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Posted By: barrysloate

The bottom line is to make the customer happy, and that takes work and isn't always successful despite your best intentions. As far as costs: when I felt the cost of my color catalogs was becoming prohibitive, I switched my business to ebay. While I've had good success I've come to realize that if you sell an expensive item, say several thousand dollars, between ebay's increased fees and those of paypal, I'm losing a couple of hundred dollars off the top. Suddenly, the color catalog is looking very affordable. As such, I'm going back to a catalog auction for my better pieces and using ebay for my less costly ones. Try a catalog auction, it can be quite successful. And keep the descriptions short on verbiage and long on facts. That's what customers appreciate most. I love Mastronet's auctions but there is too much to read. REA can be a bit long winded too but they get to the point of what makes a lot special in a more concise manner. The Mastronet descriptions are often unfocused, and jump around a lot between facts and then veer off into superfluous digressions. Well, that's just my experience. Truth is as long as the customer is happy you can make anything work.