How to Offer Something for Auction
As of February 2013, Con or Bust is now located at http://con-or-bust.org/. You can find the current version of this page at http://con-or-bust.org/auction/.
Want to offer something for auction, but not sure what? Feel free to browse current and old offers to get ideas. You can offer items or services: a care package with interesting items from your city or on a theme, baked goods, books, a poem, a story character named after the winner, research, editing, jewelry, or pretty much whatever else you can think of (that's legal, ethical, and practical). [*] If in doubt, leave a question here.
You may (indeed, are encouraged to!) post items before bidding starts and until the auction closes. In 2012, bidding starts Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 12:01 a.m. EST (GMT -5) and ends Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 11:59 p.m. EST.
Step-by-step instructions for making an offer post:
If you have or want an LJ account:
- Create an LJ account.
- Go to this page to make your post.
- Use a descriptive subject line ("Offer: Sugar Cookies," "Offer: Short Story Critique"). Don't put HTML in the subject, otherwise the subject line won't turn into a link on the community's front page and on other people's reading lists.
- Cut and paste this code as a template for your offer (for best results, click "HTML" on the top right corner of the large entry box and uncheck "don't autoformat" below it, if necessary):
Item Name & Description: [what you're offering] Starting Bid: [minimum price you're willing to offer for] Notes: [delivery time, limitations, conditions, etc.] E-mail: [spam obfuscation is fine] Bidding is now open and ends Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 11:59 p.m. EST. http://community.livejournal.com/con_or_bust/29148.html">How to bid.
(I am asking sellers to leave e-mail addresses in the offer itself, because there were some problems contacting sellers in a prior auction. If you don't want to do that, please contact me and I can list the item for you or we can work something else out (knepveu at steelypips dot org).)
- Fill out the "Tags" field with "2012 auction" and "offer: ____". Multiple tags are encouraged; separate them with commas. For instance, homemade cookies could be tagged "offer: item, offer: baked goods, offer: cookies".
- If your entry contains something (especially pictures) you wouldn't want your boss/someone else's kid/your mom/whoever to see, please review this LJ FAQ on marking "Adult Content" and choose accordingly from the drop-down menu on the posting page.
If you don't have or want an LJ account:
E-mail me at knepveu at steelypips dot org, with "Con or Bust" in the subject, including the information above. I should be able to list the item for you.
[*] Two suggestions: (1) If offering food, either figure out what you need to do to ship internationally or restrict your offer to your own country. (2) If offering original creative work to a prompt, or custom-made crafts, consider whether you've done anything like that before and what a realistic delivery time is-I would like to avoid people winning stories, knitted goods, etc. that the seller has trouble creating within the delivery time stated.
Finally, a note on shipping costs, because it's something of a FAQ: the default is that the person offering the item will pay for shipping. If the cost of international shipping is an issue, people have in the past shipped internationally after the bidder has offered to donate extra to Con or Bust, or have limited their auctions to domestic shipping only. If you think this may be an issue, please check shipping costs ahead of time and make a note in your auction post.
Leave questions in comments; some comments relating to outdated versions of this post have been screened to reduce confusion.