Hello everyone, hope you're not tired of me yet. :) Today I'd like to talk about the Pet Auctions forum with some general guidelines for creating successful sales and auctions. These are guidelines and not official rules or anything like that. Just some hints and tips to get the most out of your sales threads. Feel free to adhere to these guidelines as strictly or loosely as you see fit.

Note that I will not be talking about how to price your Sylesties or run auctions or anything like that. This is purely for the creation and marketing of sales and auction threads.

First, make sure you read the official Pet Auction Rules.

Index

The Buyers
Thread Titles
Themes and Leads
Pet Listings
Sales
On Bumping
Shops
Advertising
FAQ
Update Log

The Buyers

This entire guide can be summed up in one sentence: people are impatient and lazy. Myself included. I will skip over 75% of all threads currently in the auction forum for basically three reasons: the title, no pets actually posted in the thread and having to wait to buy the pet. This entire guide will be based around fixing those three main issues and a few others.

Thread Titles

The first thing a potential buyer sees when entering the auction forum is a page of thread titles. Your thread title is one of the most important parts of your sale/auction for this reason. If you want your thread to stand out, you want to make sure your thread is labeled and specific.

Labels

Labels are pretty simple. All it does is denote whether your thread is a sale or an auction. You can either label it out as Sale or Auction, or use the generally accepted shorthand of [A] and [S]. As long as it's the very first part of your title, which you use doesn't really matter. Personally I prefer the shorthand because it makes the thread title shorter.

Be Specific

This seems like common sense but one look at the forum will tell you otherwise. You need to specify what you're selling or auctioning. Just saying you have pets for sale or auction is redundant and tells potential buyers absolutely nothing.

Let's look at two examples, inspired but not copied from the actual forum.

Example 1: Lots of pets available!

Example 2: [A] Clear Sky Lupora, 3 Vis

If someone is looking for Lupora, which thread do you think they're going to click on? If you guessed 2, you would be correct. There is nothing worse than being nonspecific. Instead of attracting everyone you're much more likely to attract, well, nobody. Because we're lazy and don't feel like clicking through a ton of threads to find what we want. ;) You need to cater to your market, but you can't do that if you don't have one. Your thread title designates what your market is and who you're going to sell to.

What if I have a lot of Sylesties to sell, you ask? Read on, I've got you covered.

Themes and Leads

Themes

So you've got 3 stables full of Sylesties you need to sell. Great! Here's the key: don't sell all of them in one thread. That's how you end up with generic thread titles no one reads and a low sell-through from not attracting enough buyers.

It's much better to break your sales up into multiple threads and label each one with a nice title to help your buyers find what they want. Remember, you need to be specific so don't go throwing all your "themed pets" into one thread. Let's make another example:

Example 1: Lots of Themed Pets for Sale!

This doesn't work because it's generic and if you don't have at least one of literally every themed pet possible you're going to end up wasting someone's time. So let's break it up:

Example 2: [S] Clear Sky Lupora, 3 Vis
[S] Patriotic Bulbori, 2-4 Vis and Carry
[S] Patriotic Aurleon, 2 Vis

Now instead of one generic thread we have 3 specific ones. Much easier for your buyers to locate the pets they want. You'll notice the middle one specifies a range of traits in order to stay clearly labeled while still being concise.

You can do this for more than just themed pets as well. Grouping by breed is a great way to keep your auctions separated.

Leads

So say you have a stable full of Qitari with a massive range of colors, traits and maybe a few themed ones scattered in there. How do you label such a motley collection? Like so:

Example: [S] Qitari Stable + Rose Petal

Even with a wide range you're still managing to be specific. You've labeled it as a sale so people looking to buy will come here first. You've listed Qitari, so anyone not looking for them won't click here. Stable implies that you have a large number of Qitari to sell. Finally, you also have a lead--a Rose Petal Qitari, which is valuable and likely to draw people in out of curiosity.

It's a retail technique called a lead-in. That's why when you walk into a store you often see popular sale items on a display close to the door. You draw them in with a lead and they'll often stay to browse.

If you have multiple possible leads you'll have to make an executive decision of which one to put in your title. When you sell your lead, consider keeping its image up for display in the thread with a note that it's been sold. We'll talk more about lead-ins later on in the guide.

