Auctions are an fine art and a science. You lot need to wow your guests with bully auction items and inspire bidding on those items. How can yous brand auction bidding more than profitable for your nonprofit? We've broken downwards the science of better bidding. Read on for four tips to earn more money from your silent auction items while easily managing incoming bids.

The price is right

Setting your starting bid corporeality is key to attracting bids and making money on your auction items. Just how practice you know how to set the starting bid of an auction item? The central is conducting product research!

Determine the fair market value

Find similar items and compare prices beyond websites and in stores if possible. This helps determine what your item typically sells for. With auctions, bidders are looking for a deal. You should prepare the starting cost beneath fair market value to testify your guests the potential for a smashing deal. Setting the starting bid around 25-xxx% of the off-white market value gives bidders the run a risk to win the item well below market place value. As the bids come up in, your bidders will brand an emotional connection with the items they're interested in and are more likely to bid higher than the original bar they've prepare.

Exceptions to the rule

Not all sale items are created equal. There are notable exceptions to the dominion of 30% fair market value as a starting point for bids.

Auction items you bought

The first exception: purchased items. Plain, y'all want sale items donated to your issue at no cost. However, sometimes that isn't possible. Yous may need to occasionally buy auction items at a discounted cost to fill out your sale offerings. If you're auctioning off a purchased item, keep in listen what yous paid. You lot'll need to set a starting price closer to what you purchased the item for to ensure you lot break even. This potentially limits bidders' interest if the price is likewise high. Try to only purchase items yous tin can get for well below the fair market value. To avoid losing coin, prepare a reserve toll close to what you paid and offer a buy-information technology-now toll for a reasonable corporeality that's close to fair marketplace value and earns you a profit on the item.

Unique and high-value items

It tin can be hard to evaluate the worth of loftier value or one-of-a-kind items. Whether they sell is often dependent on your guest list. Still, vacation packages, event tickets, and one-of-a-kind memorabilia tin sell for an incredibly loftier price. You tin try to research the off-white market value, just it can be harder with these items.

Instead, decide what it cost the donor to provide this item and set up their cost as a reserve price. Set a slightly higher starting bid, but don't prepare it so high that guests won't want to bid if the cost is driven upwardly. Or you could keep starting bids low and set a college bid increment to make more money while pricing these big-ticket items attractively. Some other attractive pick for many sale guests would exist to offer a buy-it-now cost on unique and expensive items. Give bidders the option to purchase high value auction items outright at slightly under fair market place value but above your price for the items. This option would guarantee y'all brand a profit and bidders can easily acquire attractive auction packages.

For sale item ideas, check out our 25 virtual auction item ideas!

Ready sensible bid increments

With a starting bid in place, set a bid increment that drives bids. For items with a known fair market value, aim to earn 70% of its retail price. Make bidding meliorate for you and your guests by setting a bid increment that's low enough to concenter bids simply high enough to get you to lxx% of the item'due south value in equally few bids as possible. The general dominion of thumb for silent auctions is to make the bid increment 10% of the off-white market value. If you've set the starting bid at xxx%, you lot can attain 70% in as few every bit iv boosted bids. Anything in a higher place those iv bids earns you an above boilerplate render on the item.

A blanket ten% bid increase sounds good on paper, simply sometimes the fair market place cost means a 10% bid increment isn't a whole number. Make information technology easier on yourself and your bidders past rounding the increment to the nearest whole dollar amount.

Reserve the correct to set reserve prices

Just considering bidders bid on items yous're selling doesn't mean you lot have to lose money on a particularly expensive item. If you or an item donor will lose money on an item that didn't get enough bids to pause even, you tin set a reserve toll to avoid selling an item far beneath its value. The reserve is the minimum bid your auction detail must achieve earlier you transfer ownership to a bidder. Reserve prices aren't for every auction detail. However, if your organization spent a significant amount on an item or if yous were gifted a unique slice that collectors would want, a reserve price is the all-time fashion to protect that initial investment. But considering your item didn't fetch the price you expected doesn't mean y'all can't get that toll from the correct heir-apparent.

Monitor your results subsequently the auction and pay attention to items where the reserve wasn't met. This helps make up one's mind if the detail was overvalued or if it was the wrong package for your crowd. This is valuable information you can bring to the table when planning for your side by side sale.

Apply the right tools to manage auction bids

Bidding on newspaper bid sheets tin can be a deterrent to your effect. In this fourth dimension of virtual events, paper bid sheets would brand your auction impossible to host safely while remaining profitable. Even before the pandemic, guests had to continuously get up to monitor the items they wanted to win. Plus, your event plan can interfere with bidding. Instead, let guests bid on auction items on their phones or computers.

An auction management platform can make managing bidding on auction items a amend experience for your guests and can save your nonprofit a lot of fourth dimension and effort when it comes to determining winners and managing payments.

Qgiv's auction platform empowers nonprofits to manage their auction from start to terminate and offers multiple bidding solutions for guests. Your attendees tin can bid one-handed, enable auto bidding they tin prepare and forget, and check out using a credit menu or echeck—all from the Givi app. That increased automation saves nonprofits tons of time and makes you more money. With comprehensive auction software, you don't have to worry about bidders leaving early on. Billing automatically occurs when the auction ends! Check out this blog post for additional benefits of Qgiv's auction software.

Determination

Get to know the ins and outs of the auction behest experience. Gaining an understanding of an detail'due south fair market value makes setting a off-white starting bid and bid increase much easier. Go on a 70% return on an item's worth in mind then you can reach that target in as few as four bids. For high value items, use your all-time judgment for a starting bid and bid increment. Prepare reserve prices to avert losing coin on big ticket items. The ultimate mode to bulldoze bids and brand the behest process more than profitable is to move away from newspaper bid sheets and apply auction software to manage behest instead. With Qgiv'southward auction platform, your bidders can identify bids from anywhere, which is specially attractive during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Looking for more than resources to make your auction event unforgettable? Here are our ideas for 25 virtual auction items to help you put together fun packages for your next event. To make auction planning go smoothly, use our auction planner as a guide.