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.