Half.com takes a 15 percent fee on sales.

You need to send the bottom half of your order confirmation with the
merchandise. You can also send a receipt. You are not permitted to
send anything else (e.g., promotional materials) with the merchandise
without Half.com’s permission.
Fee
Half.com takes a 15 percent fee on sales. The fee is graduated with
more expensive items over $50 being a lower percentage. Half.com
provides the Web catalog, completes the sales transaction, and collects
the purchase price on all sales (via credit card). Sellers merely list the
merchandise and ship it. Seems like a reasonable arrangement.
Half.com takes no listing fee; listing is free.
Business?
Can you make a business out of selling on Half.com? Sure. In the
publishing industry, books that don’t sell in the bookstores are said to
be remainders. Since books are sold on consignment (a practice started
during the Great Depression), the bookstores return unsold books to
distributors, which in turn return them to publishers. You may be able
to get remainders from bookstores, distributors, or publishers at very
low prices. Sell them on Half.com. Likewise, you can find sources of
excess inventory for textbooks, music CDs, movie VHS tapes and
DVDs, video games, computers, software, and electronics.
Live Auctions
eBay bought the old San Francisco auction house of Butterfields to
acquire the expertise to auction valuable fine art and artifacts online.
eBay Premier for offline auction houses and art dealers was the result.
That didn’t seem to work. Then eBay made a deal with Sotheby’s.
That didn’t last either. Today eBay continues the experimentation
with its Live Auctions. These auctions are primarily for high class art
objects that require lots of paperwork such as authentication docuCHAPTER
27 HALF.COM AND LIVE AUCTIONS 459
ments. And they are held live online. Included in these auctions are
collectors’ books, antiques, fine arts, manuscripts, art, and the like.
It was bound to happen sooner or later on eBay, a live auction via the
Web. And eBay Live Auctions makes a great place to experiment with
live auctions. Fine art auctions handle the expensive items that make it
worthwhile to go to the expense of broadcasting such auctions live on
the Web. You can hear the auction via RealMedia (audio) and participate
in the bidding via a form in the webpage. Although live auctions
are not necessarily meant to be experimental, you should certainly
view them that way. Jump in and experiment. Live auctions via the
Web will have their place apparently.
Consult the Live Auctions section of eBay for specific instructions on
participating and bidding. You must sign up ahead of time to bid in
live auctions, and of course you must be an eBay registered and verified
user. This provides you with an opportunity to participate in
something a little different on eBay, even if you don’t bid.
Summary
Half.com is not an auction, but it complements eBay nicely with
fixed-price inventory for a few types of standard merchandise (and
more). Soon it will be incorporated completely into eBay. It’s a special
type of sales because it uses catalog databases for books, textbooks,
music, movies, and video games. If you buy such merchandise, give it
a try. Or, if you want to sell what you’ve got, give it a try.
Live Auctions have their place, but it’s not a huge place. The items are
limited to art, art objects, and similar things. It’s more like going to
Sotheby’s to bid than it is like going to eBay to bid. eBay continues to
pursue this venue, and perhaps someday it will accommodate a
broader range of items.