By far the most important part of advertising an auction is the item-level listing on the Internet. With that listing, a prospective bidder can find the items he’s interested in, not just a prospective auction that he may or may not have the time to investigate. One of the two crucial parts of listing an item for auction is the picture.
This article is the first in a series about how to handle auction pictures, from storing them to processing them to posting them on the web.
We’ve seen many cases where an auctioneer’s pictures for auctions were stored separately from the spreadsheets used to list the items. We’ve seen cases where one auction’s data was on one computer and another auction lived on a different computer. We’ve seen cases where it took an auctioneer 10 minutes to find the pictures of an item.
All data relevant to a specific auction should be stored in one place, be it a server in the office or a specific computer on a home network. This recommendation doesn’t mean that multiple people can’t work on data simultaneously, it simply means that when everyone is done they should store the files in a logical manner.
We recommend having a primary directory – a directory is the same as a folder – that contains all data relevant to all auctions. Inside this directory, create a folder for each year. Inside the appropriate year’s folder, create a folder for each day you have an auction. Most importantly, name this auction directory using the International date format. Before you wind up your propeller hat, here’s an example image that illustrates this hierarchy.

Naming and storing auction data
As you can see, this model is completely scalable regardless of the number of auctions you do. The benefit of using the international date format to name your auction directories is that they will always sort themselves chronologically. In order to find a file related to a specific auction, you’ll only have to know the date. This method is much better than some of the others we’ve seen, such as having a folder for each seller or naming the auction directory after the auction title, both of which require a better memory and better folder sorting skills. Do you have two auctions on the same day? Create a subdirectory within each day folder with the auction name.
We’re really big on organization, and so you’ll see in the image above a few folders inside the day directory. Each picture you post should be edited with picture editing software, and in future articles we’ll look at different programs and processes to perform on the images.
Originals
An important rule regarding picture storage is to always keep a copy of the original pictures you take for each auction. You never know when you’ll want to use a specific picture for print advertising or when you want to re-process a picture to highlight a feature that you cropped out in your first pass. Once a picture has been properly processed and saved for the web, it’s no longer of high enough quality to use for much else.
Uploaded
We like to always keep a copy of the pictures we’ve uploaded to the web. That way, if something happens to our web server or if we overwrite the wrong folder or accidentally delete a directory, we’ll have an easy way to reupload the missing pictures from our local storage location.
Spreadsheets
The spreadsheet is still the clear leader in the way that item listings are generated. Sure, text documents are still widely used by auctioneers who don’t list at item-level (a big paragraph of items is NOT item level), but spreadsheets are the way to list items. We like to save many and save often.
You can have many other folders of file type such as marketing or video – or you can dump everything into the same folder. Find what works best for you. The important components to a data storing strategy is to find a logical system, store everything in one place, and do it the same way every time.
Do you have a better system? Let us know in the comments.
By Stuart Bain 27 May 2009 - 8:38 am
Don't forget… spaces and punctuation in filenames are not a good thing unless it is a dash, period, or underscore. This ESPECIALLY applies to content you plan on uploading to be used on the web.
By Stuart Bain 27 May 2009 - 8:38 am
Don't forget… spaces and punctuation in filenames are not a good thing unless it is a dash, period, or underscore. This ESPECIALLY applies to content you plan on uploading to be used on the web.
By Joe Abal 27 May 2009 - 11:40 am
Aaron,what is an example of your item level entry? Are you referring to a spread sheet listing? i just want to make sure I understand your terms.Could you refer me to an example.
Nice article,good info. Why would a Kansas farm boy play music at a bar called Aggieville that's located in Kansas? Isn't an Aggie a Texas dude?
Joe Abal
Keep up the good work. Thank You for your efforts.
By Joe Abal 27 May 2009 - 11:40 am
Aaron,what is an example of your item level entry? Are you referring to a spread sheet listing? i just want to make sure I understand your terms.Could you refer me to an example.
