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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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Obama’s Map For Education is Critical

President-elect Obama has a background in community service that frequently put him in touch with individuals whose K12 education was lacking. His compassion to implement strategies that bring about access to the best education for all students is critical to our nation’s future. With all of the talk about the financial crisis the president-elect needs to make education a major priority. We are fast approaching a significant period where large numbers of professionals will retire. There is potential for a largely underutilized workforce that needs more education to help the country will remain unemployable in corporate level jobs. As the states continue to struggle due to a loss of tax revenue more must be done to keep education funding afloat. Losses in financial resources to educate the youth who are the rising workforce will put many companies in jeopardy.

More needs to be done to highlight the education issues that students and parents face today. Education is not affordable at all levels. There needs to be a road map that leads to creative solutions. Many of the larger cities and rural school districts are underfunding the education investment that should be received for each student. One idea is to have corporations to receive some type of tax credit for investing their finances in local schools. This type of innovative idea would provide two benefits. First it could raise corporate involvement in making school better. Secondly it would help more students to prepare for the world of work. More mentors are also needed in all of the schools because students are unaware of how companies work.

President-elect Obama must not back away from the education crisis. If the country backs down from addressing the education crisis we will suffer severely. Students already come to school unprepared to learn. Their parents are unaware of the role that they play in their child’s future. Obama and his wife Michelle have an opportunity to participate as supporters of parents who need guidance to effectively educate their children. There needs to be encouragement so that parents talk to their children about where they will go to college rather than if they will go to college. Their must be a definite response that reaffirms that college is possible. This tone should be set at the beginning of Obama’s presidency.

It would be great to say that after the presidents first 100 days in office education gained ground in the war against economic instability. There should be a plan in place that outlines how education in this country must change. Just like we have witnessed what a weak infrastructure can do to a country we are witnessing a national school system that needs repair. The president must diligently hear messages that demonstrate that the education of every citizen is important. The country needs more adult learners to pursue additional education. Obama must emphasize that it is never too late to renew your desire for education.

President-elect Obama has an opportunity to create a lot of good will within the education community. There are K12 schools and colleges that need to know that there contributions to society are valued. Obama could work with the congress to require banks who are receiving money to invest 5 percent of their stimulus dollars to improve resources for local schools. Our country needs an education revolution that raises the inspiration of students, parents and teachers to expect the best from the American education system.

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Online Marketing – The Affiliate Way

In this article, we want to talk about Affiliate Marketing and how it is similar and dissimilar to Network Marketing or Multi-Level Marketing. Network marketing and MLMs are set up to sell a company’s products to the consumer where the distributor “hires” or brings into their organization to sell products. An Affiliate product is usually a single product sold by the “Affiliate” to their sphere of clients. It’s usually a one-time sale and you don’t build the downline.

Affiliate Marketing is performance based. You’re compensated when you sell the product or service. There are four core players: the Merchant (also known as the ‘Retailer’ or ‘Brand’), the Network (the company that takes care of the payment processing, paying the affiliate for the sale and sending out the offer itself in whatever form that would be), the Publisher (aka Affiliate) and the Customer. This market has grown in complexity.

Because of this, there has been an emergence of tier players, including Affiliate Management Agencies (you must apply through them to sell the product or service), Super Affiliates (the Affiliate Marketer who has a huge list of customers they can sell to) and specialized third-party vendors. For Affiliate Marketing, it’s all in the list. The bigger the list, the more customer and potential customers you can market you single product to. You can market as many products to that list, but it usually one product or service at a time.

To some degree affiliate marketing overlaps with internet marketing. They use advertising methods such as organic search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, content marketing, pay-per-click marketing (PPC) and display advertising. Some affiliates publish reviews of the products or services they sell to get people interested in purchasing them. There is no formal training on the best way to do affiliate marketing because it’s based on real life experience. There are many books on the subject but none that are definitive on this subject.

Referral marketing and affiliate marketing are sometimes confused because they both use third parties to drive sales to the retailer. The difference is that to drive sales, affiliate marketing is dependent only on financial motivation and referral marketing, to drive sales, is dependent on trust and personal relationships.

Affiliate marketing uses website syndication, email and search engines to capture sales. E-Retailers’ marketing strategies play a significant role in affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing was launched in 1989 by William J. Tobin. He also applied for a patent on January 22, 1996. This was for tracking. He received a patent, in the United States on October 31, 2000. Tobin has the Japanese patent which he did on October 5, 2007.

Web 2.0 has opened platforms for affiliate marketing. It’s based on blogging and interactive online communities. It has improved communication between affiliates and merchants. It’s also opened up to bloggers, writers and independent website owners.

Predominant compensation methods are cost per action (CPA), pay per sale (PPS), cost per mille (CPM a little known definition for advertising reach per thousand viewers) and cost per click (CPC).

Cost per action only pays when someone buys the product or service. Pay per sale pays the person once the sale is made. Cost per mile pays the publisher if someone views the website. Cost per click is a measurement of what each click on your offer costs you. CPC is 10000 people view the ad that you paid $500 and 100 people bought the product so your CPC is $5.00.

There are many types of affiliate websites. They use them for comparison shopping, coupon and rebate promotions, niche markets, shopping affiliates, emails, video and video blogs and file sharing.

To locate an affiliate program you can go to an affiliate directory. You can use keywords to narrow your search i.e. “affiliate program”, “affiliate”, “webmasters”, etc.

We’ll show you numerous Affiliate Products and Programs as we post more articles.

Some of the information came from Wikipedia and the other is through my Internet Marketing experiences. In this article, we want to talk about Affiliate Marketing and how it is similar and dissimilar to Network Marketing or Multi-Level Marketing.

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