1) How much money would you like to make in a month’s time? Do you want to make an extra few hundred dollars in order to make a car payment or pay the mortgage? Or would you like to quit your job and make this a full-time business? Are you ambitious enough to want to become one of the Internet millionaires we all read about?
2) How much time do you have to devote to auctions? Be realistic. There are only 24 hours in a day…
… no matter how hard you try to squeeze in one more.If you can only manage thirty minutes a day for your auction business, or five hours on weekends, then don’t see yourself making zillions.
Know your limits. You may want this to be a full-time job but you can’t afford to quit that job right now. So focus on the here-and-now, not the future. Recognize that if you only have two hours a week, it is unrealistic to believe that you can auction hundreds of items.
3) What is a realistic time frame for this project? Are you ready to start a Net auction business today, or will you need some time to convince your spouse that this is a good idea? Will it be a couple of months before you can start cleaning out that garage or are you heading out the door with broom-in-hand after this sentence? Do you have a couple of other projects you need to finish first?
4) Do you already know what kind of merchandise you would like to specialize in, or are you unclear at this time? If you have collected something for the past thirty years then perhaps your choices are already made. If you haven’t the faintest clue, then have you done the necessary category research?
5) Is there something that you already know a lot about, or will you have to start from zero? If you are already an expert on antique maps, great! If not, what is your learning curve? Have you chosen an area that requires great expertise, or can you learn about it quickly?
6) What knowledge do you need? Do you know when you have discovered a bargain? Do you know what to charge for your items? Do you know where to get what you want to sell?
7) If you don’t have the information you need, do you know where to get it?8) Can you find out whatever you need to know without taking any big risks? If you need to take a $5,000 real estate course and have to carry home...
... a back-breaking load of books to read in order to adequately understand your field, then I suggest beginning with an easier category. Come back to real estate when you have a little experience. The auction game is not about taking huge risks!
9) What skills will you need? One of the greatest things about this business is that it isn’t extremely complicated and/or difficult. Yet there is a certain amount of discipline and effort required, just like anything else in life. Truthfully, the most necessary skills for positive Net auctions are persistence and a willingness to learn from every failure as well as every success.
10) If there are skills you don’t have, can you either acquire them or hire someone to do them for you? Be honest with yourself. Some qualities come from within and cannot be bought at any price. However, many others can be acquired or hired.
11) How do you feel about shopping? Do you love going through huge stacks of goods or would you rather…
… get in a boxing ring with Mike Tyson?
I get the shudders at the thought of going to yard sales or plowing through “stuff” at the Salvation Army store. More than fifteen minutes at the mall gives me hives. But I have friends whose idea of an ideal day is to get in the car at dawn and return at nightfall with their trunks loaded. Which style reflects you more closely?
12) Would you prefer to sell a few high-ticket items, or would you rather have dozens of smaller items for sale? We will discuss this in detail later on in this chapter but it is much easier to begin with smaller, less expensive items.
13) Are you comfortable talking to strangers or would you rather deal only with “faceless” people on a computer screen? If you are negotiating only with dealers and/or stores who stock your merchandise, you can conduct business by phone, e-mail or fax. If you are going to flea markets and such, you are going to have to talk with people face-to-face in order to buy their merchandise.
14) Do you live in a large city where a lot of merchandise is easily available or will location be a problem? You can live anywhere that has electricity and run your auction business! Whether merchandise is geographically convenient matters only if you are planning to specialize in certain fields.
15) What obstacles are you likely to encounter? When obstacles inevitably appear, how are you going to handle them?I have set up my auction business so that the worst that can happen to me is that I will lose some relatively small sums of money and a few hours of my time. You can create the same kind of scenario for yourself. However, your personal situation may be such that you are in a …
… rat race with obstacles nipping at your heels. Perhaps your spouse thinks that auctions are ridiculous, or your parents urge you to get a “real job.” How are you going to handle them?
16) Am I going to learn from my inevitable mistakes, or am I going to whine about them? In one sense, the auctions are a very basic, primal kind of business. Either an item sells or it doesn’t! If it doesn’t, are you willing to work on figuring out why not?
17) Am I willing to persist until I succeed? Or is there a significant chance that I will just give up? If you think you are going to give up, then be especially careful to invest very little money in merchandise.
18) Does a Net auction business sing to you?…
… or is it just a little tweet? Are you really interested in this? Is it just for the money? Don’t misunderstand me. There is nothing wrong with going after money. It’s just hard to maintain enthusiasm if you don’t enjoy your work.
19) What are the possible rewards? While I love the money, I love the freedom just as much or more. I am fascinated by the people that I meet and the merchandise that I find. I feel a real thrill of discovery when I successfully carry something off. What do you want? What are you expecting to happen?
20) What do you like about auctions?21) What do you dislike about auctions? Of course, we never really know something until we do it. But based on what you currently know, what are your preferences? Are the likes stronger than the dislikes or vice versa?
Do you know the answers to all those questions from above? If you do, I am amazed. It took me quite a while to answer them for myself. This is the same set of questions that I always ask when I take on a new project. Use them for anything that you do. I guarantee they will be helpful.
Some of them seem pretty ridiculous right now, don’t they? For instance, how can you know if you will like auctions until you have done a few? And how can you tell what you like and dislike if you’ve never tried it?
Focus questions are designed to get you thinking clearly and deeply. Did you ever try focused reading experiments in school? In the first part of the experiment...
... you read story A and then answer questions. For the second part, you read story B after you see a set of questions about it. Now you know what to look for as you read. The result? You get more correct answers on story B.
Use the focus questions outlined above to get positive results for your Net auction business. Now is the time to pour a rock-solid foundation.
So why did we wait until now to present the focus questions? Up until now, you were learning the “how-to” of maneuvering around auction sites. Now you are getting into the creative part, the actual how-to-make-money part.
There are lots of stories about people making huge profits and having a ball on the auction sites. But those are their stories. You have to create your own pathways and no one can or should do that for you.
Even if you read that Susie-Q is doing such and such and you want to copy her exactly, you can be sure of one thing -- your projects won’t be like hers. That is what makes us individuals. That is what makes an auction business fun.
Refer to these focus questions and review them periodically. Stay on track... the right track!
