Technology is amazing and this concept of selling your livestock with the aid of online Internet bidding is here!

Right now there are two proven methods of selling your livestock on-line. The "Silent Auction" platform and "real-time”, “live” online auctions. The "Silent Auction" works very similar to the popular eBay platform. "Colyer Herefords and Angus" has been using the COWS (silent) auction platform since we developed the first version in 2002. Once they decided to hold a silent auction online, the number one thing they did to secure their success was to inform their clients when and how to participate. Advertising in breed magazines, putting up posters at junior events and lots of phone calling and emailing are all ways to inform people of your upcoming online sale. There always should be contact with your customers.

Online Auction Success Stories:
Colyer Herefords - Bruneau, Idaho
Annual Online Sale since 2002.

West Poplar Red Angus
Located near Rockglen, Saskatchewan, the Pituleys have taken their bull sale online each March since 2004.
Read the West Poplar story here.

THE LIVE ONLINE AUCTION – "REAL-TIME" ELECTRONIC BIDDING

The “live” Online Auction concept has been getting a lot of attention lately. It has been developed to run concurrently with a live auction in “real-time” as it happens, without interference or delays to the live sale’s progress. The purpose is to make it possible to bid on livestock from your computer at home, anywhere in the world, via the Internet while the actual auction is in progress.

To better grasp how it works as a bidder is easy to explain in layman’s terms. First, knowing the sale you are interested in purchasing from, you would pre-register online by giving the necessary information that would secure you as a legitimate bidder. Upon acceptance of your information, you are given a username and password in order to login and actively bid on the sale cattle at the time they are offered in the ring during the live on-site auction. At ringside is the trained person receiving the electronic bids on a laptop, sent by those bidding at home via the Internet. Those bids are then relayed to the auctioneer. The time it takes for your bid to leave your fingertip and appear on the screen of the person receiving at ringside is the key to having a successful on-line auction platform. Although there may be a slight delay (less than one second), the goal is not to interrupt the flow of the sale by keeping this delay to a minimum.

In 1999, COWS International, with the cooperation of Lonker Herefords and Red Angus of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, were quite successful by pre-registering 40 buyers and selling 13 lots on-line in real-time at Lonker’s annual production sale. This was a huge step and was successful in its infancy. Today there are those that would call the platform Lonker’s used clunky and inefficient, but that was six years ago – and it worked! That online real-time sale was ahead of its time considering that very little else had been accomplished with selling cattle on the Internet in those early days. To have this service work right along side the live auction and not interfere with the auctioneer’s sale rhythm was then, and must remain the number one priority.

Since that first real-time auction at Lonker’s in 1999, technology and programming advancements for a service like this has made the logistics of implementing real-time internet bidding a viable and interesting addition to any live purebred cattle auction. If you have been tossing around the idea of incorporating online bidding at your next production or bull sale, here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Shop around. There is more than one company offering online auction services out there today, and they are not all equal when it comes to user-friendliness, effectiveness, speed, eye appeal, cost, etc.

2. Since these services are all relatively new, no standardized pricing models have been set, so make sure you understand what it is you are being sold and what you can expect for the dollars you spend. Make sure you are comparing apples to apples when comparing price, value and service.

3. Protected Buyer List: If the company keeps the buyer list from your sale – how will it be used? You don’t want your customers receiving unsolicited email from the company, so make sure they are protected. (Ask to be given the buyer list and have a privacy agreement signed by the company to ensure your buyers are protected from junk mail.)

For the future, the ultimate goal for this service is to offer "Real time live Video and Audio" for those watching and bidding from home allowing you to see and hear the auction live on the internet without a delay. What is available today is the ability to bid on-line with a minimal delay and silently view still pictures of the animal in the ring. The reason "Real time live Video and Audio” is not feasible yet for online cattle sales is limited internet connection speed. With the majority of on-line bids being sent from rural areas on slow dial-up lines, any delay to the bidding process is unacceptable and could cause a missed bid. It is only a matter of time before this obstacle is conquered. Wireless (Air ) and satellite Internet hook ups are a huge advancement to allow high speed internet access from almost anywhere in rural areas, but they still are not fool proof as weather can interfere with both.

There is a lot to be learned about this new service for both the developers and the end users. In time as the concept of selling on-line becomes the norm within the cattle world, it must continue to prove its worth in order to be an efficient and cost effective way to compliment marketing your livestock. If you are considering having your sale run on the internet, do not be sold on this service as a quick fix to be flooded with new buyers for your sale offering. In time and with good communication with your client base, you can become very successful selling on-line by broadening your contact base and ultimately bringing more bids to your sale. Selling online is worth pursuing and hopefully you are now armed with some questions and answers that will help you determine if an on-line auction can fit your program.