How Do I Get More Bids in Our Stallion Auction?

How do I get more bids in our online stallion auction?

Short answer, and it is not the one most associations expect: you do not get more bids by adding more stallions. You get them by bringing back the people who already bid once.

Here is what I mean.

Where does the money in an auction actually come from?

An auction is not like selling a saddle. With a saddle you name a price and somebody either pays it or they do not.

In an auction the price creeps up one increment at a time. And every single one of those increments is a real person, sitting somewhere, deciding to come back and go again.

So the money in your auction is not really in the listing. It is at the margin. It is sitting with the folks who were ALMOST going to bid one more time.

That is worth sitting with for a second, because it means the small stuff matters a lot more than it looks. One bidder who comes back at the right moment can pull two or three more bids out of the person bidding against them. Now you are not up one increment on that stallion, you are up several, because one person remembered.

Then multiply that across every lot you have got.

Why do bidders stop before they are done?

Almost never because they hit their limit. Usually because they were not there.

These auctions run for weeks. Somebody bids early, maybe sets a max, and then goes on with their life. Ten days later they are watching TV, or sitting in a movie, or up in the bleachers at a show, and they have not thought about your auction once.

Meanwhile somebody just went past their number.

They are not out. They just do not know they are in trouble.

Does the closing time matter?

More than anything else on this page.

Most of our auctions close around seven o'clock at night. Not midnight, when a person might be sitting on the couch with their phone. Seven. Right in the middle of supper, or evening chores, or hauling somebody home from practice.

That is a hard window to catch a person in, and it is exactly when your last and most valuable bids are supposed to be happening.

What can we do about it without spending anything?

Plenty, and none of it requires buying a thing.

Tell people when your auction closes. Then tell them again. The day of, and again a couple hours out. Facebook, email, a post in your members group, whatever you have got. Folks who meant to bid again mostly just lost track of the date, and they are genuinely grateful for the reminder.

Say the closing time in plain numbers, everywhere. Not "closes Friday evening." Seven o'clock Friday. People plan around a number, not around an evening.

Post when bidding is heating up. If three stallions are drawing a lot of action, say so. Competition brings people back faster than any reminder you can write, because nobody wants to lose a horse they had their eye on.

Look at what time your bidding actually stopped last year. Most associations have never checked. It usually tells you something.

Frequently asked questions

Should we run our auction longer to get more bids?

Usually not. Longer auctions do not create more bids, they just spread the same bids out and give people more time to forget. The action clusters at the end no matter how long you run.

Does adding more stallions bring more bids?

It brings more listings, which is not the same thing. A bidder who wants one specific stallion is not going to bid on four more because they exist. Depth in your bidder list beats depth in your stallion list.

When should the auction close?

There is no perfect hour, but be honest that whatever you pick, most of your people will be busy. Which is why the reminders matter so much.

Do bidding wars actually happen?

All the time, and they are where the surprises come from. Our auctions have extended bidding, so a late bid pushes the clock out and the war can keep going.  We've had them go on 45 minutes past the close! The only requirement is that both people are paying attention at the same moment.

How many bids does a typical auction get?

It varies a lot, but many of ours run well past 500, and plenty go over 1,000. Which puts in perspective how little it takes to move the total.

Let's talk

If you are planning a stallion auction this season and want to talk through the timing, call or text me at 979-217-1544. Happy to think out loud with you about it, whether we ever build you anything or not.

Tom Bruch has built websites since 1998 and is the owner of Big Sky Internet Design.