Top Car and Vehicle Auction Terms Explained

This article is part of a series dealing with the basics of UK car and vehicle auctions. Some of the terms used may apply to other countries but specific vehicle requirements are UK based.

A
• Auction – The process by which items are sold to the highest bidder within a competitive environment
• Auctioneer – The person responsible for controlling the auction

B
• Bid – An amount of money offered by a bidder for a particular lot
• Bidder – A person or company competing to purchase a particular lot
• Bidding Number – A unique number assigned to a bidder during some types of auction
• Buyers Fee – An amount of money added to the Hammer Price of a particular lot or purchase – sometimes called Commission

C
• Cashier – A member of Auction staff responsible for taking payment from buyers and releasing Vehicle Documents and Pass Outs
• Catalogue – A list of the items for sale in any one auction
• Closed Auction – A sale only available for invited buyers
• Commercial Vehicles – Any item at auction that is primarily used for a business nature.
Can include vans, trucks, tractors and plant items
• Commission – See Buyers Fee
• Company Fleet – A group of vehicles used for the needs of a business or organisation and usually leased from a leasing company
• Contract Hire – A form of long term leasing agreement offered by Leasing Companies
• Cover Note – A certificate of motor insurance offered by insurance companies as a temporary measure until full certification arrives

D
• Date of First Registration – The time at which a vehicle was assigned is Registration Number
• Dealer Group – A chain of car dealerships operating either under a manufacturer franchise or independently and selling one or more make of vehicle from one or more geographic location. A type of buyer and vendor at car auctions
• Dealership – A single location within a Dealer Group. An independent car dealer
• Deposit – The amount of money that must be paid in order to bid in any given auction, or to secure a bid on any given vehicle
• Drive Away Insurance – Cover offered by insurance companies to allow a buyer to drive a vehicle after purchase. Sometimes offered free through auctions
• Dutch Auction – A variant of the English Auction system where the Auctioneer begins with a high asking price which is then lowered until a bidder accepts
• DVLA – The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, an Executive Office of the Department for Transport (DfT)

E
• English Auction – The most widely used and recognisable system of auctioneering whereby the sale of an item is determined by an increase in the value of bids until a final bid and bidder remain
• Entry Details – Information shown on the Windscreen Entry Form describing the vehicle such as the current Odometer reading, Service History, MOT and Road Tax status and other information of interest to Buyers
• Entry Fee – The cost to enter your vehicle into any given auction

F
• Fee – Any charge added to the cost of selling or buying a vehicle at auction
• Finance House – A company that leases vehicles to businesses, organisations or to private individuals. A type of seller at car auctions
• Fleet Vehicles – A car or van which has previously been leased by a company or organisation
• Former Keepers – The number of persons, organisations or companies which have previously kept any given vehicle

G
• Gavel – The official name for an auctioneers hammer

H
• Hall – The area in which the auction takes place. There can be one or more halls situated within an auction site
• Hammer Price – The value at which an item or lot is sold. This value is set once the auctioneer declares the item as sold and brings down the gavel

I
• Inspection Report – A document created by an engineer or auction employee highlighting any damage or issues with a vehicle

J

K
• Key Room – The office within an auction site where vehicle keys will be kept and released to a buyer upon presentation of a Pass Out

L
• Leasing Company – An organisation which leases vehicles to business or organisations to form their fleet. A type of seller at car auctions
• Log Book – An common name used for a vehicles Vehicle Registration Document or V5c
• Lot – Any item for sale within any given auction
• Lot Number – The unique number assigned to any item for sale in any given auction

M
• Main Agent – The authorised seller and service centre of a particular type, or types, of vehicle within a given geographical area. May also be used in reference to a vehicle’s Service History which may include their stamp
• Manufacturer – The maker of a type of vehicle. A type of seller at car auctions
• Margin – The difference between costs and outlay to acquire an item and the total subsequent sale value
• Mileage – The current miles travelled by any particular vehicle as shown on the vehicle’s Odometer
• MOT – A certificate confirming that at the time of the last test, a vehicle met the minimum statutory safety and environmental standards

