Guide to Baphomart Auctions
Baphomart Auction
By using Baphomart Auction, you can determine your Start Price, Reserved Price, Bid Increments, Buy It Now Price, Auction Start Date and End Date for your items.
Auction items function just like regular products. They are added to Baphomart’s product listings and can be added to customer’s wish list and auction watch list in their dashboard. Make auctions from any type of product including virtual or downloadable.
You can also select either a normal or sealed (silent) auction for your items which is great for specialist items, collectables, competitions, books and toys.
Customers can take advantage of our automatic bidding as an easy way to bid on an auction. They enter the highest price they are willing to pay for an item and for each counter bid we automatically bid in incrementals set by the you. Customers can stay ahead of the competition for an item without needing to be glued to the auction.
How to Create Auction Products
To put products up for auction you will first need to subscribe to the Baphomart Extra Plan if you have not already done so, follow these steps to update your plan:
Step 1: Sign up to Baphomart Extra Plan
- Click on Baphomart Plan in your Seller Dashboard
- Select Baphomart Extra from the options
- Complete your details when prompted to purchase the new plan
- Log out and back in to refresh the Dashboard and show the Auction button
Step 2: Creating Auction Products
Navigate to the Dashboard where you will see the menu item “Auctions”.
This page is similar to the main products page. Click on the “Add New Auction Product” button and you will see a new page to enter your new auction product data. Complete the first sequence of fields in the same way as you would for a standard product, including any variations and attributes. After this there are some new fields to complete specific to auctions:
Start price
This is the minimum price so the bidding will start from here. For example, if you set £10 as a starting price bidding will start from £10 and will increase each time a customer places a bid.
Bid increment
This is the amount that each customer will be able to increase each time while bidding. For example if you have set a starting price of £10 and increment to £2, each time the customers increase the bid, it will increase by £2 at £12, £14, £16 and so on.
Reserved price
A reserve price is the lowest price at which you are willing to sell your item. The amount of your reserve price is not disclosed to your bidders, but they will see that your auction has a reserve price and whether or not the reserve has been met. If a bidder does not meet that price, you are not obligated to sell your item.
Buy it now price
Buy It Now disappears when bid exceeds the Buy Now Price for normal auction or is lower than a reverse auction.
Auction start date
This is the date you want to start the auction on. It can be the current time or a future time.
Auction end date
This is the time you will stop taking bids. After exceeding this time, people will not be able to bid on that product. You can also hide expired auction products in Simple Auction Settings.
Advanced usage
This usually means setting up automatic or proxy bidding. If you set reserve price for proxy auction, the first proxy bid will be automatically raised to that (reserve price) value.
If you enabled “Sealed Bid” checkbox, buyers will not see “Current Bid” value but the message “This is sealed bid auction”.
Re-listing auctions with failed payments
Failed auctions can be automatically re-listed by selecting “relist if not paid after x hours”
Adding Attributes on Auction Products
While editing an auction product, you can add different types of attributes and variations. Follow these steps to add attributes to your auction products:
- Select an attribute from the drop-down menu or create a custom attribute
- Click on the Add Attribute button
- You will find some new options and chose to make the attribute visible to your product by checking the option
- Add any variations and attributes which you have previously created
- Click the Save Attribute button
- Scroll to the bottom and click Update Product
Please contact our help desk if you cannot find or add the attributes you require.
Automatic bidding and increments
Automatic bidding is the easiest way for customers to bid on an auction. They enter the highest price they’re willing to pay for an item, and we’ll do the rest. Once they set up automatic bidding, they can stay ahead of the competition for an item without needing to be glued to the auction.
When one customer places a bid, we’ll place a slightly higher bid on the next customers behalf. The amount the bid increases by is known as a bid increment. Bid increments are smaller when the bid price is low and larger in higher price brackets.
| Current price | Bid increment |
| £0.01–£0.99 | £0.05 |
| £1.00–£4.99 | £0.25 |
| £5.00–£24.99 | £0.50 |
| £25.00–£99.99 | £1.00 |
| £100.00–£249.99 | £2.50 |
| £250.00–£499.99 | £5.00 |
| £500.00–£999.99 | £10.00 |
| £1000.00–£2499.99 | £25.00 |
| £2500.00–£4999.99 | £50.00 |
| £5000.00 and up | £100.00 |
Auction outcomes and actions
When you setup a new auction, customers can either be outbid or win the auction.
Successful auctions
The winning customer will see their auctions in the ‘My Auctions’ page with pay now button. All winners will also receive email notification pay for auction reminder with a pay now link. You will also receive email notification with details of who won auction or why the auction failed.
The order will only be created when the winner clicks ‘pay now’ button. Once the order is created the customer will see it in their Orders section in the dashboard.
Note : The winning bidder needs to pay for the item, however there is no way to force user to pay for an auction so you need to take that into consideration.
Auctions with paid status do not have the relist option so you will need to create a new auction if you want to sell an identical product.
Tracking your orders
In your ‘Orders’ tab the following colour codes represent different stages of auctions:
Blue icon = Finished and paid auction
Orange icon = Finished and sold auction
Red icon = Finished but failed auction (reserve price not met)
Green icon = Active auction
Failed auctions
Auctions that are sold (finished but not paid) and failed can be automatically relisted using the pre-set “relist if not paid after x hours” (see above). If this has not been pre-set you will need to re-list the product manually.