$260 is standard. Bidding starts at $1 for each player. For scoring categories, go with 5x5 instead of 4x4. Bidding order is irrelevant. Each owner takes a turn throwing out a new player for bidding.

After first year, allow owners to protect up to 15 players.

Keeper auction leagues are the way to go. It helps minimize dump trades because even the lowest ranked teams can still try to improve their teams for the next season by trading their high salaried, high performing players for strong performing, low salaried players.

Do not target players. Target value. You will want to pay $260 for around $340 in value. When you see a bidding frenzy on a player, keep it going to drive up the price, being careful to drop out before getting stuck with an overly inflated player. When throwing out a player for bidding, NEVER throw out a player you want. The goal is to have the other owners overspend their budgets so you can reap the benefits later in the draft. Try to acquire at least one top 10 player and at least a couple of top minor leaguers. This way, if your team is doing well, you can start shopping your minor league talent to teams that suck for their best players. If your team is the one that sucks, start shopping your top 10 player for the best minor league player likely to be in the majors the next season.

One of the coolest things we do in a league I'm in is we allow players with rookie eligibility to be protected the next season as if they are still first year players. We have a 10 player reserve roster where rookie players must be reserved. Their salary still counts toward the cap.

During the next season, try to estimate inflation. The effect of inflation can be calculated by subtracting the protected salary value of each player from the predicted auction value. Total that figure for the league and divide by the number of teams. When using a website to estimate your team's custom league settings for auction values, that will be the figure you add to the league salary cap in order to adjust for inflation.