N
• Non-runner – Used to describe a vehicle when the engine will not start

O
• Odometer – A device which records the current miles travelled by a vehicle and then displays this record
• Open Auction – A sale where anybody is free to attend and bid

P
• Part X – Vehicles offered at auction that have been traded to a Dealership in return for a new vehicle
• Pass Out – A form given to the buyer of a vehicle indicating that the sale is complete and allowing the buyer to remove the vehicle from the auction site
• Plant – A term used to describe any items which do not fit into the general sale categories. Can mainly be used to describe agricultural machinery, industrial items or non road vehicles
• Plate – Term used to refer to a vehicles registration number
• Private Buyer – The term used to describe a member of the public not associated, or bidding for, commercial gain
• Provisional Bid – The system whereby the auction will contact the vendor and offer them the highest bid achieved during an auction if this bid has not met the set reserve price

Q

R
• Registration Number – The unique code assigned to a vehicle by the DVLA and used to identify it
• Remarketing – The industry term used to describe the sale of used vehicles at auction
• Reserve – The minimum sale value set by the vendor on any one lot
• Road tax – The statutory amount payable on all vehicles in order to drive them on UK roads.
• Rostrum – The stage or podium where the auctioneer stands and from where the auction is controlled
• Rostrum Clerk – An Assistant to the Auctioneer who acts as a Customer Liaison during the auction

S
• Sale – The time during which the Auction takes place
• Service History – Details of a vehicles maintenance and past. Will include details of when, and at what mileage, services have been carried out on a vehicle. Stamps may include those from Local Garages or Main Agents
• Sold as Seen – The process by which vehicles are offered and/or sold without guarantee

T
• Tax Disk – Certificate attached to the inside of a vehicles windscreen confirming that it has current Road Tax
• Trade – Buyers or sellers at auction whom operate within the Automotive Industry

U
• Unsold- A vehicle that has been entered at auction and has not been bought either due to lack of interest from Buyers, the final bid not reaching the Reserve or the Seller rejecting a Provisional Bid

V
• V5C – Also known as a log book. Shows the present registered keeper of the vehicle and is used to inform the DVLA of any change in ownership
• VAT Marginal – Applicable to Trade buyers who will be required to pay VAT on their Margin when they sell the vehicle on
• VAT Qualifying – Applicable to Trade buyers. VAT is payable on the Hammer Price of a vehicle
• Vehicle Documents – The collective term used to describe all legal and additional documents relating to a vehicle
• Vehicle Logistics – The process and system of arranging vehicles for collection and delivery to and from auction sites
• Vendor – A company, organisation or individual selling their vehicle(s) at auction

W
• Warranted Mileage – Used to describe when a vehicle’s vendor has confirmed that the current Odometer reading is correct and accurate
• Windscreen Entry Form – A document attached to the inside of a vehicle showing the vehicle’s Entry Details

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Auction Listings Are Vital to the Success of Fundraising Auctions

Fundraising Auction Tip: You should always provide potential bidders with a printed Auction Listing of both your Live and Silent Auction items at any Fundraising Auction. A printed Auction Listing is vital for several reasons:

An Auction Listing informs bidders of the order of sale, and what is coming up next. If you keep your bidders guessing, they will simply not bid.

If bidders are not 100% certain of what they are bidding on, they will not bid. A printed Auction Listing should answer any and all questions about what is being sold in order to encourage bidders to bid as much as possible.

Bidders often need time to plan their bidding strategies, especially on multiple and/or larger value items. A printed Auction Listing helps them to do that.

Couples often need time to consult with each other about what they are willing to spend on something. A printed Auction Listing helps them to do that.

Potential bidders need to know the specifics, the benefits, and the restrictions on any item they are going to bid on, especially on travel and/or other higher value items. A printed Auction Listing should answer all of their questions, in writing.

After bidders see that they have lost an item to another bidder, a printed Auction Listing makes it easier for them to re-strategize on what else they can bid on.
Printed Auction Listings generally come in 3 forms:

Printed in the Event Program or Auction Catalog.

