YIPPEE! For Yahoo!
Written: Sep 26 '00 (Updated Jan 20 '01)
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The Bottom Line
Yahoo Auctions is no longer free for sellers. That's a bummer, but I guess they're still cheaper than ebay. It remains to be seen if they will still remain competitive.
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Update (1/20/01):
As of Jan. 10, 2001, Yahoo Auctions has made several changes which will affect Sellers. First, they eliminated the 1000 items per month limit (which is good) but secondly, the auctions are no longer free for sellers (bad, very bad). This is very disappointing to me since the primary reason why I liked Yahoo Auctions so much was because it was totally free. While they are only charging a listing fee (unlike ebay which charges both a listing fee and commission fee if the item sells), just the listing fee itself is enough to keep me away. And I think that Yahoo will lose many other sellers as well. As a result, the selection of items for sale at Yahoo Auctions will decline. I don't see how Yahoo can think that charging a listing fee will improve the quality of their auction site. If anything, it will make them less competitive with ebay...but that's just my opinion.
Original Text:
Like most people, my first experience with internet auctions began with ebay. Through ebay, I was able to find those hard-to-find items to add to my collection, which I never would have found anywhere else. After a while, I developed the desire to sell some of my own items. But what kept me from doing so were all the fees ebay charges to sellers. I didn’t want to take the risk of paying to put something up for auction and end up with having no bidders. And if I did sell the item, I didn’t like the idea of giving someone else a piece of my profits.
I don’t remember exactly how I found out about Yahoo Auctions. Maybe I just stumbled on it during one of my web surfing sessions. But boy-oh-boy, was I glad I did! As soon as I found out that Yahoo Auctions was completely free to both buyers and sellers, I signed up right away. Immediately, I put some items up for sale. It didn’t take long before I got bids on my items. And I can’t tell you the excitement of getting that first check in the mail!
I’ve been using Yahoo Auctions for over a year now. During that time, I’ve also tried out a number of other free internet auction sites. Some of them are now defunct, others continue to exist. For a list of some of these other auction sites, check out http://ebayexodus.com/links.html. But none of them compare to Yahoo Auctions in terms of popularity and ease of use.
Setting up a basic auction in Yahoo Auctions is a breeze. You start out by selecting an appropriate auction category. Then you can upload photos of your item. Next, you provide a title and description for your item.
Set the quantity of items, the starting bid price, a reserve price (if any), and how long you want the auction to last. You can also set the auction to be automatically resubmitted if it doesn’t sell, up to two times. Preview your auction then submit it. You’re done!
Yahoo keeps track of the 5 most recent categories you submitted an auction to. So if you have other similar items to submit, you can go directly to one of those categories with just a single click. With other auction sites, every time you start a new auction, you have to dig through a long list of categories all over again.
One of the best features of Yahoo Auctions is that they provide free image hosting. What this means is that you can upload pictures directly from your hard drive to your auction. You can upload up to three pictures per auction. Most other auction sites require you to have your pictures uploaded on another web server and then you have to provide a URL to link it to your auction.
Once you’ve submitted your auctions, it’s very easy to manage them. You can view all of your active auctions in the Selling area. There is a question and answer area for each auction so that potential bidders can ask you questions about your item. Yahoo will alert you by e-mail when a question has been posted to one of your auctions. You can add additional information to any of your active auctions. And, you are allowed to cancel auctions early provided there are no bidders. When your auctions close, they are placed in a Closed Auction area. If you have a winning bidder, you will be given the winner’s e-mail address to contact. If your auction has no bidders, you can then resubmit it. Before resubmitting, you are allowed to make changes to your auction if you want to.
Some of the criticisms about Yahoo Auctions are that there are too many deadbeat bidders. I personally have had some people who bid on my auctions and never followed through. Some people simply ignore my e-mails, others keep promising that they will send payment but never do. The fact is that you have to expect to encounter some deadbeat bidders, no matter what auction site you’re using. But this is less painful when you’re using Yahoo Auctions since you are not charged any commission fees when your auction closes with a winner. On a site like ebay, whenever your auction closes with a winning bid, you are charged a commission fee based on the final selling price of your item. If the bidder never sends you their payment, you have to send proof to ebay that the bidder never followed through in order to get a refund on the commission fee. What a hassle! With Yahoo, you never have to worry about things like that. You simply remove the bidder from your auction and then resubmit it. There is also an option to place problem bidders on a blacklist. Yahoo Auctions does have a rating system that is designed to deal with the problem of deadbeat bidders. You can optionally set your auction to exclude bids from bidders who have a negative rating. It’s very important, if you’re a seller, to give negative feedback to buyers who don’t follow through and, of course, give positive feedback to those who do.
Recently, Yahoo Auctions implemented a seller performance system. The way this works is that every new seller is given an allowance of 1000 auctions per month. This number will increase during the month based on the number of auctions that are closed successfully and the seller’s rating. At the beginning of each month, the auction counter will reset to the new allowance number. This new system would really only affect business owners who sell through auctions. Most casual sellers like me, however, probably don’t even have 100 items to sell per month, never mind 1000.
In summary, Yahoo Auctions has worked very well for me. I have successfully sold nearly everything I put up for auction. Some stuff sold within the first week while others took a few months. I’ve even sold some things to people in a different country. You can’t get that kind exposure by putting an ad in the paper. But the bottom line is, it’s all FREE! And because it’s free, it took all the risk and worries away from selling through online auctions. By the way, while most of my review relates to selling on Yahoo, I’ve also gotten great bargains through Yahoo Auctions as a buyer. Yahoo could easily charge a fee for using a valuable service such as this, but I applaud them for not doing so.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
robotnut
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Location: NJ
Reviews written: 30
Trusted by: 3 members
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