chance to win an item at a drastically reduced price.Auctions make that possible by spreading out the cost of the product among multiple bidders. In order for a person to take part in an auction, they must pay a set price for each bid. For example, if a person wanted to bid on a fifty dollar Amazon gift card then he would spend a dollar for each time a bid placed. If he ended up winning the gift card, then he would only have spent a few dollars for a fifty dollar gift card. Usually penny auctions sell bids in packages.

HOW PENNY AUCTIONS WORK!

The main foundation of penny auctions is the pay-per-bid format. It is the key that allows bidders to win items at the fraction of their retail value and allows the auction owners to keep their site profitable. Most y auction sites run on the same premise: people pay a set amount for each bid, whenever a person places a bid within the closing seconds of the auction time will be added, the last person left with a unique bid after the clocks runs out will win the item. There are a large variety of items that can be won, but they tend to be popular electronics or gift cards to popular stores.

There are two types of auctions: lowest unique bid auction and highest unique bid auction. Lowest unique auction sounds confusing but it is actually quite simple. A unique bid is when only one person has a bid at a certain price. Bids usually start at one penny, a bidder can then place a bid at two pennies. Until another bidder places a higher bid, the most recent bidder will be the lowest unique bid because that was the only bid at two cents and nobody bid higher. However, penny auctions generally don’t stop at one penny. It is not uncommon to find auctions that end up at a couple hundred dollars based on the popularity of the item being auctioned. However, the same principles apply for those auctions. Highest unique bid auctions follow the more traditional auction format such as eBay. The person with the highest bid at the end of the auction wins the item.

Auction site owners turn a profit by selling bids. Say twenty people are bidding on a ten dollar gift card at one dollar per bid, at the end of the auction if there were twenty bids placed in total then the site owner would have made twenty dollars with a ten dollar profit.Auctions do seem like a win-win situation:The site owner makes money while the bidder gets an item for dirt cheap. However, not everyone wins in penny auctions. The people who paid one dollar each bid but left with nothing to show for their investments will not be so happy.

HOW TO WIN!

Penny auction has a lot of chance mixed into it, but one can incorporate strategy that will help raise the chances of winning. Playing smart can make all the difference between gambling and auctioning.

The first crucial tip to winning penny auctions is to know how to manage your bids. Your goal should be to win as much as possible without spending a ton of money buying bids. Managing your bids means that you should already know how much you are willing to risk in order to win an item. The amount of capital you are willing to risk will determine how many bids you can use. Once you know how many bids you have to spend on an item, then you will be better able to manage how and when you place a bid. That will keep you from blowing away all of your bids in the first few seconds of the auction.

The next tip is to practice time management. When fighting in the trenches of penny auctions, you have two enemies: other bidders and time. Knowing when to bid is a must if you want to have success. Placing a bid when there is a lot of time left on the clock is never a good idea. You have to remember that the key to winning a penny auction is being the last one standing when the clock runs out and that each bid increases the amount of time left. It would be a good practice to wait until the last few minutes of the auction before you begin to bid.

The final tip for successful auctioning is to keep your emotions under control.Auctions have a lot of similarities to gambling, and just like gambling, your spending can get out of control. If you keep your emotions level, it will keep you from making rash decisions and blowing loads of cash. Keep your mind clear so that you can gage the behavior of the other bidders and outsmart them.

HOW TO AVOID SCAM SITES!

Penny auctions are a great addition to the web whether you want to win an item that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to afford or if you simply enjoy the thrill that comes with bidding in auctions. Unfortunately, scam sites have tarnished the reputation of the legitimate penny auction sites. However, there are ways that you can protect yourself from scamers and enjoy your auctioning without having to worry about losing your money due to dishonesty.

Checking the reputation of the auction site before you start spending your hard earned money is always a good idea. Chances are other people have tried the site before you and some of them have left reviews. The reviews are your way to gage whether a auction site is trustworthy or not. If a site is getting overwhelmingly negative reviews, then that is a clear indication that you should steer your business elsewhere.

Another tool you can use to protect yourself is checking the Alexia ranks of the auction sites. Alexia rank will give a solid view of how much traffic the auction is getting. If you see a huge difference in the amount of traffic Alexia is projecting and the amount of active bidders on the site, then warning signals should be ringing in your head. Some auction sites have been known to set up robots that automatically bid on projects in order to keep the auction going and inflate the price. That is known as shill bidding. You can sniff out those sites by comparing the traffic the site should be getting to the amount of users using this site.

CONCLUSION!

New legislation may come out later down the road that will officially make penny auctions gambling, but until then, it is a fun, exciting auction that allows one to win the item they’ve always wanted but couldn’t afford.Auctions are also quite lucrative for the site owners because of the pay-per-bid strategy they’ve incorporated. Penny auctions had humble beginnings with farmers who just wanted to get back at the banks who kicked them out of their house. More recently, auctions have enjoyed an explosion in popularity with the rise of the internet.