Printed on loose sheets of paper and hand-inserted into the Event Program or Auction Catalog.

Printed on loose sheets of paper and hand-delivered to all attendees, or left on each dinner table in the room.
Auction Listings cost practically nothing to produce and they can make the difference between the success and failure of a Live and Silent Auction. You should never conduct a Fundraising Auction without one.

A Case Study

Let me share a real-life experience with you. Once I was hired to conduct a Fundraising Auction for a nationally renowned organization. The event was held in a major hotel, in one of the country’s largest cities, with several hundred “black tie” participants attending. It was an extremely professional event, with the music, singing, lighting, speeches, and awards all perfectly timed and choreographed. Everything was done to perfection… exception the Fundraising Auction.

Although I had signed an agreement to serve as their Auctioneer nearly one year in advance of the event, no one bothered to contact me for any advice or help. Approximately one week prior to the Auction date, I contacted the group to see if they had replaced me with another Auctioneer. But they said that I was still their man.

Upon arriving at the event I asked for a copy of the Auction Listing. I was told that there were none. I’m not sure whether they felt that the Auction Listing wasn’t necessary, or whether someone forgot to have them printed. This was never made clear. When I asked what I was to use at the podium, I was told to copy the list of Live Auction items from a committee member’s computer. It took me about 30 minutes to copy three pages of hand-written notes in order to prepare for my role as their Auctioneer.

I knew that they had created a PowerPoint program showing the various Live Auction items. When I asked whether the PowerPoint slide order corresponded to the order of sale I had copied from the committee member’s computer, I was met with a blank stare. The committee member left to check the slide order, and returned to let me know that the slide order did not correspond my notes, and he provided me with the correct slide order… hand-written on a paper napkin. This forced me to re-arrange my three pages of hand-written notes before taking the podium.

There was a Live Auction Table with descriptions of the Live Auction items that were to be sold, but the table was not clearly marked, and it received significantly less attention than the Silent Auction Tables, which were clearly identified. Since the Live Auction Table was located adjacent to the “Raffle Table”, it appeared that most people thought it was part of the raffle and therefore paid very little attention to it.

According to the event program (which did not include an Auction Listing), I knew approximately when I was to begin the Live Auction. At the designated time the Master of Ceremonies announced the start of the Live Auction to the several hundred people in attendance, and introduced me as Auctioneer. As I approached the podium I realized that photographs of award winners were still being taken… directly in front of the podium where I was to stand… which required me to stand aside for several minutes until the photographers were done. Can we say “awkward moment”?

As the photographers cleared, I approached the podium and began my Live Auction introduction. Approximately one minute into my introduction, the “Raffle Committee” approached the podium and stopped my Live Auction Introduction in order to pull the 8 or 9 Raffle Winners. These drawings lasted about 5 minutes. Upon it’s conclusion I was allowed to resume the start of the Live Auction.

When standing at the podium two intense and extremely bright spotlights were pointed directly at the podium. The lights were so bright that I literally could not see the center 1/3 of the room. I could see the tables on the right, and on the left, but was totally blinded when looking straight ahead. It took perhaps five minutes before the spotlights were turned off.

While at the podium and describing Lot #1, I had to ask someone to start the Lot #1 PowerPoint Slide… because apparently no one was assigned that job.

So with only the Auctioneer’s verbal description, and a PowerPoint slide, it appeared that few people in the room had any idea about what we were selling… or when we were selling it… until it was announced by the Auctioneer. As a result, bidding was extremely light and the final results fell several thousands of dollars short of where they should have been
The learning experience is this:

The Live Auction is where you place your better items, and where the real money should be made at any Fundraising Auction. Let bidders know as far in advance as possible what you will be selling, and the order of sale, so they can get excited about the Auction, and plan their bidding strategy accordingly.

Auction Listings are absolutely vital to the success of both Live & Silent Auctions. In my opinion, revenues at this Auction fell thousands of dollars short of where they should have been, because no Auction Listing was provided to the guests.

If bidders are not perfectly clear on what is being sold, including both the item’s specifics, benefits, and restrictions, they will not bid.

