Turn Your Joomla Site Into the Next eBay!

Internet auction bridge land sites give purchasers a "virtual" flea marketplace with new and used wares from around the world; they give Sellers a planetary shopfront from which to marketplace their goods. But the online auction bridge concern can be hazardous business.

Despite ailments of fraud, online auction bridges stay a fun, efficient, and relatively safe manner to shop — if you move prudently. Here's how:

Become familiar with the auction bridge site. Never presume that the regulations of one auction bridge land site use to another. If the land site offerings a step-by-step tutorial on the command process, take it. It may salvage you defeat and letdown later.

Try to find the relative value of an point before you bid. Be sceptical if the terms sounds too low to be realistic. "Brick-and-mortar" boughtens and terms comparing land sites may be good for world checks.

Consider whether the point come ups with a warranty, and whether follow-up service is available if you necessitate it. Many Sellers don't have got the expertness or installations to supply services for the commodity they sell. If this is the lawsuit with your seller, be certain you're willing to give up that protection before placing a bid.

Find out who pays for transportation and delivery. Generally, Sellers stipulate the cost of transportation and give purchasers the option for express bringing at an further cost. If you're uncertain about transportation costs, bank check with the marketer before you bid.

Protect your identity. Never supply your Sociable Security figure or driver's licence figure to a seller. Don't supply your recognition card figure or depository financial institution business relationship information until you check up on out the marketer and the online payment or escrow service, if you're using one, and guarantee their legitimacy. Analyze the online payment and escrow service's privateness policy and security measures. Never let on fiscal or personal information unless you cognize why it's being collected, how it will be used, and how it will be safeguarded.

So you believe you desire to run an auction bridge bridge site?

Creating auction land sites is not for the faint-hearted, it's recommended to utilize a professional Web designing company to make and support your endeavour. Don't ever believe you can make this alone – unless you desire to begin a niche auction bridge site. For such as narrow marketplaces you can begin littler and do it up to the top.

Should you utilize a designing company or construct your own? You can certainly salvage one thousands of dollars by using an "out of the box" package, or employing your ain in-house IT skills. But these nest egg may be little compared with the turnover rate of a successful land site — or, more than seriously, the cost of getting it wrong. Use for starter motors a little niche to test. Testing never neglects to supply you with information and experience that you never acquire anywhere else

Creating an auction bridge land land site is nil compared to running one, and you may wish to read before what such as a site needs. Popular ways of getting a land land land site started include:

* scene a footing at which a command automatically wins.

* featuring selected points on other auction bridge sites, drawing visitants to your site by including your URL.

To cover with fake commands and timewasters:

* impose strict payment terms and lodge to them.

* veterinarian all winning commands by telephone set or email.

* require bidders to log in with personal details.

* tally private auction bridges to accredited bidders.

* black book offenders.

* bank check leery bids.

* automatically deny a 2nd peak command when peak is suspicious.

Since I am strongly in the Joomla development and Web site building, I wondered if Joomla is up to the Undertaking of being set up as an Auction Site. I searched for some solutions few calendar months ago. There seemed to be no cardinal bend solution to this matter. I looked at some semi-professional components, but merely suited for some specific undertakings as for case to let decision makers to begin an auction bridge for some of his stuff. That's nice but there is no interaction, no community building, no traffic. Just maybe some bidders on your 1 or two items. Also there were some issues regarding support and some not so make clean Ajax programming.

I sure wondered where all the developers have got gone? …

Yet since last hebdomad I noticed the new Auction constituent ( http://www.thefactory.ro/shop/joomla-components/auction-factory.html ) by the cats at The Factory ( www.thefactory.ro )! I must state I'm impressed! They managed to plan an "eBay in the box" sort of component. Not only the users can make Auctions, but there are nice characteristics as Auction watchlist (so you can maintain path of interesting auction bridges – acquiring updates on the evolution), Proxy command (so you can stipulate a maximal command and the system will offer in your behalf to that amount) and other bang-up features.

So you desire to make your ain eBay, or maybe the adjacent Sotherby's? Well, now you can make it using Joomla.

How?

Together with some old spouses from SEO-Executive Inc, I started setting up respective Sites using based on Joomla, installing Auction Factory as an Auctions platform on these.

Why Joomla? Fist because it have a rarely seen versatility. You have got Templates (free and commercial – and Iodine must salutation all Templates from Rockettemplate– very professional), Content items, Articles, Banners, RSS (again I must give the pollexes up to The Factory Team – RSSFactory–FREE- is by far the best Collector – free or commercial!), Community builder– Joomlapolis did a great, great work releasing this piece of Jewel! Also Galleries (Zoom Media galley is my favorite). So in short: you got it all.

So we started putting Auction Sites together. We started some niche auction bridge land sites (Mobile phones, Sphere names, Prison Guard websites), and some broad scope (Anything goes).

We must state we were impressed by the relaxation of Joomla and Auction Factory – both spell so smooth – installation, administration.

There is one fast one with Joomla: SEO is easy with Joomla – meta tags are easy to put up, page statute titles are dynamic, but if you desire to acquire the best out of it – you must enable SEF, and usage a SEF Extension (Joomla's ain codification SEF is rubbish). We used mostly ARTIO Sef , but OpenSef is also a very good extension. Auction mill have a plugin for both OpenSef and ARTIO Sef, so there were nice URLs like /auction/nokia-8010-new-in-package.html or /auction/used-armchair-urgent.html

These uniform resource locators are very of import for a startup land site AND for one established. The opportunities of getting a higher place into Google or similar engines is at least doubled!

The land sites we put up got pretty soon (right to the adjacent Pagerank update) a praseodymium 3, and we are hoping for a dramatic addition in the adjacent Google Pagerank update. Here are some SEO pointers, maybe you could utilize them too.

As a Auctions land site decision maker you must maintain an oculus on all the transactions. Don't worry, there will not be so many at beginning, and when you got too many, just utilize the internal Coverage system from the Auction component. That's how users will alarm you regarding some of the doubtful auctions.

In an followers article I will give you cats more inside information on setting up the land site and what you have got to maintain in head regarding all these issues.