Auction Houses

Auction Houses are websites that earn income from the sellers, buyers, and from advertising. The first established and currently most popular auction house is eBay.

The way an auction house works:

• The sellers pay a set price to put their item up for auction.
• The seller selects a catogory and type in keywords for the item they are selling so it can be catogorized for buyers when they search for items.
• Buyers can either browse through catagories of different items or search through items narrowed down by a keyword search.
• The buyers bid on the items
• The winner pays for the item with either a credit card or through the Pay Pal program

PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. It serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders.

Business to Business Auction Houses are used to dispose of unusable or excess inventory.

• Inventory can be excess products.
• Inventory can be unusable or excess raw materials

Seller-Bid Auctions and Group Purchasing Sites are driven by the consumer, rather than the seller. Seller-Bid Auctions are a reversal of regular auctions, the seller "bids" for the buyers business.

Specialized auction sites such as Onsale.com and Ubid.com deal primarily with online bidding for name brand technology equipment.

What is the difference between Seller bid auctions and regular auction houses?

The seller bids for the buyers businessThe buyer bids for the sellers business.No one bids on anything.