When you have a committee of volunteers, especially volunteers having full time jobs and/or very busy schedules, the services of a professional Fundraising Auctioneer can help to keep the committee on track.

And once you retain the services of a professional Fundraising Auctioneer… use the services that you are paying for.
Don’t let this happen at your Fundraising Auction.

Michael Ivankovich is a Bucks County Fundraising Auctioneer based in Doylestown PA, and serves the Great Philadelphia PA area. He has been a professionally licensed and bonded Auctioneer in Pennsylvania for nearly 20 years, has been named Pennsylvania’s Auctioneer of the Year, and has considerable experience in conducting Fundraising Auctions. Michael loves helping groups raise needed funds for good causes and one of his specialties is the “Special Pledge Appeal” or “Fund-A-Cause Appeal” which usually enables clients to double their revenue in a single evening.

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What is Blog Advertising?

Blog – the word sounds much like a ‘magic password for entry to a secret club’. In ordinary parlance ‘blog’ is a simplified form of ‘web log’ which in reality means an online web or internet diary. It may be used for personal reasons or as a means of reaching and interacting with like minded people. A blog is like your personal internet space allowing you to share information with family, friends or other internet users. Since the initial stages blogging has evolved as a networking tool and as the visibility is extremely high blog posts are an extremely attractive proposition to exchange information, write comments and reviews and just about anything that involves networking of people.

Now since everyone understands what a blog is and the extent of its reach, blog advertising is a new form of marketing and promotional tool via the internet. Blog advertising is simply the least expensive way of online marketing. The advertiser does not have to fork out large amounts of money to create physical ads that may not reach a wide audience. Neither do they have to spend huge sums of money on recruiting people to design ads that take up a lot of space and will eventually be confined to a minor audience. By creating advertising banners and publicity material that are in the virtual world, people and organizations save themselves a lot of effort.

Since many sites allow users to set up blogs for free, blog advertising is the simplest and easiest way to promote yourself or a product you are endorsing without much fuss. Blog advertising simply refers to the advertisements that appear on the pages of a blog. The concept is very much like the advertisements you see in a newspaper for instance – texts and banners placed just about anywhere on the page – that instantly catch the eye of the reader, or in the case of a blog, the viewer. The more the number of viewers, the greater your chances of marketing success.

A blogger simply uses the space on the pages of his blog to display banners, links or text messages of any product, organization or profile. He or she may be personally endorsing the product and the blog may be owned by the advertiser. Most often blog owners display several ads on their pages. With the use of internet aided marketing strategies a blogger can create higher visibility or in the internet sense, “drive traffic” to his web page to ensure the ads he displays are seen and used.

There are several types of blog advertising that one can choose. It is important to know the kind of blogs you will be posting and choosing a product or organization that will go well with promoting the visibility of your blog. Using images, different text styles or simply placing the banners prominently – much like a hoarding or a billboard ad – can go a long way in promoting your blog and increasing the chances of profitability.

In the coming articles we will examine how to get maximum traffic to a website through blog advertising and what are the effective ways of advertising personal blogs.

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5 Ways to Find Direct Advertisers For Your Blog

If you are running a blog, probably you also want a revenue stream out of it, by accepting online advertisements from advertisers, in your blog property. The easiest approach, which is also often the best, is to join the Google AdSense network. Through this network, bloggers can sell their ad space without any involvement of management time, and the whole process is efficiently managed by Google’s AdSense applications. However, blog advertising is not always an easy task, especially if your blog is a bit off – popular – topic. We therefore are giving you five tips to help you monetize your blog and find advertisers for your blog advertising.

Perform a search with combination of your blog topic at Google. Along with the results, you will find a list of advertisers appearing at the right side of the results, or below the results. Approach them for your blog advertising. Chances are that a percentage of them would be interested to be a part of your blog advertising, if their topic is highly related to yours. You will need to open a direct line of communications with them.

Visit all your competitor blogs in your topic. Scan through them carefully to understand their blog advertising. Make a list of all the companies you find as advertisers there, then start approaching them as given in the point above.

