In this article, I will touch on only a portion of this marketplace, namely, estate and garage sales. I will suggest certain ways for estate and garage sale companies - both large and small - to increase their overall revenue while also making sales engaging and useful to …show more content…
These websites only display the company's own goods, and this decreases the audience of their prospective buyers. These companies would do well to list their goods in larger virtual malls, which attract a wider audience at a much lower cost.
The idea of a private "virtual booth" in a larger online mall is not new; it's employed by some big online players, like Amazon. With a platform that houses many "virtual booths," the cost to each "booth owner" of building a quality buyers' experience is considerably lower than setting up a private shop with a separate company. While such virtual malls can provide online auctions for every participant, the actual estate sales and face-to face meetings (where the goods change hands) should retain their traditional mode, and should remain an integral part of the business model.
Small Estate Sale Companies:
The majority of estate/garage sales companies are small businesses, and many have no websites of their own. Some of them are proud to be hands-on people and practice the traditional walk-in approach only. These companies would do well to add an online component to their business - preferably in a platform that combines the benefits of online auctions with the traditional model of estate/garage …show more content…
It just adds new technology benefits to the old process;
Provide more information to buyers with listings that include detailed descriptions of the seller's goods. In addition to traditional photos, each item description should contain the estate/garage sale code - the "booth name" - to help prospective buyers easily find desired listings, as well as the sale location. All this information should be open to all users without registration;
Provide buyers the option to bid on listed items both before and after the date of a real estate sale. A time span of 2-4 weeks gives sale organizers more time to prepare for successful sales. Sale organizers should be able to collect bids 24/7, and buyers should have the opportunity to bid higher or lower than the item's start price; this increases sale flexibility;
Allow sales organizers to choose a winner/buyer at any moment during the bidding stage. An ideal platform should create an opportunity for sale organizers to receive periodic notifications about bidding activity and let them monitor online bids in real