How To Conduct an Auction with WP Auctions

Auctions are fun, exciting, addictive and a great way to keep visitors on your site engaged. You can do just about anything with WordPress today, and for the past 5 years (wow!) you can use WP Auctions with it to create, conduct and close auctions.

Why auctions?

A lot of people like to auction off their items because:

• It’s their preferred way to sell their items
• They want to get the highest possible price, Or
• To raise money for an awareness campaign

In either of the cases above, WP Auctions is the perfect tool to help you out. Here’s a little tutorial to get you started.

*This tutorial assumes you have WP Auctions Pro installed on your site.*

1. Create your auction
2. Images, Media, Images!
3. Close, payment and ship

1. Create Your Auction

Once you have the WP Auctions plugin installed, simply go to the “New Auction” admin panel. There you will see all the options available to conduct your auction.

The most important parts of entering a new auction are:

1. Your title
2. Description
3. A featured image
4. Start price
5. End date
6. Payment method

Everything else is completely optional.

Now, here’s a neat little thing that most people tend to overlook.

Templates!

Yes, the plugin allows you to use specific data templates for each auction. This gives you the option to insert specific data for your auction. For instance, if you were selling art you can enter custom fields like “Medium”, “Style”, “Inspiration” etc…just to give you an idea.

Of course, don’t use too many custom fields otherwise you’ll just end up confusing your bidder.

You can create templates from the “Auction Templates” tab. Once you’ve done so you can load it by selecting the template from the top most drop down panel when you create a new auction.

2. Add MORE Media To Your Auction

We’ve already placed a featured image for the auction above, but we can add more by using the extra 3 image slots available. These are shown by default next to the featured image. Once you’ve done that add your new auction and you’re done!

Now, lets take it a step further.

Let us embed and bind the auction to a Post or Page. Simply add a new Post/Page and insert your auction shortcode in the write area via the handy Insert Auction panel. Once you’ve done that you can now click “Bind Post to Auction“. This will create the relationship between your Post/Page and the auction.

Because of the above step, every time an email is sent out to the winning bidder, losing bidder, viewers watching the auction etc…they will be linked to the Post/Page you embedded the auction in. This gives you the ability to offer your bidders and users a central place to get all updates related to that auction.

Since we’re embedding the auction into a Post/Page you can also do just about anything else as far as media is concerned. Embed videos, image galleries, widgets, longer descriptions, use the comments section and much, much more.

Overall, a very easy way to make your auction 10 times more exciting is to embed it into a Post/Page.

3. Get Paid!

Once your auction is over you can check in the backend of the plugin under “Closed Auctions” to see who the winning bidder is. Their name is to their email address.

The plugin automatically sends the winner an email stating that they have won along with your payment instructions. If you’ve chosen PayPal then a link to pay is sent along as well. If by chance the winner says they didn’t get the winning email you can click on “Resend Winner Email” and the system will send it out again.

All you have to do now is wait for your payment and ship out your item.

—

So that’s how you can use WP Auctions to conduct an auction online, on your very own WordPress powered site or blog.

Best of luck with your auctions!