Need some tips on selling your merchandise online? Oriented toward selling cds and lps, this page will give advice for anyone selling online. What It Costs What To Sell Seller's Obligations Make It Easy To Pay Rating The Condition of the Items Set Sale or Auction Minimum Bids Shipping Charges Guarantees What It Costs Right now, the site is free for anything you list till the end of October! This includes all listing fees and percentages on items sold. The following prices will go into effect on November 1, 1998. Listing fee (based on minimum bid/reserve price): Up to $10.00 - $.25 $10.01 - $25.00 $.50 $25.01 - $100.00 $.75 over $100 - $1.00 Percentage on items sold (both auction and set sale) 5% Minimum payment: $5.00. This is a minimum charge, not a charge added on top of the other fees. It only is due when the other charges you incur within the calendar month do not reach $5.00. You will then have the remainder on your account to pay for future ads. This is just to simplify billing, so that you do not end up with a $.25 charge on your credit card and we don't end up losing money trying to get paid. It costs us more in bank charges than 25 cents to accept any credit card transaction. If at some point, you want a refund of the balance due, and you have no current auctions, we will return the remaining funds to you. What To Sell Before you can sell anything, you have to decide what you should list. Get off the keyboard, and go find some of those treasures that you don't listen to anymore, and put them up for auction. We only accept music related items. This does include supplies, software, rock star dolls, etc., but other items (like the 'Princess beany baby' or a booklet on how to make a million dollars in your spare time) will be deleted from the auctions with no listing fee refunds. Seller's Obligations If you are placing items online in an auction or set sale, you are making a contract between yourself and the buyers that You actually have this item to sell You are going to allow someone to buy it You are going to go to the trouble of packing it up and shipping it to the winner in a timely fashion. Think about this before you list your items. If you know you are lazy or slow about doing these kinds of things, please don't list your items here. You will just get buyers mad at you. Take your cds down to the local used record shop and sell them there. It is quick and easy, and you are the customer, not the merchant. If You Normally Sell Items On Your Own If you normally sell your cds some other way (other auctions, in your store, etc.), please make sure they are available for winners in this auction. Take them off the store shelves for the duration of this auction. If you normally sell via another auction (such as in an ad or a mailing list), you may want to mention that you have this auction as well, and set the closing date here to 1 day after your regular auction closes. Then, if you get a bid higher than in your first auction, you can put the bid in for the other buyer by proxie (bidding for them) before the auction here closes. Then, send out your bid notifications from your other auctions after this auction also closes. We strongly urge you to not have items for sale anywhere else while on auction here. If you do have a set sale going here you can also place it for sale other places, but please remember to close this set sale immediately after you sell the item so that you don't have someone here trying to buy it after it is gone. If it sells through us, it will close itself when someone buys it. If we get too many complaints that a seller is not filling their orders, we may have to recind their account. Make It Easy To Pay Have you ever wanted to buy an item mail order, but just never got around to going to the trouble of running out, getting the money order, and mailing it? Even if you do this without a second thought, your customers may not. You should try to make it as easy for them to pay as possible. If you are doing this as an ongoing business, look into the possibility of getting a merchant credit card account established to take credit cards. That is generally the easiest and fastest way for customers to pay. Otherwise, consider accepting personal checks. You can hold the shipment for 10 days while they clear to make sure they won't bounce (just make sure you state this clearly in your ordering instructions). Some banks will accept foreign checks with no penalties, while others will charge you a lot if you deposit them. Contact your bank, and find out their policies on this. Some banks takes 6-8 weeks to clear a foreign check and charge a $40-60 fee any time a foreign check is deposited. Others don't charge anything. You may also want to consider getting a toll free phone number for people to place their orders. Generally, the charges to you for a toll free number is just the per minute rate set by your long distance company. A 4 minute call to give an order will only cost you about $.40-.50, and you will less customers who just never get around to mailing that check. Rating The Condition of the Items Make sure you check the condition of any items you are listing. The value of an item can vary greatly depending on the condition, so your customers need to know this information. We have found that it is generally better to be very strict with condition rather than overrate a product. Your customers will be happy with their purchase, and want to buy more from you. People will always buy from someone they know they can trust. For our suggested ratings, click here. Set Sale or Auction If you have a really rare item, by an artist in high demand, then you should auction it. You will have people competing against each other, knowing that they may never get another chance to own this item. Sometimes, they will keep raising their bid just to be the winner, and not even relating it to the 'book' value of an item. On the other hand, if you have a common item (like an in print popular title), and you know the value, you may want to consider a set sale. A lot of people may want the item, but don't want to bother placing a bid, then possibly not getting it. They may be able to easily go elsewhere and just buy it. Some customers just don't want to go through the trouble of placing a bid, not knowing if they will get the item or not. But, if they see an item at a price they like, they will just buy it. If you know a fair price for an item, you may sell it faster using a set sale price. On the other hand, if you aren't sure how much something is worth, an auction is a great way to get the most value out of an item. Minimum Bids Of course, you want to sell your items for the most you possibly can. But your customers want to pay as little as they can. And, you don't want to sell an item for less than you paid. Try to keep the minimum bids as low as you would be willing to sell the item. An item which is overpriced to begin with, is just not going to sell no matter how you try. If you try to sell a common in print 15.98 list price cd for minimum bid of $15, it is just not going to sell. A lower minimum will hook someone, and it is human nature to want what someone else wants. Some auctioneers think it is best to not put any minimum bids, just to get the activity going. We do not allow 'reserve prices.' A reserve price is a hidden minimum bid which the buyers do not see. Bids can be placed for under this amount, but the seller is not obligated to sell it. While there are legitimate reasons for this (it can get interest in an item going), we have decided that it is unfair to the buyers who may have put in the high bid on item, but are then not allowed to buy it. We are, of course, willing to listen to anyone who thinks otherwise, so feel free to let us know how you feel about this (and why) at webmaster@4tunes.com Shipping Charges When selling an item, you should always give an idea to the buyer of what they can expect to pay for shipping. Most smart buyers will consider this when placing a bid, and you can get a lot of angry customers if they unexpectedly get billed $5 shipping on a $3 item. Let them know upfront. A good idea is to have a small page on your own website with your shipping fees, and put a link to it in your descriptions. This way you don't have to reenter it for each item. Guarantees If you have been fair in your grading and descriptions, it is a good idea to guarantee that your customers will be happy with their purchase. Money back on the item, but not shipping is a fairly common offer. Very few buyers will actually take you up on it, but a lot will consider it when they place a bid.