DON'T be impressed by awards. They're easy to get. Many of them are available to all comers. All you have to do is promise to link back to their awards site.

DON'T be impressed by a slick marketing presentation. If firm is dominated by marketers, they may undervalue their technical talent. Some of best companies are two or three person firms whose members are all actual designers and programmers.

Three other things to consider:

One: A marketer is overhead for a design firm. That means firm that hires one has to charge you more to pay marketer's salary.

Two: A marketer knows how to sell, not nits and grits of how to make a website. You might as well start process with person who's actually going to make website.

Three: You may love marketer you meet with initially, but that's not person you'll be living with during creation process. You need to be sure you can communicate with person who's actually going to do work.

The final DON'T:

Don't authorize work with a handshake. Get a contract spelling out who's going to do what and how payment will be handled. It's for your protection as well as developer's.

As an internet development manager, I've worked with all kinds of design companies. I know you will find, as I did, that a good designer can make process of putting up a website a pleasurable and edifying experience.

•Bid Shielding: Posting extremely high bids to protect lower bid of an earlier bidder, usually in cahoots with bidder who placed shielding bid.

•Bid Siphoning: The practice of contacting bidders and offering to sell them same item they are currently bidding on, thus drawing bidders away from legitimate seller's auction.

•Bulk Loading: Listing a group of different items in separate lots all at once using an online auction site's bulk loading tool.

•Buying Up Lots: The practice of buying all quantities of an item during a Dutch auction. This is typically done for resale purposes.

•Caveat Emptor: The Latin phrase meaning "let buyer beware."

•Cookie: A piece of information sent from a web server to a web browser that browser software saves and then sends back to server whenever browser makes additional requests from server.

•Deadbeats: High bidders who fail to pay for item they won.

•Dutch Auction: The seller is offering multiple, identical items for sale.

•Escrow: Money held in trust by a third party until seller makes delivery of merchandise to buyer.

•fdbk/fk: Feedback. One user's public comments about another user in regard to their auction dealings. Feedback comments cannot be removed or changed once submitted to an auction service.

•Featured Auctions: Auction listings placed prominently on home page and category pages of an auction service. Sellers pay for this prime placement.

•Feedback Padding: One user posting fraudulent positive feedback about another user and his or her auctions.

•Final Value Fee: The commission charge seller pays to auction service after his or her item sells.

•FVF Request: Final value fee request.

•Grading: The process for determining physical condition of an item. Different items have different grading systems.

•Initial Listing Price: The opening bid price a seller attaches to his or her auction.

•Insertion Fee: A fee paid by seller to auction site in order to list an item for auction, calculated as a percentage of opening bid or reserve price.

•Lot: A single auction listing.

•Market Value: The highest price a property will bring in open market.

•Maximum Bid: The highest price a buyer will pay for an item, submitted in confidence to an online auction service's automated bidding system to facilitate proxy bidding.

•Minimum Opening Bid: The mandatory starting bid for a given auction, set by seller at time of listing.

•NARU'd: A auction user term to describe users whose memberships have been discontinued. NARU is acronym for "not a registered user."

•Neg: Short for "negative user feedback."

•Net Cops: Auction users who actively attempt to report instances of fraud, such as shilling or bid shielding, to online auction sites.

•NR: Short for "no reserve." This indicates in item description line that auction has no reserve price specified.

•Opening Bid: The seller's opening bid, which sets opening price.

•Outbid: To submit a maximum bid that is higher than another buyer's maximum bid.

•Proxy Bidding: Decide maximum you're willing to pay and enter this amount. eBay will confidentially bid up to your maximum amount. In this way, you don't have to keep an eye on your auction as it unfolds. If other bidders outbid your maximum at end of auction, you don't get item. But otherwise, you're winner--and final price might even be less than maximum you had been willing to spend!

•Registered User: A person who has registered as a member of an online auction service. All online auction services require registration prior to buying and selling.

•Relisting: The relisting of an item by a seller after it has not received any bids or met its reserve price. Typically, first relisting is free.

•Reserve Price: The minimum price a seller will accept for an item to be sold at auction. This amount is never formally disclosed.

•Retaliatory: The user term for retaliatory negative feedback, posted by one user in response to another user's negative feedback.

•S&H Charges: Shipping and handling charges.

•Secondary Market: The buyer market for second-hand goods. Online auctions serve secondary market.

•Shilling: Fraudulent bidding by seller (using an alternate registration) or an associate of seller in order to inflate price of an item. Also known as bid rigging and collusion.

•Sniping: Outbidding other buyers in closing minutes or seconds of an auction.

•Starting Price: The mandatory starting bid for a given auction, set by seller at time of listing.

•Terms of Service: A legally binding agreement that outlines an auction site's operating policies. All registered users must agree to a site's terms before using service.

•User Info Request: A request for a user's background information, which provides personal information, such as a phone number.

About the Author Gillian Tarawhiti, is Founder and CEO of Community Training Centre, an Australian-based Internet Marketing firm that works with individuals and organisations © 2004 Permission is granted to reprint this article in print or on your web site so long as the paragraph above is included and contact information is provided to www.millionairerippleeffect.com.