Best Practice for Running an Auction?

[hillary764]

Hi everyone,

I am running my first auction, and I'm not sure if I'm doing it right.

If you want to look before answering, here is what it currently looks like:

https://www.chickensmoothie.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=5040267

I tried to copy the guides on the Auction forum page, but I have a few questions.

1) I copied the formatting guide, is my formatting okay? Should I make it easier to see the bids or anything? Completely just an opinion question, but, also, is there anything you usually like / dislike in auction formatting?

2) I kind of want to just accept the leading bid. I saw the guide say you should end the auction early if someone bids the auto-win. I didn't set an exact auto-win, but I still kind of want to just accept early. One of the pinned guides says you should message your bidders and give them 24 hours notice. Is there anything else I should do?

3) I wasn't really sure what would have been fair to set as an auto-win, so I didn't set one. Is it normally better to list an auto-win? When doing something like an auction for bulk, is there a standard for auto-wins? On one hand, a rare seems like it would be worth a lot of commons. On the other hand, I don't know how many people have a ton of pets and also want to trade that many in bulk, so I'm not sure if it's just unreasonable to set a really high auto-win

4) I kind of like the "auction for bulk commons" idea. Most auctions are for super rare pets, though. So like, if you auction a pet that's worth like 1 non, I don't think many people would own enough commons to trade for it. Is it frowned upon to auction slightly less rare pets for commons? And how common is "too common" to auction? For example, a 2015 rare is fairly rare and fairly old, but a lot more common than an omg so rare. Is that too common to auction? What about a recent store pet? I was doing a store pet set this time because I thought it would be "big enough" to auction, but then I was wondering if it was hard to bid on because it was a whole set.

5) how much communication is annoying, and how much feels like you're ignoring them? Should you message bidders if someone outbids them, or is that annoying?

Thank you for reading all this, and thanks for any advice you can give. Also, please let me know if this is the wrong place to ask

[axelandria]

A lot of these answers are just my personal opinion as a user, not as a staff member!

1) I think your formatting is perfectly fine! Personally, I like when people label bids out of 10 (like 1/10 or 7/10, etc)

2) Personally, I just post on my auction thread that I will be accepting the leading bid in 24 hours. You can end the auction at any time though, it's all up to you!

3) I don't think it's necessary to set an auto-win if you're not sure what you want. It's also totally fine to set your auto as a really high rarity or demand pet, that's why it's an auto, because it's so valuable. Some people have lots of pets and are fine with paying in bulk!

4) If you're auctioning for bulk commons, then a rare pet with less demand seems reasonable to auction! Higher value pets will likely get less bids if you're only looking for bulk, just because not many users have that many commons.

5) Personally, I think it's up to the bidder to keep track of if their bid is winning or not. As a bidder, I bookmark the auction thread so I can check it regularly to see how my bid is doing!

[hillary764]

Thank you so much! That was really helpful. I realized after posting that my question was really big, and it would take a lot of work to answer it.