Simply list your items on one of the many person-to-person auction sites, such as eBay, Onsale's Exchange section, or Auction Universe. You may have to pay a small fee (often as low as 25 cents) when you list an item, as well as a commission when you sell it. But the service takes care of all the auction details.
Ron Tipton, 54, owner of Tipton's Coins and Jewelry store in Salem, Oregon, takes slow-moving items from his store and sells them on eBay - to the tune of up to $7,000 per month. Tipton has been so successful that he has considered shutting the doors of his store and going totally virtual. "It's particularly effective for unusual items," he says, since eBay can help you reach buyers with very narrow interests.
If you'd like to draw more attention to your company, check out FairMarket (www.fairmarket.com/programs.asp), a service that lets you create auctions for your business Web site. On the FairMarket site, you design an auction page with your company's look-and-feel, and then create a link between that page and your company Web site. It's a way to maintain control over the auction experience without setting up your own auction site. Meanwhile, if you're really sold on selling through an auction, or if you want to avoid the fees that other sites charge, you can go all the way with your own thing. Two companies - OpenSite Technologies (www.opensite.com), and Moai Technologies (www.moai.com) - offer easy-to-customize tools for do-it-yourself auctions. Your customers aren't likely to confuse you with Sotheby's - but they may make some interesting bids.
Katharine Mieszkowski (katharinem@fastcompany.com), a senior writer at Fast Company, is based in San Francisco.
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