Identify and approach affiliates in your topic. You might like to try an affiliate middle man like commission junction, and search for affiliates in their interface. You can also try to approach affiliate companies directly. There should be a number of affiliates who would be ready to be advertisers in your blog. The point of caution here is, you should keenly monitor the conversion rate of the affiliates. Some of them typically do well in blog advertising, while some of them have little or no conversion. It would be prudent to discontinue those advertisers, which are not converting.

Checkout the traditional mode of advertisement:

Check out the newspapers and magazines in your area to look for advertisers who might be interested in your blog advertising. Try an approach companies who shares your blog topic.

You will need to prepare an impressive report though, outlining the benefits of the advertiser. They already have an advertising budget, and you will have to convince them to invest in your blog advertising.

New Websites and Online Stores:

Again, Google your topic, and this time, look for businesses that are not so high up in the rankings. Approach them, explaining the benefits of blog advertising. If you can show them real benefits, you should be able to win them as advertisers.

There would other ways to win advertisers, and other ways to look for them, which you will learn as you spend time in the market. Rates also vary widely in this market, and it takes quite a bit of time to learn the right rates you can charge your advertisers. The most important factor in winning advertisers is your blog’s popularity in search engines, and hence the amount of traffic your blog might receive. It is also important to see which keywords search engine are ranking you, for than defines the category of your visitors and what they are looking for.

Overall, blog advertising cannot be achieved in one day, rather it is a process, that goes on and on. You will learn newer aspects of blog advertising as you tread on this path, and newer ways to woo your advertisers. But do not get disheartened if you do not find good advertisers in the beginning, or see poor monetization of your blog. Use this time to concentrate on marketing of your blog in search engines, to other sites and to other blogs. As you become more and more popular, you will find advertisers looking for you, instead of you looking for them. And one last word of caution, do not let the character of your blog suffer for winning advertisers. Do not compromise on that account.

Arijit Roul is an expert ezine article writer as well as freelance writer f

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Advertising on Internet With Blogs – Are You Making These 3 Mistakes on Blog Advertising?

There is nothing wrong when comes to advertising. It provides solutions to certain problems, allows people to access product and service that can meet their needs, and people can make money out of it. It is especially true when comes to blog. On the Internet today, people can start a blog and write something easily and immediately. Advertising on Internet with blog is considered as a cheap online advertising method.

However, if you are doing “too much” on advertising, you will end up driving away your original blog traffic. Certainly you do not want this to happen, especially if you have already had good traffic on your blog and want to make some money by advertising. Here are three main mistakes that bloggers may make when they advertise in their blog on the Internet.

Respecting Advertisers Guidelines

You may think that putting as many ads as possible on your blog can help both your advertiser and you. After all, advertisers want their ads to be exposed to as many people as possible. However, your advertiser may put your name on their blacklist just because you did that!

It is because advertiser have their guidelines on the number of ads you can place on every single web page. Generally speaking, placing 3 to 5 ads on one page is enough but, it all depends on advertiser’s guidelines. If you want to keep a good relationship with your advertising partner or affiliate manager, read their policies and respect them.

Avoid becoming Spam Blog

Your blog will become “spam blog” if it contains nothing more than ads on page after page, and there is only a few or even no content. It is because advertising too much on a single blog page will distract your visitors from your main content. Your blog should be a content provider rather than an advertising machine. If your blog is just another infomercial, your visitors will just leave immediately and harm your reputation.

Too many choices

Imagine if there are 10 or even 15 ads on a single blog page at the same time, distributed all over the computer screen, what do you think? The main problem in a blog that have too many ads is that visitors will be heavily confused. And what you can expect from a confused visitors? Neither will they click on your ads nor buy anything from you. Both your advertiser and you lose.

Ellery is an Internet Marketer who are actively helping people who has different problems on Internet marketing. His flagship website [http://www.howtomakemoneyby.com] provides over 800 articles on affiliate marketing, online marketing, SEO, ECommerce and more. Now you can get a $97 value “Website Advertising Guide” which tells you 6 strate

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