How To Bit The Penny Auctions Sites - A Mathemitcal anaylsis for the novice.
88Bit the Auction Site (Chapter One)
So by now you have probably heard of, bid in, or told someone else about the new phenomenon hitting the U.S called the Penny Auction sites. There are about a dozen or so currently in the continental U.S, with dozens more in Europe. For those who are not familiar with this type of "auctions site", you pay for bids, unlike ebay, but you have the opportunity to win some of the most popular items out there like the nintendo wii, or Playstation 3, (Only New, no refurbished) for sometimes just a few pennies. The catch is that you pay to bid, anywhere from $.50 to $1.00 depending on the site.
One more thing before we get to some math; there is a debate whether these types of sites are considered to be Gambling or not. The numbers however don't lie. You see the basic argument is whether or not this is a game of chance or strategy. Once you work through the numbers you will clearly see that its all about the correct strategy. (believe it or not there are already books for sale on how to bit the penny auction site, I hope to write one up soon too. (a better one))
O.k so the first thing we need to do is pick a site. Well, the most obvious one would be www.swoopo.com since they have been around the longest. But the math would be too complicated since they have over 2 Million users. (so they claim) So we will pick on a different site that is a bit newer, but has had enough history to do some math, www.rockybid.com. (Sorry were picking on you, but you do get free advertizements as well.) First thing you need to do is go to their site and look at their history of closing auctions. (At the time this article was written there were over 800 auctions that closed, plenty a number for statistical anaylsis. ) O.k now the first thing you should do is browse, you should look for several things 1. is there a repetition of the same winners, 2. Price the auction has ended at, 3. Is there a correllation between price - days - and times.
O.k Lets start with point 1. If you look carefully for name repetition you will spot that many of the winners have won multiple times. (it would be great if Rockybid.com would add some type of search function here, would make my analysis easier) i.e NeraK, Zero, and rockystar to name a few have each won a bunch of auctions. That's a pretty strong proof (as long has its consistant) that sites should not be considered gambling. Its also good to note that if you have the right strategy you too can win multiple times. (A number of these sites have imposed limitation on how many times you can win on a weekly or monthly basis, make sure to look into it before you put a strategy together)
2. Now lets look into a couple of auctions starting with the DSI, valued at around $150-$180. Copy and past the following links http://www.rockybid.com/auctions/view/1196 you will notice it's a DSI auction on Rockybid, that ended at $.51 on Thurs June 11 at 11:28pm Est. Now open another web browser to compare the following http://www.rockybid.com/auctions/view/1195, another DSI (same as above) on Rockybid, that ended at $1.19 on Thurs June 11 at 9:28pm Est. (2 hours before the first one) The first thing you can draw is that all auctions end at 28 after the hour. (This where I would put a smiley face if I was computer literate enough) What you should draw out is that although both of the winners got a steal, one paid more than the other. We now need to look into point 3. Is the closing price related to a particular day and time. Is it that when ever you have 2 auctions back to back the first one goes for a lower price than the second. If we look at a couple of other auctions on rockybid http://www.rockybid.com/auctions/view/1166 and http://www.rockybid.com/auctions/view/1165 you have two ATV's (nice little machine) o.k the first one sold fo $.93 on Sunday June 14th at 8:46pm Est., so that would mean the second would be for a lot more; well not quite, the second as you can see sold a couple hours later for $.06. (Wow) So what we can draw out is that whenever you have multiple auction that feature the same product you can bet (not guaranteed of course) that if the first one goes for a smaller amount the next one will go for a larger one. Its has to do with basic human Psychology. (another important factor when you put together a strategy is to consider what are the other bidders are thinking, look at what they have done in similar situation historically, well talk more about that in chapter two) One important note: this rule can help you build a better strategy of how and when to bid, but its not bullet proof.
Chapter two will need to wait, My wife has notified me of a dirty diaper that needs my full attention.
