Auctions – How Do Auctioneers Make Money

I know this part of the concept is probably something that may be in your mind as a big question mark. Perhaps you are just curious about the way these professionals (and the whole auction center) benefits from the sales and all. Others may want to follow such a career, and I can tell you that in order to speak that well and that fast, you better start soon.

Obviously the auctioneers, the announcers get paid a salary. The type of items that are sold don’t really determine what they make as they get paid by the venue. Having said that though, obviously auctions that involved more expensive items, will have more expensive professionals working there than elsewhere (common sense right?) So the point I’m trying to make is that they don’t get any commissions or anything like that.  If that were the case, there would be no one to announce the smaller items that are for sale.

But who pays him and how do they make money? Obviously in order for someone to draw a salary, that means that he/she is bringing in more revenue for his boss. So how does the auction center manage to take care of all the bills, pay the employee that will come in and clean the place and finally keep a profit for themselves?

Well, there are a few ways actually:

  1. In big shows where rare and expensive items are expected to be sold (presidential limousines for example) there is always an admissions fee. It’s like a show and if you refer back to an article I wrote a while back, these venues are so huge and great in size and those attract the most well off individuals and entities. You won’t find a low income class person from Louisiana walking into one of these events that easily – unless he is looking to sell his horse (it’s a joke.)
  2. There will almost always be some kind of percentage on the sale that the auction center will keep. I can’t tell you the exact rates and percentages, but it is a good amount, considering that these deals are worth multiple tens or thousands of dollars. So it’s a lot like a commission deal. The higher the price of the product sale, the greater the commission.
  3. Some centers will require that the people looking to sell, pay a small fee just for having the opportunity to list their product up for sale. Because a lot of the process works as a great PR and advertisement stunt for all these people, they need to treat it like an advertisement campaign and so that is what they really do.

Guys, who are we kidding? If money wasn’t being made in these venues those would have been extinct long long time ago. The fact that they are still alive means that these are profitable. Many times, the people responsible for these events, are people that actually own the items (or some of them) so as you can understand, when they make that multi hundred thousand dollar sale, they make a sweet profit from it!

When these shows get to the point of being a commercial success (with TV stations broadcasting the show) then you can understand that there is a lot of advertisement that takes place: both in regards to TV ads and the local ads being places on the building. So these auction centers will sell the rights of TV broadcasting to the related channels, gaining another sweet profit for them.

I mean when you think about this all, there are just so many revenue sources for the auction centers. And there must be so many, because these auctions don’t take place every day but only certain times of a year. If you are considering to join this part of the business, make sure you start on speaking fast and fluent as the auctioneers. I’m kidding of course: there are so many jobs within this industry and if you pick something you like and are good at it, you can go really far.

That’s all I got today – hopefully I’ll have more to post tomorrow.