Private auctions

Bidders’ names are often kept private when dealing in the expensive fine art world. Likewise, to protect the innocent, eBay private auctions don’t place bidders’ names on the auction listing. No one needs to know just how much you choose to pay for something, especially if the item is rare and you really want it.
As a seller, you have the option (at no extra charge) of listing your auction as a private auction. The option can be found in the How You’re Selling portion of the Create Your Listing form. To find this option (should it be hidden), click Show/Hide Options in the top-right corner of the form, select Format, and then select Private Listing.
The eBay search page features an area where you can conduct a bidder search. You — and everyone else, including your family — can find the items you’ve bid on. One December, my daughter told me that she didn’t want a particular item — something that I had just bid on — for Christmas. My creative daughter had been regularly perusing my bidding action on eBay to see what I was buying for the holidays! Buying from private auctions might have kept my Santa shopping secret.
The private auction is a useful tool for sellers who are selling bulk lots to other sellers. It maintains the privacy of the bidders, and customers can’t do a bidder search to find out what sellers are paying for the loot they then plan to re-sell on eBay.
A great option for sales of items that are a bit racy or perhaps for purchases of items that may reveal something about the bidder, the private auction can save you the potential embarrassment associated with buying a girdle or buying the tie that flips over to reveal a racy half-nude female on the back. Although the private auction is a useful tool, it may intimidate the novice user. On the other hand, if your customer base comes from experienced eBay users, and you’re selling an item that may benefit by being auctioned in secret, you might want to try this option.

Restricted access auctions

eBay won’t allow certain items to be sold in non-restricted categories, so you must list them in the Mature Audiences category on eBay. eBay makes it easy for the user to find or avoid these types of auctions by making this area accessible only after the user enters a password and agrees to the terms and conditions of the area.
Items in the Mature Audiences area are not accessible through the regular eBay title search, nor are they listed in Newly Listed Items to those who haven’t verified their identity.
Anyone who participates in Mature Audiences auctions on eBay, whether as a bidder or a seller, must have a credit card on file on eBay for verification Do not attempt to slip an adult-only auction into a nonrestricted category. eBay doesn’t have a sense of humor when it comes to this violation of policy and may relocate or end your auction. eBay might even suspend you from its site.

Reserve price auctions

In a reserve price auction, you’re able to set an undisclosed minimum price for which your item will sell, thereby giving yourself a safety net. Using a reserve price auction protects the investment you have in an item. If, at the end of the auction, no bidder has met your undisclosed reserve price, you aren’t obligated to sell the item, and the high bidder isn’t required to purchase the item.
For example, if you have a rare coin to auction, you can start the bidding at a low price to attract bidders to click your auction and read your infomercial-like description. If you start your bidding at too high a price, you might dissuade prospective bidders from even looking at your auction, and you won’t tempt them to even bid. They may feel that the final selling price will be too high for their budgets.
Everyone on eBay is looking for a bargain or a truly rare item. If you can combine the mystical force of both of these needs in one auction, you have something special. The reserve price auction enables you to attempt — and perhaps achieve — this feat.
The fees for a reserve price auction are the same as those for a traditional auction with one exception. eBay charges between $1.00 and $50.00 for the privilege of running a reserve price auction. If the reserve price is $200.00 or more, the reserve price fee is 1 percent of the reserve price (with a maximum of $50.00). When your item sells, your reserve fee is refunded. The reserve price auction is a safety net for the seller, but often an uncomfortable guessing game for the prospective bidder. To alleviate buyer anxiety, I recommend that you put reserve prices in the item’s description. This allows bidders to decide whether the item will fit into their bidding budgets. You can’t use the reserve price option in a Dutch auction.

Multiple Item (Dutch) auctions

When you’ve purchased an odd lot of five hundred kitchen knife sets or managed (legally, of course) to get your hands on a truckload of televisions that you want to sell as expeditiously as possible, you might want to use the Dutch (multiple item) auction. In the Dutch auction, which can run for one, three, five, seven, or ten days, you list as many items as you’d like, and bidders can bid on as many items as they’d like. The final item price is set by the lowest successful bid at the time the auction closes.
For example, suppose you want to sell five action figures on eBay in a Dutch auction. Your starting bid is $5 each. If five bidders each bid $5 for one figure, they each get a figure for $5. But if, say, two people bid $5, one person bids $7, and another bids $8, all five bidders win the action figure for the lowest final bid of $5.
In the following list, I highlight the details of the Dutch auction:

• The listing fee is based on your opening bid price (just like in a traditional auction), but it’s multiplied by the number of items in your auction to a maximum listing fee of $4.80.
• The final auction value fees are on the same scale as in a standard auction, but they’re based on the total dollar amount of all your completed sales in the listing.
• When bidders bid on your Dutch auction, they can bid on one or more items at one bid price. (The bid is multiplied by the number of items.)
• If the bidding gets hot and heavy, rebids must be in a higher total dollar amount than the total of that bidder’s past bids.
• Bidders may reduce the quantity of the items for which they’re bidding in your auction, but the dollar amount of the total bid price must be higher.
• All winning bidders pay the same price for their items, no matter how much they bid.
• The lowest successful bid when the auction closes is the price for which your items in that auction will be sold.
• If your item gets more bids than you have items, the lowest bidders are knocked out one by one, with the earliest bidders remaining on board the longest in the case of tie bids.
• When the auction closes, the earliest (by date and time) successful high bidders win their items.
• Higher bidders get the quantities they’ve asked for, and bidders can refuse partial quantities of the number of items in their bids.

For a large quantity of a special item, your Dutch auction may benefit from some of the eBay Featured auction options

Standard auctions

Auctions are the bread and butter of eBay. You can run a traditional auction for one, three, five, seven, or ten days, and when the auction closes, the highest bidder wins. I’m sure you’ve bid on several and I hope you’ve won a few. If you’ve tried selling, I suspect you’ve made some money running some of your own.
You begin the auction with an opening bid, and bidders bid up your opening price, competing with one another and building a healthy profit for you on your item.’
If you’d like, you can set a Buy It Now option on your auction for an additional fee. By setting fixed selling prices at the get go, buyers have the option of buying your item outright. This is attractive for many users of the eBay system. The Buy It Now price you post should be the price at which you’d be happy to sell the item.
Even with a Buy It Now option, people can still bid on your item. After a bid is placed, the Buy It Now Option disappears and the item proceeds in a regular auction for the duration you indicated when you placed the listing.