Selling tips

[Tad Carlucci]

Auctions are good because you also meet people and the personal relationship can aid selling, as well as helping you keep abreast of what's selling, and for how much. For auctions, the auctioneer is a big factor. So go to a lot of different ones and socialize.

Bid boards are OK but slow and impersonal. The main factor here is traffic. There are a lot of bid boards out there, and you can even run your own. But if the boards are not advertised, or are in a low-traffic area, they won't perform nearly as well as those which are. Again, do your research.

Since you're only doing buy/hold/sell, a good option might be love tables. Here, you're looking for those with actual rules. There are some which are little more than drop zones. When people are looking for a mate, they generally want one NOW. So tables with restrictions like only 90% and above should generally perform better than those which allow boxes, sick cats (which won't be ready for a week) and 1-day-old kittens (which won't be ready for even longer). Again, it's also matter of traffic and marketing. A love table with no marketing, in a low-traffic area, is unlikely to perform.

Having a shop stall is usually a good option. Again, traffic matters. The advantages of a permanent stall are you have a storage area, potential customers can browse the selection. While traffic is definitely a big concern here, you can drive traffic to your show with signs (if permitted) at your love table, bid board, and auctions offerings. A sub-optimal shop location, even one way out of the way can work. Often, what many people do, is have one such area and use it as a base of operations while stalking the optimal locations (such as next to love tables, bid board and highly-active auctions) waiting to pounce on any stall which might become available.