Rockybid.com & Swoopo.com
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Comments
A friend of mine told me about Swoopo a few months ago. I checked into it but in some cases the items seemed to be selling for quite a bit of money. By the time you paid for your bids in some cases it was close to the cost of new. It seemed like a hassle.
Yeah, I agree with the other poster. It seems like buying bids is where the company really makes the money.
o.k as an avid swoopo user i am so happy to see this articel and I second marco I want chapter 2 (please) . But I really like this Rockybid.com as well. It seems its the same as Swoopo except with the right strategy you have a much better chance of winning there. Also they have a more diverse array of products, i like the ATV's. Now, Is there any reason why I should continue using swoopo and not switch over to using Rockybid?
Hello everyone and thank you for your comments. I apologize I was really busy the last week and this is the first opportunity I have to blog. O.k Marco and Swoopo123 I will hopefully get to chapter 2 sometimes next week. (hopefully) "erick" and "popintervention" you are correct without the right strategy you will be wasting your cash. And back to "swoop123" yes I see why it would make since to go with Rockybid.com over Swoopo.com, your reason are valid. However, at this point I will not give my endorcement to any particular site.
why does it add first seconds and then minutes? I was watching a bidding on a laptop it was down to 15 seconds and then the more people started bidding the more seconds it added to the time until it was at 30 minutes again. Is this common?
Hey Dbecker,
Hmmmmm interesting concept- can't wait for chapter two!
I finally figured out how Swoopo makes its money. What an ingenious idea. With each of 2,000,000 people buying bids, they can rake in the "dough". An item that sells for $110.00 may cost $1,110 if bought alone. Think of all the people bidding on that one item. My hat goes off to you Swoopo, congratulations, for being so smart. Wish I had thought of it.
Do
1. Do people really get the items they "win" or is this a scam?
2. I've been watching swoopo for five hours continuously, monitoring three items - the bid times jump from a few seconds up to 30 to 45 minutes - without any explanation and only a few bids (I've read *all* the fine print and specifics about these bids.) Aside from them making ton's of money, this seems borderline legal to me - what's going on with that?
People really do get the items they have won. I have won several items on swoopo and smaller sites.
The timer goes up as new bids come in. If a person uses an automated bidder ("bid butler") and places a large number of bids at once, the clock goes up by maybe 15 seconds per bid placed (as an example), so it can jump a lot if the person placed 100 bids at once against an automated bidder already in place.
i watched swoopo for 3 hrs nothing ended on the 28th min of any hour your full of it u c k m A
No, the sites are not scams. People do actually get the items they win. And it is very rare that swoopo (or whatever), actually lose money.
http://www.swoopo.com/auction/apple-macbook-pro-mb Apple macbook pro, worth $1799, sold for $35.86. This was a penny auction, so each bid makes it go up 1 penny. Each bid costs 60 cents. So the person that won it made 783 bids. He pays $469.80 for his bids, and 35.86 for the actual item. So still a good deal (just over $500 for an $1800 laptop). But rememeber every bid made costs 60 cents. The item starts at $0.00. So in total, there was 3,586 bids. So that means that swoopo made $2151.60 off of bids (+$35.86 from the winner). So even if they paid full price for the macbook (which is doubtful), they made a profit of $393.46 (and probably some handling charges in the shipping).
They do lose money on some auctions, but its easily made up on other ones.
For the people asking about the time going up. If a bid is made in the last 15 seconds, the time goes back up to 15 seconds. Any other time, the time is raised by 30 seconds (typically). So if there is 10 seconds left, and 3 people bid, the 1st raises the time back to 15 seconds, and the next 2 raise it by 30 seconds each. That makes the total time left 1min 30 sec.
I've never heard of these penny sites. I'm going to look into this. Sounds like a lot of fun!
Also, good job having only one hub and already having a front page hub!
Good article. It sounds very interesting, multi-exchange!
i won a 52 two inch last night with 50 bids but everone one that lost sure sucks. It is fun if you win
wow I just ran into swoopo by mistake and it looks like I'd have more fun bidding on items than I do playing Texas Hold-em.
