Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 19:40:11 -0400
From: Bob Rankin
Reply-To: TOURBUS-Request@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
To: TOURBUS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Subject: TOURBUS - 03 Jun 1997 - AuctionWeb
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TODAY'S TOURBUS TOPIC: AuctionWeb
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP: http://www.ebay.com/aw
Welcome to another installment in our little tour of the highways and
byways of cyberspace. Today I'm pleased to announce that we have a
Guest Driver. Kevin Savetz is author of several Internet FAQs and
books and is well-known to AOLians as the Answer Man. You can visit
his home page at http://www.northcoast.com/savetz for the full scoop.
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AUCTIONWEB - By Kevin Savetz
----------------------------
Bob has put me in the driver's seat today -- so if I can keep the
TourBus from careening off the side of the road, today's stop will
be a site that I frequent in my relentless pursuit of more clutter
for my home: AuctionWeb. Please keep your hands and arms inside the
vehicle at all times.
The premise of AuctionWeb couldn't be simpler: sell stuff that you
don't want, buy stuff that you do want. AuctionWeb isn't one of the
zillions of forgettable sites where you can purchase stuff from some
random company. Instead, anyone can put anything up for auction --
selling their stuff to the highest bidder as the law of supply and
demand run its course.
You can buy and sell just about anything here. The site organizes
items in categories, including comics, books, Barbies, jewelry,
photography equipment and many others. There are, as you might
expect, a gaggle of computer-related categories, where you can hawk
your old Commodore 64 or try to get a good deal on Microsoft
Office... or just about any other hardware and software you can
name. Collectibles, antiques, trading cards and music CDs also do a
brisk business.
If you're on the lookout for something in particular, AuctionWeb
makes is easy to find the goods you're looking for with its search
engine. Be patient, though -- the search tool can be on the slow
side.
Holding an auction is simple enough: fill out a form to describe
your item, tell AuctionWeb what the minimum acceptable bid is, and
pick the category that best fits. You can choose the length of the
auction, from three to seven days. (Longer auctions don't
necessarily mean you'll get more cash, as heavy bidding wars tend to
occur in the last 24 hours of an auction, regardless of its length.)
AuctionWeb will send you daily status updates via e-mail. When the
auction is over, it will e-mail the final results to you.
Bidding in an auction is even simpler: enter the maximum price that
you're willing to pay, and sit back as AuctionWeb does the rest of
the work. The program uses "proxy bidding," which means that it
bids on your behalf, up to your maximum bid. So if you bid a
maximum of $30 on an antique cookie jar, but the next highest bid is
only $15, AuctionWeb will raise your bid to $16. If you are outbid,
AuctionWeb will send you a warning via e-mail.
Buying from and selling to strangers on the Net is not without its
dangers, so AuctionWeb provides a tool for evaluating the dealings
that you have with others. You can check to see if other users have
found a person trustworthy before you blithely send him or her your
hard-earned cash.
AuctionWeb is free if you're bidding on and buying items (of course,
the items aren't free but the site is.) AuctionWeb does charge
sellers -- a small listing fee for starting an auction (from 25
cents to $2, depending on the lowest bid that you'll accept in your
auction), and a small percentage "cut" if the item sells. Despite
the cost, AuctionWeb is a good value for sellers -- your item is
likely to sell for more here than it would at a neighborhood garage
sale.
If you don't know what your old set of baseball cards, that Star
Trek Christmas ornament or your dusty guitar is worth, consider
putting it up for auction and letting the other netizens fight over
the price.
It's a whole lot of fun to participate in an online auction, and its
also a blast just to browse the aisles and aisles of weird stuff
that folks have for sale. But remember: AuctionWeb is like a trip
to Las Vegas: never bid more than you can afford to lose.
--Kevin Savetz
See you all next time! --Bob
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