Pet Listings

So you've broken your sales up into threads and made some lovely titles for each one. Now what? Well, now you want to make your listing. Always post all of the pets in the thread. One of my biggest pet peeves is clicking on a thread expecting to see Sylesties and instead I find a one liner directing me to some random tabs in someone's stable. No. Just no. That is not how sales works. Remember, buyers are lazy and impatient. You need to make it as fast and easy as possible to buy your pets.

Formatting: KISS

When formatting your thread, follow the KISS (keep it simple, silly) principle. The pets should be the most prominent part of your thread--everything else is secondary and should be as short and to-the-point as possible. If you have specific information about your pets, make sure that information is placed only where it's applicable.

Examples of information that does not belong in your sale/auction thread: reasons why you're selling these pets, updates on breeding projects, advertisements for anything other than the pets in the thread. Basically, anything not directly related to the sale or auction.

Auctions Note: In the official auction rules thread there is a template provided for auctions. I highly suggest using it.

The Listings

Ok, now to the fun part. Actually listing your pets. Remember the lead-in I talked about earlier? The same principle applies when you list your pets in the thread. Your most valuable/lead pet should always be the first one in the thread since it's the main draw.

In general when you have a lot of pets to list you also want to keep them organized. It's mostly personal preference, just make sure you keep your categories clearly marked.

Example categories: breeding projects, number of visible/carry traits, colors, age, bred stats, etc.

A Note: If you're not sure you want to sell a particular pet, don't list it in your sale/auction thread. I've been seeing this a lot lately and it's terrible for business. Why? Because you're dangling a carrot (in my observation, the pet is usually the best one in the thread) and telling buyers essentially that they can't have it. There's no point in putting it in the thread, then. Just hold onto it until you've decided if you want to keep it or not. You can't go halfway on something like that.

Pet Profiles

Each pet listed should have its own profile. Information they should all have: pet image and link, price, visible/carried genes and mutations, theme (if applicable), or anything else relevant like bred stats.

Optional information: name if it has one, whether it's bred or tamed, level, whether it's a mission/battle pet, etc.

Example Profile
Note: Crusader is not for sale. This is for example purposes only.


Name: Crusader
Level: 45
Mission Pet - Health
Genes: Warhorse Armor (Striped)
Generated Sylesti, no children
Price: x gold / x diamonds

Yes, it can take awhile to format if you have a lot of pets. Do it anyway. It's not too bad if you make your own template (or set of templates) to copy and fill in as necessary.

How to create a linked image: first open a separate tab to your pet's profile page. Right click on the pet's image and choose copy image URL. Then paste it into the post box. Highlight the entire URL then click the blue IMG= at the top of the post box. Now it'll ask you for an URL in a pop up box. Go back to your tab with the pet's profile page and copy the URL in the address bar. Paste that into the pop up box. Ta-da! Clickable pet image.

Sales

Make sure that you set the prices for every single pet you want to sell before you post the thread. This is so a buyer can see a pet, click it and buy it without any further input or action from either of you. If you don't have the prices set and have to go back and forth, chances are by the time you get back to your buyer they'll either have changed their mind or found a pet they could actually buy when they wanted it.

Obviously, this does not apply to auctions.

On Bumping

I will preface this by saying I hate bumping and make a point to do it as little as possible. The only time you should ever feel it necessary to bump your thread is if it falls off the first page or if you've made substantial updates/revisions to your listings.

Shops

If you want to create a permanent sale thread, aka a shop, remember to follow the same basic guidelines for regular sale/auction threads. Personally I would not consider making a shop for anything other than themed pets and/or breeding projects. Random, large assortments of pets are just too hard to sell in one place for reasons listed throughout the guide.

Advertising

So you've made these lovely threads with nice titles and pets and profiles. Now to attract some buyers! The thread itself will do the bulk of the work for you if you've made a nice title and formatted the thread for ease of navigation and sales. If you want to do further advertising, I would suggest putting a thread link in your profile page.

Do not spam links anywhere, message random people or anything else annoying. If you don't like it when other people do it, don't do it yourself.

FAQ

To be added and updated as necessary.

Have anything to add or clarify? Please let me know!

Update Log
4/17 - Guide written.
Upcoming features: formatting, profile templates, links.