Is this for real or more garbage to read thru
LS.... dude , you're wrong! The 783 bids are ALL the bids, not just the guy's that won ! therefore, if he was one of the bussiest bidder, maybe, at most,he bid 100 times, therefore he spent $60 bucks on bids! Therefore he got the item for no more than $130 bucks, including shipping! If what you say, was true, people wouldnt spend 20 hours to pay 500 bucks for a laptop that they could've got at Tigerdirect or other sites for that sum~Check with Swoopo and see Im right! At 4000 bids for an item(none is going over 1000 bids, most are under 400!) Swoopo will make 3k ona $1200 laptop ans people will get upset and leave !! It about ...savings for everybody, not,,greed and then you're out of business! Besides, Swoopo made some great deals with the manufactures who have big surpluses in their warehouses, due to the economy! Noticed there are pretty much the same 7-8 items in every category! Because they got the whole lot!!!
I've never heard of these! It's so interesting how virtually overnight these things pop up on the internet. I'm gonna check it out, thanks for the info!
Great hub,
Ker
i want to setup a small auction website for my college so i am in search of best open source script can you suggest me soe
Hy, also a cheap website are www.luckyprice.net. They have few users soo with a packege of 100-200 credits u cand win a lot of auction.
A new addiction to supplant on-line poker. Swoops is a blast, but confusing as to how they decide to add time. I know they say each bid rings in a new 15 second clock, etc...but all of a sudden you see 12 minutes, or 45 minutes and even more.
I have not watched long enough to be certain, but suspect perhaps they just need more for a particular auction? Any thoughts?
Also, sit down with your calculator...the margins are obscene.
Has anyone seen the junglecents.com one, they say you dont pay for any of your bids, but rather buy a seat into an auction, would like to see an analysis on it.
Check us out www.pennyauctionwatch.com we have a forum and articles related to penny auctions. MrBill: Jungle Cents gives you a free seat, and free shipping and unlimited bids to bid on an Ipod Shuffle, they need like 60 some more people to join. I can't wait for more people to get seats because I too would like to try it out.
I play penny aucton sites and have done very well.I have won items for pennys on the dollar.This sites are RockyBid,
BidRodeo,Zoozle,andAnd Centy24 this are good site that give you brand new items.
BID LEW IS A RIP OFF DO NOT USE THIS SITE THEY DON'T EVEN CONTACT YOU IF YOU HAVE A QUESTION.
Skeptic your the one that has it wrong. If you take the time to do the math that LS has laid out for everyone, You would see that he is correct in every thing he says. Great comment LS. You couldn't explain it any better than you did.
I'm an ebay buyer. I have that bid system down.
Swoopo has my head swimming. So here are my questions:
I get the total purchase price (bids, +bid won price+shipping).
When does the bid actually end? At the "end by date" listed? The count down time keeps increasing as people bid - will the bid end when people stop bidding (earlier than the end by date)?
There is a clock symbol with "20" red highlighted. When you click on it it says "last 15 seconds $____(price). What does this mean?
Thanks to anyone or bdecker1 for answering my questions.
What a money making idea this is. Why didn't I think of it. THERE IS ONE BORN EVEY MINUTE!
Interesting article. It's good to know that there is a way to use strategy to one's advantage in the penny auctions. I look forward to chapter two.
The thing the bidder has to remember is NOT to get caught up in hitting the bid button. I watched one girl bid on 300 bid tokens (or whatever they call them). She bid 5-6x a minute for over 45 minutes. Take the cost of her itchy bidding finger and add them to the cost of the item and she paid roughly double than what she could've paid outright. I try to bid in the middle of the night (ain't insomnia great?) and wait for the last second to bid- if there's more than one other person trying for the item they're sure to click around 3-4 seconds and save me the cost of bidding. Then I sit back and watch my items tick down. If I miss one, well there's sure to be another one cheaper if I'm just patient. The tips you gave, though are really great!
