Online auctions are definitely not for everyone. However, they can work very well for buyers with patience, self-control, and specific needs. Online auctions also are effective and enjoyable venues for sellers who hate trying to convince customers face-to-face to stop shopping and buy something. Millions of people suddenly have access to your sales item, and some of them who need it may do an Internet search and find it. No one may bid on it today, but one bidder may show up tomorrow, and thirty more may show up before the seven-day auction ends.

New and experienced sellers alike almost never tire of the process of posting new auction items, and seeing bid prices and the number of bidders magically start climbing. Unless the winning bidder is a repeat customer with a recognizable screen name, there may often be mysteries and surprises in who is buying what. Why does somebody in midtown Manhattan want an old-fashioned butter churn? Why is a woman in Tennessee buying so many vintage surfboards? And why did that buyer in rural Alaska bid so high on a used bowling ball?

You may never know the answers, but you may also never cease to be amazed at what can be sold and how much money people are willing to pay for it.

Buying at Online Auctions

Needs happen. One morning you go into your home office and turn on your personal computer. You also fire up your trusty old laser printer — literally. There is a sudden, loud pop, followed by a small cloud of stinky smoke curling out of the cooling vents. Unfortunately, the printer hasn't been manufactured since 1990, and repair shops will no longer touch it. But you have money invested in several spare toner cartridges, and your trusty PC is old, and won't work with most of the newer, sleeker laser printers. You need your faithful peripheral.

So, you open the printer and try to do the repairs yourself. Very soon, you spot the problem. A small part on one of the printed circuit boards has self-destructed. At this point, you have only one choice: find a replacement on the Web, either from an online store that stockpiles old printer parts or from an online auction. You log onto eBay, Amazon, Yahoo! or some other auction site, and enter the bad circuit board's part number into the search tool. To your relief and pleasure, you find five of the replacement boards are up for bids, and two of the listings are ending within the hour. You click on the descriptions, determine which one is better, and place your bid. An hour later, you confirm your purchase and pay for it, with expedited shipping. Three days later, the board is in your hands. You install it and turn on the printer again. Success! You're back in business.

Selling at Online Auctions

The need to sell also happens. One day, you decide your house is cluttered with too many things. Mentally, you start taking inventory of what can go: an ice-cream maker that no longer fits your diet, an old table radio with vacuum tubes, a vintage juice pitcher gathering dust on a knickknack shelf, a shoebox full old picture postcards lovingly collected by a now-deceased relative.

You could throw away these items, pile them out by the curb beneath a Free! sign, donate them to a social services agency, or start stacking them up for a garage sale.

You also could use the items as the starting inventory for a part-time sales business built around online auctions. The search tools on sites such as eBay, Yahoo! Amazon, and others can reveal a surprising truth. Many of the items that seem like junk or clutter in your home are very much wanted and needed by other people on the planet. An ice-cream maker exactly like yours has just been bid up to $50 on eBay. The old table radio turns out to be a collector's item, and one that is not as nice as yours is about to sell for $75 on Amazon. The vintage juice pitcher was made by Fiesta just before World War II. Yours, you discover, could sell for $40 or more on Yahoo! or eBay.

You start to throw away the box of postcards but decide to do one more online search first. Amazed, you discover that many thousands of people collect postcards and flock to online auctions, willingly paying prices ranging from fifty cents to $50 and more for rare and vintage cards. The shoebox full of postcards you almost threw away could generate hundreds of dollars in online sales. In just a matter of minutes, your new enterprise — online auction seller — has been born.

Participating in online auctions does require at least a small leap of faith. You have to be willing to trust that good things will happen most of the time when strangers hundreds or thousands of miles apart swap money for goods. If you are bidding, you have to rely on a few digital images, a short text description of the item and its condition, and the seller's reputation, or feedback score, on the auction site. On the other hand, if you are selling, the potential buyer has to trust your photos, descriptions, and online reputation.

Most people, you will discover, are inherently good. They want what you are selling, or they are happy you need something they want to sell. Online auctions create a level playing field for buyers and sellers. The two parties are not standing face-to-face, so there is no pressure. An item simply is offered for a starting price, and bidders are free to look at it and make an offer or quietly move on to other auctions.

Online Auctions and Small Business

Online auction sites can provide sales and purchasing channels that are affordable and effective for home-based businesses and small businesses. Some typical ways auction sites can be employed include:

• Selling off excess inventory

• Test-marketing a new product

• Buying office supplies, shipping supplies, spare parts, and manufacturing goods

• Creating a low-budget “Web store” for your business, at a site where the feature is offered

• Getting a home-based business with no marketing budget off the ground quickly

• Providing extra income for a home-based business or small business that offers products or services mostly in its local community

Who Should Not Use Online Auctions?

At least five categories of buyers and sellers should consider minimizing their contact with online auctions or possibly skipping them altogether:

• Compulsive shoppers

• Impatient buyers who want instant gratification

• Buyers who demand perfection in what they buy

• Buyers who are unwilling to do comparison pricing in current and completed auctions

• Sellers who have no qualms about overstating an item's quality when posting it for sale

Online auctions and compulsive shoppers are a dangerous mix. With almost endless merchandise just a few mouse clicks away, it is much too easy to spend hours at a computer, burning up credit cards instead of dealing with other issues in your life.

Online auction sites can be “extremely addictive,” cautions April Lane Benson, Ph.D., a psychotherapist and author of I Shop, Therefore I Am. Some online buyers try to fill voids in their lives by making compulsive bids and spending much more than they can afford. “It's extremely important to figure out what it is you're really shopping for. Overshopping is just another way of looking for love in all the wrong places,” Dr. Benson warns.

If you are prone to impatience and desires for instant gratification, you will likely hate most online auctions. The typical eBay auction runs for seven days; then the seller has several days to respond to your payment and ship the merchandise. On Yahoo! and other sites, an auction may run for ten days. At least two weeks or longer can pass from the time you post a winning bid until you finally get what you bought.

Hard-core perfectionists definitely should avoid most of the buying opportunities offered by online auction sellers. Posted items often are “collectible,” or “vintage” or “used” or “surplus” or “incomplete” or “slightly worn.” Of course, many new products can be found at good prices on online auction sites and through Web stores that they host. But you have to understand that not everyone can write accurate descriptions of their goods. What they consider “very good” may be “very shoddy” in your opinion, and this can lead to angry exchanges of e-mail, demands for a refund, and exchanges of negative feedback.

If you hate comparison shopping while wandering through retail stores, you'll absolutely hate comparison shopping in the online auction world. For one thing, you may have to read the descriptions and compare the photographs of several similar items. You may also need to go to two or three other auction sites to be certain you are getting the best deal. And, you'll need to check out completed auctions as well as current auctions to see what the winning bids were. You will need this information to determine when you are about to bid too much.

Finally, if you think it's okay to exaggerate when convincing someone to buy something, don't expect to last long as an online auction seller. The early years of online auctions were rife with rip-offs. Many sellers oversold the quality of their goods or simply took the buyers' money, sent nothing, and told them the merchandise must have gotten lost in the mail. Buyers are much more wary these days, and the auction sites' feedback systems and other security measures can quickly identify and separate the good sellers from the bad.

Research, Research, Research

You must be willing to research an item's value before placing a bid, especially if you plan to buy or sell collectibles, antiques, art objects, or jewelry. This means learning how to look at current and previous auctions of the types of items you expect to buy or sell. The Phoenix Police Department's Organized Crime Bureau offers this tip for auction site newcomers: “Don't take quotes, even verifiable ones, as indicators of the real value of an item. Know the current value, and decide for yourself what the item is worth. Remember, you are the market.”