Six Tips to Win Online Auctions

Online auctions are a great way to score name-brand merchandise at flea-market prices or lower, but you have to know how to play the game. Because make no mistake, online auctions are a game and if you don’t know the rules, you can lose a lot of money chasing after the wrong deals and bidding against the wrong people. Whether you like penny auctions or other types of online auctions, knowing and understanding the rules can help you score big and avoid losses. Try these tips to increase your chances at winning the deals you most want to win.

Pick Your Online Auction Sites Carefully

Penny auctions are popping up like mushrooms after the rain. There’s a lot of money to be made running penny auctions, and a lot of folks are trying to skim out of that pot. That means that there are a lot of scam sites out there. Read websites that give unbiased reviews of auction websites and only bid on auction sites that you can trust.

Read the Rules

Every auction site has its own rules. Understanding those rules is vital – if you don’t you could end up paying a lot of money without much reward, or you could end up bounced out of a profitable site because you inadvertently broke the rules.

Understand How Bidding Works

Before you jump in to start bidding on auction websites, learn how the bidding works. Generally on penny auctions, you pay for a pack of bids. Each bid increases the price of the item on which you’re bidding by one penny – but you’re paying for the privilege of placing the bid. If you win the item, you’ll pay the final winning bid price plus shipping and handling on top of the money you’ve already spent to place your bids. Obviously, the fewer bids you place, the less money you’ll spend on each item. That’s why it’s also important to…

Watch the Bidding Before Jumping In

The biggest mistake new bidders make is jumping in feet first and starting to bid on the big-ticket items. It almost always results in the newbie burning through his initial bid pack and spending more money to buy more bids. Instead, pick a few auctions and watch the rhythm of the bidding to get a feel for how things work. Get to know the heavy hitters on each of the auction websites you frequent so you can devise a bidding strategy that will win more often than you lose.

Start Small

That MacBook Pro going for $16.87? You’ll be facing stiff competition – and a lot of it – if you decide to bid on it. Start out by bidding on smaller items that don’t attract as much interest and you’ll build up a winning profile on most online auction sites. That winning profile won’t go unnoticed – you’ll start scaring off bidders and facing less competition when you’re ready to go for bigger ticket items.

Bid During Off Hours

Watch the online auctions to see when they’re busiest and when there are fewer people bidding. Bidding during the off hours reduces your competition and increases your odds of winning the items you bid on.

Online auctions are a lot of fun when you’re winning. These tips can help you win at penny auctions and other online auction sites for more fun and more profit.

How to Make Money with Online Auctions

Penny auctions and online auctions are among the most popular and growing niche websites on the Internet today. People love the opportunity to pick up big name products for a fraction of the price – but there’s more to the phenomenon than that. The fact is that online auctions are fun – they combine elements of competition and gambling to make the whole online shopping experience a lot more fun.

Several major networks and news shows have reported on the online auction phenomenon – and on penny auctions in particular. All of them concluded that most online auction websites are legitimate and users can certainly score great bargains – if they pay attention to what they’re actually spending. Those low, low prices in the display only represent part of the price on penny auctions, they point out. To figure out the true cost, you also have to count in the cost of the bids you used to win the right to buy the item at that low price and the shipping cost.

What they don’t generally talk about is the best way to make money with online auctions – running or working for auction websites. Consider the money facts and you’ll get a picture of the amount of money you can actually make when you run an online auction site.

In order to bid on products, users must buy packets of bids at $.50 to $1 each. Most auction websites sell bids in packets of 25 to 500, with discount pricing on bulk purchases. They also often run special auctions to purchase bids at a reduced price or promotional auctions that refund all or part of the bids losers spend on their bidding. Those promotional costs mask the huge amount of profit you can make, though. Here’s an actual auction example to give you an idea of the scope of profits from penny auctions.

The Item: KitchenAid Artisan Mixer

MSRP: $459.99

Wholesale Price: $125-$150

Auction Price: $19.98

Now that’s a bargain, right? Even at wholesale prices, the winning bidder got one of the hottest kitchen tools on the market at an 85% discount. How can the auction websites do it?

Simple. They’re crowdsourcing their profits. That $19.98 bid price means that there were 1,998 bids placed at $.50 to $1 each: they raked in at least $999 and up to $1,998 in bids on that mixer for which they probably paid less than $200. In addition, the winning bidder will pay the bid price plus shipping and handling, so the auction site makes anywhere from $700 to $1,700 in profit on that single item. Multiply that sale by dozens of auctions happening every minute and you begin to get an idea of the awesome money-making potential of operating a penny auctions site.

