Semi-Live Sale

     Ever since I started doing my live sales I have been looking for ways to make them easier and more efficient. I have also tried to find ways to make them more of an equal playing field for everyone. In most live sale situations whoever has the fastest internet connection, coupled with the fastest typing skills, will pretty much always be the one to get the first claim in. Which means the same people get the items over and over and people with slower connections often miss everything, get frustrated, and don't want to bother trying anymore. I get it. 

      Since I am only offering most of my smaller items at my live sales, and not on commission, I wanted to find a way to make it possible for a wider number of people to try to get the items I am offering. But I also want to still do the live sales since people seem to really enjoy them, and not only for the sales items. What I came up with is a semi-live sale, or at least that is what I am going to call it. For my semi-live sale I am going to preview items I have for sale a day, or several days, before the sale day. These will not be available to claim ahead of time. I would, as usual, list what the price of the items are. 

      Then at an appointed time, for example 2:00pm ET, this new photo, with claim numbers attached, would go live on my studio page. Adjusting for time differences, 2:00 p.m. is the same time no matter your internet connection. Which means there is no video delay to keep people from having a good chance at claiming their items. The person who claims a particular item from a group first (and I will use time stamps) is the person who gets the item. Also to spread things out a bit, there will be multiple items in the same photo. Following Terri's rules people will only be allowed to claim one item from each group for X-number of minutes. I am still working out the exact rules of things. 

      So while you DO have to be online when the sale happens to be able to claim the items you want, you do not have to have the fastest internet to do it. You probably just have to refresh your page obsessively (that is how I do it at Terri's sales!) until the listing is live. And for the live portion of my performance? The part where I say who gets the item, sing the alphabet as I sort things, and am generally silly? I will still do that. I can set up the sale so the different groups are scheduled to go live at particular times. And I can go live (video) with my phone, just like I always do, and then I can check the claims on my computer and make bags and sort and interact with anyone that feels like watching. I think it will all work. It works in my head. 

      Because I think this will work, but do not positively KNOW this will work, I want to do a test sale soon. This post has things I have already made (or started) that will be available for purchase very soon. Maybe as early as next weekend. As soon as I have items ready I will post the group photos, without claim numbers, and all of the rules of the sale, as well as the sale date and time. 

       I am sure some people have spotted an issue with this style of sale. It really is hard to be in two places at once, trust me, I have tried. How can you check my studio page for the posts AND watch my live video? Off the top of my head there are a couple of ways I can think of. One, you can split your screen (I only know how to do that on a Chromebook or computer, I don't think you can do it on a phone) and you can in fact open Facebook on more than one page. I have done it many times. Or you can go the super easy way and use 2 different devices. What happens if you can't split your screen and you also don't have two devices? Then you have to choose. Do you want to claim items as they pop up OR do you want to watch the show and interact? I can't make everyone's situation ideal, I can only do my best to try to make things as fair as possible for everyone. 

     So this is the basics of how my semi-live sale will work. You do not have to watch me perform to claim, but you are welcome to and I will be announcing who got the claims. If this works I will use this style of sale for my future live sales, though they will be the larger ones with more items. I feel this style will also be highly scheduled so may run more efficiently. People will also know exactly when they need to check the page for the specific items they want. I am excited to try this style of live sale, even though it sounds like a ridiculous amount of extra work on my end.