Nice article,good info. Why would a Kansas farm boy play music at a bar called Aggieville that's located in Kansas? Isn't an Aggie a Texas dude?
Joe Abal
Keep up the good work. Thank You for your efforts.
By Stuart Bain 27 May 2009 - 1:38 pm
Don't forget… spaces and punctuation in filenames are not a good thing unless it is a dash, period, or underscore. This ESPECIALLY applies to content you plan on uploading to be used on the web.
By Joe Abal 27 May 2009 - 4:40 pm
Aaron,what is an example of your item level entry? Are you referring to a spread sheet listing? i just want to make sure I understand your terms.Could you refer me to an example.
Nice article,good info. Why would a Kansas farm boy play music at a bar called Aggieville that's located in Kansas? Isn't an Aggie a Texas dude?
Joe Abal
Keep up the good work. Thank You for your efforts.
By Aaron Traffas 27 May 2009 - 7:24 pm
I can't believe I forgot that part. It's crucial to find a standard set of naming conventions for images that includes letters and numbers and the few characters you mentioned. Anything outside of that is asking for trouble and headaches. More importantly, if it isn't necessary – and things like ampersands ($) and pounds (#) and slashes are NEVER necessary – why try to use it?
By Aaron Traffas 27 May 2009 - 7:24 pm
I can't believe I forgot that part. It's crucial to find a standard set of naming conventions for images that includes letters and numbers and the few characters you mentioned. Anything outside of that is asking for trouble and headaches. More importantly, if it isn't necessary – and things like ampersands ($) and pounds (#) and slashes are NEVER necessary – why try to use it?
By Aaron Traffas 27 May 2009 - 7:29 pm
By item-level entry, I mean a way of listing items that has a picture associated with each item and lists the item description next to the picture. Paragraph-level is the archaic way of listing an auction by simply providing a big block of text that has items separated by a comma or dash or tilda or some other weird character. We've all seen the old sale bills:
dresser ~ toolbox ~ wagon ~ gun safe ~ tractor ~ combine ~ Ford truck
An example of an item-level listing is anything with Internet bidding. Internet bidding requires item-level. Proxibid or purplewave.com have good examples of item-level listings. AuctionZip has examples of paragraph-level listings.
We as auctioneers can do better, we must do better and we will do better.
By Aaron Traffas 27 May 2009 - 7:29 pm
By item-level entry, I mean a way of listing items that has a picture associated with each item and lists the item description next to the picture. Paragraph-level is the archaic way of listing an auction by simply providing a big block of text that has items separated by a comma or dash or tilda or some other weird character. We've all seen the old sale bills:
dresser ~ toolbox ~ wagon ~ gun safe ~ tractor ~ combine ~ Ford truck
An example of an item-level listing is anything with Internet bidding. Internet bidding requires item-level. Proxibid or purplewave.com have good examples of item-level listings. AuctionZip has examples of paragraph-level listings.
We as auctioneers can do better, we must do better and we will do better.
By Aaron Traffas 28 May 2009 - 12:24 am
I can't believe I forgot that part. It's crucial to find a standard set of naming conventions for images that includes letters and numbers and the few characters you mentioned. Anything outside of that is asking for trouble and headaches. More importantly, if it isn't necessary – and things like ampersands ($) and pounds (#) and slashes are NEVER necessary – why try to use it?
By Aaron Traffas 28 May 2009 - 12:29 am
By item-level entry, I mean a way of listing items that has a picture associated with each item and lists the item description next to the picture. Paragraph-level is the archaic way of listing an auction by simply providing a big block of text that has items separated by a comma or dash or tilda or some other weird character. We've all seen the old sale bills:
dresser ~ toolbox ~ wagon ~ gun safe ~ tractor ~ combine ~ Ford truck
An example of an item-level listing is anything with Internet bidding. Internet bidding requires item-level. Proxibid or purplewave.com have good examples of item-level listings. AuctionZip has examples of paragraph-level listings.
We as auctioneers can do better, we must do better and we will do better.