Oh, I should mention to avoid the auto bidders (butler bid, etc.) like the plague. It uses up your bids really, REALLY fast. Took me about fifteen seconds to figure that one out. You tell the auto-bidder how high you want to bid & it places X number of bids as fast as the other people put their higher bids down. Trouble is you can't control it short of cancelling the autobid. When you put bids in yourself you can hold off & let the others duke it out on their dime, not yours. I do agree there needs to be some sort of regulation on these sites so they don't artificially keep the betting going. I suspect this is what's happening on Swoop because despite the 'rule' of only 8 wins/mos (and X# of bids at the same time) I see one person's name on a whole host of the popular items like big screen TVs, cameras, etc. He bids very, very often, too, keeping the bidding fairly frantic. Either he can afford a couple of thousand to play (or is addicted) or he's really an it.
Swoopo is a real neat way of ripping people off: they get you to bid on little items to sucker you in "see how easy it is?!" and then you try to buy a big item. I wanted to get a flat screen. The 40" TV was supposed to be 'up' at 4pm. It's now 1am and the clock has been stuck on 10 minutes to go for almost 6 hours. Every one of the people who ran the cost of the TV up to 200 bucks are gone. I check the site every 45 min-1hr just to see how it's going (or not). You want math? Try this: 200 divided by .12 x .60 = 1,000 bucks from people who didn't have a chance to get that TV - unless they wanted to sit around for 18 hours! Then there's the 270 bucks (including shipping) the winner'll have to pay IF they ever decide to close the sale! I started watching 3 TV's, a GPS, a laptop & a camera at 9am. It's now 12:30am - and not one sold! Like Logikal above me there I saw people putting down bids a dozen times a minute for over an hour: bet they're pissed. The items are all still going strong. Save your money, folks...this site is highway robbery.
Nice hub, like it
Thanks you, I'll register Swoopo.com to try...
I just won a Pacific Coast Cruise to British Columbia on a new website I just stumbled on and I feel they are going to be very, successful...they have just launched the site a few days ago. Check it out http://www.pposh.com
The auction I won is at http://pposh.com/book-bidbudler.php?product_id=187
I did the calculations and Swoopo makes about 31 times the winning bid on a 2 cent auction. It makes a ton of $$ on the high-bid Voucher auctions. An actual $27.00 winning bid on a 300 bid Voucher auction means $837.00 to Swoopo rather than the $180.00 they normally sell for. NICE!
I'm not criticizing it 'cause there have been some, no, MANY great buys for the winners and crying hankies for the losing bidders.
The key is to use smaller penny auction sites where you actually have a chance to win something. Swoopo has too many people to be able to turn a profit.
This website it's the best penny auction website you will find. With your bids you get premium information where you can see how many are bidding on a auction and how many bids remain. It's a great genuine website and now is the time to get great bargains. Register and try the virgin auction witch are free to bid and win it's that simple and 100% genuine. The Customer Service that users receive is fantastic you will not get service like this anywhere else. There is also a new tool where you can now chat to other people on PsychoAuction with PsychoChat and tell them which items they should not bid on because you want to win them yourselves! Also new: If you purchase more than 500 bids within 7 days and use them on an object without winning it, they give you back half of the used bids. It's great fun and you win also great place and the best. You don't need Mathemitcal skills you can see how many bids remain. see for yourself, i have won 24 items so far and there have been many winners.
Three times I bid on an item in the last two seconds and did not win. The person who bid before me won. It is like it doesn't register your vote less than 3 seconds to go. No fair. I would have won. The others had given up.
Yeah, you can't bid in the last few seconds because depending on the traffic on the internet at the time you place your bid it may take up to 2-3 seconds to get to the penny auction site. I was bidding on http://www.bidblink.com and I bid when it said 2 seconds left and my bid hadn't gone thru yet. Thank goodness I didn't place that many bids yet!
I have found many more websites that do the same thing: ex
Here is a big list of them
marco says:
4 months ago
post chapter 2 soon!