If you’re looking for an incredible earning opportunity without the responsibility of owning an auction website, you can look into an affiliate sales program with one or more of the dozens of online auctions and auction websites operating on the net. Check out other money making opportunities with online auctions today to find out how much you can make.

The Lowdown on Online Auctions

If you keep up with the latest trends, you’ve probably heard the term “entertainment shopping.”  It’s typical marketing speak for something you probably know better as online auctions or penny auctions. The most popular of these are the penny auction sites, where you place bids in increments of a penny, and win the item you’re bidding on if you placed the last bid before time ran out. Penny auctions are so popular that you’ll see reports about them on the evening news and ads for them during prime time. Are you curious about these online auctions and how they work? Here are the basic facts you should know before you start bidding on any online auction site.

Buying Bids

Penny auctions are not the same as the better known auction sites like eBay, which operates on an English auction system. In an English auction, you bid on items against other bidders. At the end of the auction, the bidder with the highest bid pays the full amount for the item. If you don’t win the item, you don’t pay anything.

In penny auctions, you buy bids in advance at a pre-determined rate, usually between 40 cents and $1 per bid. Every time you place a bid on an item, the bidding price on that item will go up by a penny – but it will cost you the price of one bid. Your bids are used up whether you win the item or not, so even if you don’t win the item, you’ll be paying to bid.

Timing Auctions

Another difference between typical online auctions and penny auctions is how the auctions are timed. In a typical online auction site, each auction is set to last a specific number of hours or days. When the timer runs out, the highest bidder wins the item. Penny auctions run differently, and it’s important to understand how the clock runs on each penny auction website you visit. Generally, each auction runs for ten to fifteen minutes, but the auction doesn’t end until the bidding stops. This is a lot closer to the “going, going, gone” of the auctioneer that most people are familiar with.

Bidding Strategies

Obviously, the fewer bids you have to place to win an item, the less the item ends up costing you. That’s why bidding strategies are important. You’ll find lots of advice about bidding strategies at penny auction review sites and on online auction sites.

If you’ve never tried bidding on penny auctions, give it a whirl, but study the site first so you know how to bid and what each bid will cost you. The most important thing to remember is that this is supposed to be entertainment – set your limits and have fun.

Bidding Strategies for Online Auctions

Online auctions have come of age. Once the province of one big online auction site whose name starts with e and ends with Bay, there are now many online auction sites utilizing a number of different business models. You can score some incredible bargains in online auctions – or you can pay far more for an item than it’s worth. Depending on the site and its business model, you can end up paying out more money than you intended and still not end up with the item you were bidding on. If you want to score big bargains in online auctions, it helps to understand the site’s business model and have a targeted strategy for winning items on each site.

Standard Online Auctions

The most familiar type of online auction site, that big, well-known one, is technically an English auction. In English auctions, the item is posted and users place open bids on each item. Each new bid must be larger than the bid before it and the winner is the one who places the largest bid at the end of the time allotted for the auction.

One of the best strategies for winning online auctions is to keep your bids to yourself. This may seem impossible – after all, don’t they show the highest bid? Not necessarily. Some sites allow you to name a maximum amount that you’ll bid on an item – but won’t show the maximum bid to anyone else. Instead, the site will increase the bid on the item by a specific increment – and you’ll pay that price if you win it. If someone tops your bid, the site will automatically increase the bid by the standard increment – and keep doing that until someone outbids your maximum.

By letting the online auction site manage your bidding, you’re saving yourself time and ensuring that you don’t get carried away and bid more than you can afford. You’re also avoiding one of the biggest no-nos in bidding – calling attention to the item you want to buy. Every bid increases its visibility – keep your bids out of site and you’ll have less competition.

Bidding Strategies for Penny Auctions

Penny auction sites are growing in popularity. On these auction sites, you buy a number of “bids” for a package price, and then use the bids to buy items that interest you. The action on penny auctions can be fast and exciting – and strategy is important to winning the items you want for the lowest possible number of bids.

Strategies for winning penny auctions often involve timing things right. Bidding during off hours, for example, guarantees that you’ll have less competition for items you want, which usually translates to spending fewer bids to get the item you want.

The most important tip for winning online auctions is a common sense one. Research the online auction site before bidding. The more you know about how the site works, the easier it will be to win the auctions you enter.