Whats the catch with these new bidding sites?

[Jakez]

I know theyve been around for at least a few years now but I've never checked them out. Whats the trick to actually getting a crazy deal on something like $0.30 for a $100 gift card? It seems like if the sites got enough traffic then there would be too many people starring at the 15 or so auctions going on to really get a deal on anything.

Also does anyone know which of these sites are best? Theres a lot of them but I was only told about bidcactus and beezid.

[Roald]

Friend of mine works for one of the biggest dutch travel/free time bidding sites and like you say, they profit pretty well on most of those deals.

My mom is a frequent visitor of the site and she always thinks she got a steal while in reality its not even that big of a deal. Ofcourse you actually do get a slightly better deal then the normal price but overall its just about giving people the idea they get a great deal imo

[loreen]

I prefer ebay

[Jakez]

Originally Posted by Roald

Friend of mine works for one of the biggest dutch travel/free time bidding sites and like you say, they profit pretty well on most of those deals.

My mom is a frequent visitor of the site and she always thinks she got a steal while in reality its not even that big of a deal. Ofcourse you actually do get a slightly better deal then the normal price but overall its just about giving people the idea they get a great deal imo

Yeah thats how im guessing the majority of the auctions end but my cousin has gotten things for like $5 that retail for $500-$700. I guess its just luck and knowing when to stop bidding? If I understand correctly the items are bought by the people running the site and they make money off from people bidding because each bid costs like $0.75. So they can afford the let things go for so cheap because the profits from people bidding adds up.

[HighlyIntoxicated]

A lot of these websites have automated bidding bots to keep the auctions going.

[deanberkeley]

DealDash.com is probably one of the biggest ones IMO. I played a bit on there about 18 months ago, won a few little things, lost some money. I had one friend who got CRAZY addicted to them, she probably blew threw 10k on that site, but she got a LOT of stuff for that as well. Wii's, computers, cameras, iphones, tvs. She sold lots of the stuff on ebay, gave a lot of the stuff away. She claims she broke even, but I kinda doubt it.

[lagcam]

Originally Posted by Jakez

Yeah thats how im guessing the majority of the auctions end but my cousin has gotten things for like $5 that retail for $500-$700. I guess its just luck and knowing when to stop bidding? If I understand correctly the items are bought by the people running the site and they make money off from people bidding because each bid costs like $0.75. So they can afford the let things go for so cheap because the profits from people bidding adds up.

Originally Posted by HighlyIntoxicated

A lot of these websites have automated bidding bots to keep the auctions going.

Yes and yes, so reality is that unless you are dealing with a big site with plenty of real customers, you are unlikely to be successful at anything other than spending money on bids.

[kane]

Originally Posted by lagcam

Yes and yes, so reality is that unless you are dealing with a big site with plenty of real customers, you are unlikely to be successful at anything other than spending money on bids.

That may be. I think a lot of it has to to with what you are bidding on as well. Obviously something like an iPad or a 50" big screen will attract a ton of bidders, but I read an article a little while back about a woman who used these sites to get gift cards. In many of the auctions she would win a $50 gift card for around $6-$8 (that includes the winning price and the cost of her bids. She said she ended up with about $2,000 worth of gift cards and only paid about $300 for them all. So she was going to use them to give as gifts and also use them to buy a ton of stuff for Christmas presents and save herself a ton of money.

[Davy]

Their model is to have people big on stuff, loose the bid, and then big again.
It would be extremely easy to outbid people with bots.

[Chris]

I wasted $100 on those sites...never won anything so thats pure profit for them and im sure they got 1000's more just like me who dumped a little bit of cash into them


my step mom on the other hand found one where they let you bid for an item and if you lose they will still let you buy the item and take off what you've wasted in bids ...and the prices are the same as in the store so for fun she has bid on items she would of bought at full price anyways and won once on a camera


they wont be around forever tho .. they will die off

[lagcam]

Originally Posted by kane

That may be. I think a lot of it has to to with what you are bidding on as well. Obviously something like an iPad or a 50" big screen will attract a ton of bidders, but I read an article a little while back about a woman who used these sites to get gift cards. In many of the auctions she would win a $50 gift card for around $6-$8 (that includes the winning price and the cost of her bids. She said she ended up with about $2,000 worth of gift cards and only paid about $300 for them all. So she was going to use them to give as gifts and also use them to buy a ton of stuff for Christmas presents and save herself a ton of money.