There are two main formats fora auctions, lowest and highest unique auction, however they both run on the same premise where the last unique bid wins the item. Winning a penny auction will require a certain amount of mental tactic and a bit of luck. However, you can increase your odds of winning by practicing certain techniques such as managing your bids wisely, learning how to work with the time, and keeping a level head and your emotions under control. When you combine those three strategies to your bidding plan, you will find that you win a lot more often.

It is important that you do your due diligence to protect yourself when participating in auctions. Not every auction is run by honest and trustworthy people. There are people out there who just want to take your money. You can protect yourself by ensuring that you only bid on sites that already have a very positive reputation from real users.

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How to Find Great Live Auctions for Resale Items

Hi, my name is Walt. I’m an auctioneer with 25 years of experience in the auction business and licensed in the state of MA. I own Quick Auction Service, a company that specializes in building and running custom auctions, I’m also the webmaster of my own site and have been on eBay for 8 years. Besides eBay, the types of auctions I run most frequently are antiques and on-site estate auctions, although I’ve run everything from business overstock auctions to charity & special event auctions.

I enjoy sharing my knowledge and stories of the auction business. My goal for article is to help folks get the absolute most out of their auction experience.

Whether your fresh out of the package or a seasoned dealer I think I can offer something in this article to help you with your auciton adventures.

There may be as many reasons to attend auctions as there are types of auctions to attend. Maybe you want to attend an auction to buy items for re-sale on eBay, or some other market. Maybe you want to furnish your home with wonderful antiques, or you want to furnish your home as inexpensively without sacrificing quality.Some folks are just looking for a fun night out. With a little perseverance all these things are possible.

There are antiques and estate auctions, auto auctions, overstock auctions, absolute and no reserve auctions, real estate auctions, specialty auctions where only one genre of items are sold, tailgate auctions, live auctions, online auctions, sealed bid auctions, silent auctions, charity and fund raising auctions and many more.

Can you really buy for pennies on the dollar at an auction? You bet! Many times I’ve seen folks buy and re-sell at the same auction on the same night for a good profit, although be advised, this should only be done after the auction is over.

There are a lot of ways to find an auction, but here are some tips on how to find and attend the best ones.

Visit the genre of shops in the area that apply to the type of auction you want to attend. IE: If your looking for a good antique auction to attend, stop in the local antiques shops and ask for what there are for good auctions in the area. Sounds obvious right? But listen to what they don’t say as well as what they do say. Oftentimes when a dealer speaks poorly about an auction he or she attends, it may be likely that they are trying to keep a good thing secret. Think for a moment, why would a dealer keep attending a lousy auction?

Newspaper ads: I personally like to find ads in the classified ad section rather than flashy display ads. Flashy ads are usually indicative of an auction that will be high priced, may have reserves, (a set price on an item), and usually an enormous crowd. While any auction can be profitable to attend, it is usually best to steer clear of the glitzy ones, at least for the beginner.

Here’s the minimum you want to find out before you go. If there is a phone number in the ad, call and ask for the terms of the sale. What forms of payment do they accept? Is it an absolute auction? An absolute auction is one that has no minimum or reserve bids on items. These are the best auctions to attend! Is there a buyers premium? A buyers premium is like a tax that everyone who makes purchases at that auction must pay above the winning bid price. Most auctions these days do charge a buyers premium, 10% is not unreasonable but I feel much more than that is greedy, and the auctioneer that charges over 10% is counting on most bidders not doing the extra math as the bids quicken in pace.

A fair auction will have ample time to inspect the merchandise, usually at least 2 or 3 hours. Find out when inspection starts and make sure to attend! Never attend an auction if you can’t make the inspection, not unless your prepared to gamble. Most auctioneers sell at a rate of about 100 items per hour, which is why they sell “as is”. They simply don’t have the time to give a detailed description of all the items. Since almost all items at auction are sold AS IS, there are sure to be some damaged, refinished, fake and incomplete items at any given auction. Beware of any auctions that offer very little or no inspection time.

Good auctions will usually have 150 to 400 lots. A lot may be one item or a group of items. The exception to this are specialty auctions, auto auctions, real estate auctions etc.

When you attend your first sale, take note of the 1/2 dozen or so dealers that buy the most often. See if you can find out about other area auctions they attend.

When you do find an excellent auction, attend it as often as possible. By frequenting good sales, you help increase the bottom line of that business. It’s difficult for many auctioneers to keep the quality of merchandise consistent, so good attendance certainly helps. And when an auctioneer gets to know you as a buyer, he/she will go out of the way to accommodate you, to keep you coming back.

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