There is every chance that you can loose money on some or even all of your online auction items, but if you pay attention to purchasing trends or have highly valued, but not widely available items you can see very high returns from online auctions.

In the spring of 2008 there was a man who sold his life on an online auction. He explained his wife filed for divorce and everything he had worked for just fell apart so he was willing to see that tattered remains of his life. I don't know exactly how he delivered that, but it sure generated a lot of auction interest.

Another woman a few years earlier placed a riveting description of an item related to her role as mother. Her description was both humorous and touching. In the end she got an unbelievable price for the baby item she was auctioning simply because of the story associated with its purchase.

If you have a really unique item you can relate the history of the item and increase its perceived value based simply on its historical significance.

You might even ask a celebrity to send you an item for charity and then auction that item online with information about the origin of the item and the celebrity involved. Obviously you will have significant interest and presumably there will be lots of money raised for the charity, but the crazy amount of visitation to the auction page will also provide a link to your primary business as well as other items you may have at auction.

What I am getting at is there are ways to promote your auction-based business within the confines of the auction environment. If you are creative enough you can bring customers to an auctioned item just to see what you've come up with next.

I suppose if everyone did that the novelty of this approach would wear thin, but there may be certain items in which it would make sense to use this approach.

There are even some brick and mortar stores that will accept items to sell in an online auction environment and then take a percentage of the final auction price. This type of business is designed for those who either don't know how to conduct an online auction or have no access to a computer.

Even those who do not use a computer have come to understand the value of online auctions as a means of selling unwanted items or to gain needed cash.

Sometimes these stores will offer a cash price up front or they take a commission after the sale. This can be a gamble for the business owner, but they obviously pay much less than they think it would bring at auction if they were paying up front.

Online auctions can be the basis for a business opportunity on and offline.