Tech smarties - help me find out about auction software?

[LindsayWagner]

Hello
Does anyone here have any experience with auction software? I am about as tech-literate as my cat, but have the kernel of an idea and would love to know if it's a complete non-starter or not.

So my qu's are:
Is there such a thing as off-the-shelf auction software or do you have to have a developer?
WTF is a developer?
If this software had to be custom-built, what is involved, in terms of stages of development, cost, and, erm, personnel?
Is there no point even thinking about auctions unless you're eBay? By which I mean, would the whole experience be so clunky and crap for bidders that they won't bother again?
What other massive spanners in the works can you see that I can't possibly see because I am a tech DUMBKOPF?

You can get what people will call "off the shelf" auction packages but even then they can still require a fair degree of customisation.

You can also get solutions where you pay a monthly fee and someone will even host the software for you. But again you will have to customise things somewhat.

What is a developer? A computer programmer, someone who can create software or more pertinently in this case take existing software tools and customise them.

Writing an auction platform actually isn't that complicated. Where things get complicated is handling the payments for things and dealing with customers who aren't happy. And then there's the issues of actually finding somewhere for your auction software to run and looking after it when it is running.

It's not impossible, nothing is impossible, but it is quite involved and I'd ask why you can't just use eBay? They take care of all the hard bits for you and will let you just sell stuff.

Oh THANK YOU Badgers Paws! Really grateful.

When you mean 'finding somewhere for your auction software to run' do you mean a hosting service? And how, do you think, I could find a developer who's competent but also used to dealing with very small businesses?

The reason I'm exploring this is that I don't want to sell my stuff, I want to sell other people's stuff (of a very specific type).

Another question that even I am astonished I don't know the answer to - what's a server?

"When you mean 'finding somewhere for your auction software to run' do you mean a hosting service?"

Yes, it would need to be hosted somewhere that supports applications and database storage as well as allowing enough traffic to the site to support the users.

"And how, do you think, I could find a developer who's competent but also used to dealing with very small businesses?"

That I'm not sure how to answer, I've always been the developer rather than someone trying to find me :)

Your first step might be to see what you can manage on your own. If you lack IT skills then a hosted solution might be best as that will take care of a lot of your day to day support worries and will mean that you won't need a techy permanently on hand and can rely on the support from the hosting company to help you out. But yes that does mean if the hosting company collapses you're left in a world of pain....

I recently look at these guys:
www.rainworx.com/

Have a look at their online demo through the admin, buyer and seller modes.

Once you see what people like that can offer you out the box then you might get a better understanding of what you want to customise, and that in turn will let you find a developer and clearly state to them exactly what you're after.

"Another question that even I am astonished I don't know the answer to - what's a server?"

The actual computer that something is running on, so think a big beefy Windows machine that exists somewhere out on the internet.

I'd still think very hard about trying to go up against eBay, why will people be drawn to use your site and not eBay?

AGain - thank you, very much.

The idea is that the category of things that I am thinking of aggregating is very broad on eBay, and keywords are misused or vague - so it takes hours of going through it for the good stuff. If you go to a shop which has already found the good stuff, there's a massive 'finders' mark-up.

I'm thinking of a site which combines blog/news/articles, a forum to discuss/swap tips/show off your things, and an auction area. And taking ads which are 'around' the thing (potentially quite high-end producst). It's a sort of leisure-shopping area, if that makes sense - where part of the pleasure the process of finding things, finding out more about them, being with like-minded people.

There aren't very many actual businesses selling the thing, so I don't think it would be too hard to draw them over to my site, even if they sell via me at the same time as eBay - lots have their own sites, list things there and on eBay and remove their eBay auctions if the item sells via their own site.

Sorry about saying 'thing' all the time .

hv pm'd you btw

"I'm thinking of a site which combines blog/news/articles, a forum to discuss/swap tips/show off your things, and an auction area."

Mmmm, it's becoming a much bigger web site now. And you'd want to do things like make sure that someone only needs to be able to log in once to be able to talk in the forum and to be able to bid on things. So it's not quite as simple as just bolting some different components together but making sure that they can play nicely with each other.

Again popping my developer hat on this isn't that complicated at all, and those RainWorx people that I mentioned earlier can host other pages alongside their own auction product so it would still be a viable solution.

However you would need technical help to get this kind of thing sorted, I'm not sure if you'd find an off the shelf solution that you could just get working.

However....

If you were happy with a blogger web site and the auction software hosted somewhere else then something like RainWorx would do the trick and get you up and running at a pretty low cost.

There will also be other alternatives out there. When I looked into RainWorx I was limited to Microsoft based solutions, there will be others that should be checked out first.

But do check out the link I gave earlier to see the sort of thing you could get up and running with pretty quickly and for a decent price of $20 a month.

But bear in mind that that example is a full auction site. If you wanted to be the only person who would list things for sale and were happy if you owned a shop with existing card handling facilities for auction winners to phone you up and finish their transactions over the phone then there might be something even simpler you could do...

BP I have bookmarked rainworx and will deffo get in touch with them.

It does need to be a full auction site - the idea is to get others to sell on my site, not to sell my own stuff - and really the forum/articles etc are add-ons to improve the offer. The auctions would be at the heart of it.
Thanks for everything - really do appreciate it.