And who do you think wrote that article, or paid for it to be written?

The sites that want you to believe you can repeat this "luck".

There are always exceptions, but most people's experiences will be similar to that of Chris.

[iTugIt]

Because it's a gamble. If something retails for $100, and 500 people bid the equivalent of $0.50 worth of "credits", the site just made $150.00.

Plus there are the bots. What would be could is if you could meet a real person who won something for pennies on the dollar from one of those sites. You won't.

[PornMD]

I think it would be far too easy for the people operating the site to simply win most of their own auctions. Anyone normal person who lost loses money in the process, rinse and repeat. Seems shady as fuck tbh. They wouldn't even have to actually HAVE the item being auctioned if they did that. If a supposedly legit company like Snapnames could get away with shilling for years n years, why not these companies? There's a reason they are doing these shady "fake news" advertisements similar to what the scamming "make money from Google" guys were doing.

[hashbury]

A lot of the sites with little to no traffic use shill bidders, but the major players do not. quibids is probably one of the best. You also need to watch out for the power bidders. These are the people that will stop at nothing to win an item even if it means they have to pay tripple the price overall. A lot of people think the power bidders are the bots or shill bidders, but that is their strategy. They scare off all the other bidders so no one will bid against them on other auctions. You can go to PennyAuctionTraffic.com and get an idea of whos legit and whos not. It is owned by bidcatus but the numbers are pretty much correct, give or take a few spots. You can also go to PennyAuctionWatch.com and see who is on the up and up and what sites have scammed people.

From a business standpoint this is a very high risk businees. Paypal has stopped proccessing payments for these sites because of all the complaints and finding a merchant to proccess payments for these sites is 50 times harder to find than adult merchants. I think alertpay is still proccessing but it will be only a matter of time before they stop also.
beezid.com bidcactus.com and quibids.com are very good ones to use.

[Jakez]

Ok after browsing a bit and thinking about how the system works I think I've figured it out.

I watched 2 people (usernames) go back and forth placing a bid ($0.01 increments) on an iPad one after the other for like a half hour. The ending bid was $67. Why did the other person give up? Probably because they either realized theyve spent enough hitting bid every 2 seconds for a half hour paying for each bid, or ran out of bids. And when theres only 2 people going at it for an item and one of them gives up theres less than 10 seconds left and that person usually gets it.

Each bid you make is supposed to cost $0.75 so when an iPad goes for $67 it would seem as though the people running the site have made a small fortune ($67 divided by each $0.01 bid = 6,700 bids at $0.75 each = $5,025 made from auctioning a $700 iPad). BUT these people don't pay the regular $0.75 for each bid because they've bidded on 'bidpacks' of 100 or so which can usually go for like $3. So at $3 for 100 bids each bid is only costing them $0.03 and $0.03 X 6,700 bids is only $201, well below the retail price of $730 even if you dont include the ending bid price ($67). Each bid would have to average out to like $0.11 a piece in order for the site to break even. So the only explanation I could come up with is that theres enough idiots paying $0.75 per bid on it that it raises the average bid price and makes them a profit. BUUUUUTTTT, these are expert marked auctions and an expert obviously isn't going to be paying a whole lot per bid. So after thinking I've figured out how this stuff operates at a profit I'm still stumped at how they actually do make a profit lol..

[Angry Jew Cat - Banned for Life]

everyone and their uncle has been building these as of the last year or so, once again if you haven't built one, you're already too late for the bus....

[Mutt]

the concept is brilliant but only a moron would not by cynical - it's gambling, each auction is a lottery and you have no idea if the people running the 'game' are scamming.

i expect as the business continues to grow that government will step in - it's unlicensed gambling.

[Agent 488]

sucker born every minute?

[AzteK]

It's like a penny slot machine...

[PornMD]

I had an offshoot idea once...in fact it's an existing type of auction but not one that I've seen worked with this sort of system where people pay to bid, and I think it'd work pretty well, but with these sites not exactly seen in the highest of regard, probably isn't the climate to try it. Got the name for it and everything.

[mynameisjim]

The first time I saw a commercial for one I could see it was a scam in about 2 seconds.

But that made me realize they must be making money. It seems these days the more obvious the scam, the more people that fall for it.

[Angry Jew Cat - Banned for Life]

Originally Posted by mynameisjim

The first time I saw a commercial for one I could see it was a scam in about 2 seconds.

But that made me realize they must be making money. It seems these days the more obvious the scam, the more people that fall for it.

