Get Your Fix Had enough of auctions? Fixed pricing could be just the thing your business craves.

Online auctions aren't for everyone. "If you have rareand collectible items, auctions seem to be the way to go,"says Brian Schell, president and owner of Replay Media Inc., athree-employee seller of second-hand books and recordings."But for things we sell that aren't rare but may not beavailable locally, fixed pricing seems to be the way to go,"adds the 35-year-old Dayton, Ohio, BIZ Experiences.

Fixed-price marketplaces, where all kinds of pre-owned,overstocked and clearance items are listed and sold at pricesdetermined by sellers instead of bidders, haven't gotten muchattention compared to that given to eBay's auction action. Buttoday, 60 percent of items on eBay are noncollectibles such as carsand even real estate. In addition, 40 percent of eBay'stransactions have started taking place at fixed prices, eitherthrough auctions featuring the "Buy It Now" option topurchase something at a set price without bidding, or viaeBay's all-fixed-price subsidiary, Half.com. Driving the growthof fixed price is the fact that these markets have special appealsto both buyers and sellers.

For buyers, the charm is avoiding the delays, hassles anduncertainty of the auction process. "A large percentage ofpeople are looking for an impulse buy," says Rick Antunes, CEOand founder of Carnaby.com, a 20-person Casselberry, Florida,online auction market. "They don't want to wait. Theydon't want to go through the whole process." Last year,Antunes, 52, added to Carnaby's auction offerings by purchasinga small, fixed-price marketplace called Grababargain.com.

Sellers like fixed-price marketplaces because they make it easyto put large inventories of goods online for sale. Entering itemsfor sale in an auction can be time-consuming because of the need toupload descriptions of unique items and, often, images as well.Fixed-price markets employ huge databases of millions of standardproducts. "The big success of fixed price is it'sdatabase-driven, allowing people to avoid cumbersome ways of doinglists," says Antunes.

It takes just seconds to post a book or CD for sale onGrababargain.com or Half.com, says Schell, who has experienceselling through both, as well as on eBay and in his own retailstore in Dayton. There's no need to upload detaileddescriptions or images because they are already included in thedatabases fixed-price marketplace operators provide.

Fees for listing items for sale on fixed-price markets are lowerthan those of auction sites-even nonexistent, with the fixed-pricemarket operators collecting only when items are sold. Listingsdon't expire in a few days as auction listings do, sofixed-price sellers can keep large inventories online for a longtime while looking for buyers.

In addition, fixed-price marketplaces will continue to lurebuyers and sellers from conventional online stores as they increasethe number of items, sellers and buyers, says Lisa Strand, chiefe-commerce analyst at online market tracker Nielsen/NetRatings inMilpitas, California. More users will go for the chance tocomparison-shop for standard items; they'll be followed by moresellers seeking the chance to reach more shoppers than they couldthrough stand-alone online stores. "It's a fire that feedsitself," Strand says. The downside is that all those buyersare typically after only one thing: a bargain.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to fixed-price success is thecreation of databases vast enough to offer easy listing of allproducts. Right now, big fixed-price marketplaces can list tens ofmillions of items. But that's only a fraction of the productsthat could be sold. "In the next couple of years, you'llbe able to find every item that is made on a database," saysAntunes. "Then, fixed price will explode."

Austin, Texas, writer Mark Henricks has covered business andtechnology for leading publications since 1981.