In America, you can legally sell a dream. That, is the American dream.

[hashbury]

Originally Posted by Angry Jew Cat

everyone and their uncle has been building these as of the last year or so, once again if you haven't built one, you're already too late for the bus....

If you have deep enough pockets it is not to late, but you will need serious investment capital to even think about competing with the big sites.

Originally Posted by Mutt

the concept is brilliant but only a moron would not by cynical - it's gambling, each auction is a lottery and you have no idea if the people running the 'game' are scamming.

i expect as the business continues to grow that government will step in - it's unlicensed gambling.

By law it is not considered gambling, especailly if the site offers a buy it now option. Your actually buying bids to to use on physical items. Backing this up with a buy it now option eliminates the gambling aspect. One of the companies I work for has spent a nice amount of money on lawyers to make sure of this. Although seeing how the US goverment is about controlling every aspect of our lives, it wouldnt surprise me to see them pass some new law to change this.

[Jakez]

People saying it's a scam should think more in depth about how these sites work before jumping to that conclusion, it's nearly the same as saying poker is a scam, but it's not, it's a gamble with odds increased by experience or skill. In any case as I've said my cousin has been winning things at extremely cheap prices (bidding expenses included) so it's obviously not a scam. Yeah the brand new 'penny bid' sites are probably using fake bids but an established one could work without them.

The only thing I don't understand at this point is how they are making money off from the 'expert' labeled bidders who are bidding for very cheap. They must be losing money on expert bidders and making a huge profit off from the auctions that onoy beginners can bid on.

[hashbury]

Originally Posted by Jakez

Each bid you make is supposed to cost $0.75 so when an iPad goes for $67 it would seem as though the people running the site have made a small fortune ($67 divided by each $0.01 bid = 6,700 bids at $0.75 each = $5,025 made from auctioning a $700 iPad). BUT these people don't pay the regular $0.75 for each bid because they've bidded on 'bidpacks' of 100 or so which can usually go for like $3. So at $3 for 100 bids each bid is only costing them $0.03 and $0.03 X 6,700 bids is only $201, well below the retail price of $730 even if you dont include the ending bid price ($67). Each bid would have to average out to like $0.11 a piece in order for the site to break even. So the only explanation I could come up with is that theres enough idiots paying $0.75 per bid on it that it raises the average bid price and makes them a profit. BUUUUUTTTT, these are expert marked auctions and an expert obviously isn't going to be paying a whole lot per bid. So after thinking I've figured out how this stuff operates at a profit I'm still stumped at how they actually do make a profit lol..

The bid packs are usually controlled by the power bidders. They like to control things like this, and not let the average get a lot of bids. They would rather pay full price or more for the bid packs if it would keep them out of the hands of average or new users. If you find a site where the bidpacks are going for cheap prices its a possibility that something is not right.
Also another thing to take note of, the power bidders tend to work togather. Its agianst the rules at most places but if you can figure out who are the power bidders you will see other power bidders jump on the auction and help them outbid other users that bid against them.

[Agent 488]

don`t be a dumbass. it`s a fucking scam. thinking it`s not is white trash.

[hashbury]

Originally Posted by Jakez

People saying it's a scam should think more in depth about how these sites work before jumping to that conclusion, it's nearly the same as saying poker is a scam, but it's not, it's a gamble with odds increased by experience or skill. In any case as I've said my cousin has been winning things at extremely cheap prices (bidding expenses included) so it's obviously not a scam. Yeah the brand new 'penny bid' sites are probably using fake bids but an established one could work without them.

The only thing I don't understand at this point is how they are making money off from the 'expert' labeled bidders who are bidding for very cheap. They must be losing money on expert bidders and making a huge profit off from the auctions that onoy beginners can bid on.

The power bidders are one of the main reasons of failure to the new penny auction sites. When you advertise a new site you advertise on the penny auction forums blogs and other sites. The power bidders watch those like a hawk. So, when a new site starts it is usaully filled full of power bidders that know each other, and any new person or average bidder gets killed in any auction that they try to win. After that they have the this is a scam mentality and never come back. Thus not keeping the retention they need to keep the site alive.
Most sites have a win limit and or will label the power bidders so they can keep losses low and know who to watch out for.

[Jakez]

Originally Posted by Agent 488

don`t be a dumbass. it`s a fucking scam. thinking it`s not is white trash.

Do you just troll or is this actually how you think? LOL, I think you are a scam luring me into replying to you.