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PR Log (Press Release) – Dec 16, 2009 – Can you give me some advice about how to bid?
Help center > Frequently asked questions > Bidding
We often get asked by people how to improve their chances of winning an auction on SwoopBug.com
Here are a few different observations

There’s no ’sure-fire’ winning strategy, but here are a few tips to help you get started, as well as a few of the traps that novice bidders sometimes fall into.

Place your bid late
Watch the countdown and try to place your bid in the final ten seconds. If the timer has reached this point, you know the auction will end with you as the winner unless another bid is placed.

Start with the cheapest products

Although you can get some incredible bargains on our most expensive items, they also tend to be the most competitive auctions, attracting hundreds of bidders. Our cheaper products tend to have fewer bidders, meaning you’re much more likely to win.

Use the T-matics to your advantage

The T-matics is a powerful tool, if you get the timing right you can scare off other bidders by placing one. Nobody likes to see their bids matched over and over again by your all conquering T-matics, you might just persuade them to give up and try again next time.
Turn their t-matics against them
On the other hand, some people have a ‘fire and forget’ policy with the T-matics. It is easy to tender in and win with a quick single bid if your rival has gone to make a cup of coffee safe in the knowledge that their T-matics will protect them.
We’ve noticed that users tend to set the ‘Bid To’ value of their T-matics to a round number, so watch out for this and you might be able to snap up a bargain by simply clicking on the “Bid” button when T-matics has just finished.

Keep an eye on what other bidders are up to

You can see the details of the last ten bids placed: try to work out who’s bidding and when they’re bidding. It’s all about timing, so maybe you can work out when the right time is to jump in and grab the lot.

Scout out the competition

Look and see how many different bidders have recently bid on an auction. You’re more likely to win if there are fewer bidders interested in the item than if there are lots of competing bidders.

Bid at the right time of day

The number of bidders varies throughout the day – smart bidders can use this to pick up bargains by bidding when others are busy having breakfast or taking the dog for a walk.

Fine-tune your T-matics

If you use T-matics to bid on your behalf, it’s best not to set your ‘Bid To’ value to a round number – other bidders will be watching out for this (see above!).
How do I win more Auctions?
So how do you up your chances of winning an auction? As we have researched and examined thousands of auctions that have been conducted on SwoopBug, we have learned several things that can increase a person’s chance of winning an auction. The first main thing that we have learned is:

The SwoopBug customers that win the most auctions are the ones who spend the most bids in their pursuit of winning.

Most people’s first question after learning this is, “How are they able to confidently spend so many bids? Isn’t it possible that they will just lose all that money?” The answer to this question is actually fairly simple and it is related to the second main thing we have learned about winning an auction.

The SwoopBug customers that have the most success are the ones that are willing to exercise the “Buy it Now” feature if they do not win the auction.

The customers who are the most successful at SwoopBug are the ones who pick out products that they would be willing to pay full retail price for. Then they bid on those items for a chance to win them far below retail price. As a result of their willingness to go all the way they usually have a very high chance of actually winning the item.

The SwoopBug customers that have the least success are the ones that have unrealistic goals and are unwilling to pay more than a small fraction of the actual retail cost of an item in bids.

Even if you are unsuccessful in winning an item, you can still apply any of the bids that you have used towards that item and still buy it for a price that is comparable to what you would pay at a local retailer. It is a fun and risk-free way to do your holiday shopping. However, many customers don’t ever consider using the “Buy it Now” feature. Instead, they are interested in spending $20 trying to win a $1500 Apple Macbook. Although it is possible for someone to win the Apple Macbook with $20 in bids, it’s highly unlikely. This is an unrealistic expectation that certain customers have. We encourage everyone to set a realistic expectation of how much time and financial investment is necessary to win a big ticket item

 

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PR Log (Press Release) – Dec 17, 2009 – After reading this account of traditional style penny auctions and doing a comparison here is what you will find once a member registers he or she receives free bids to get acquainted with how the auctions work if a member decided to purchase bids, the member places his bids and here is where the similarity ends, if the member does not win the auction his purchased bids are returned to the members account , this policy continues until the member wins an auction.
if the member choses to end the auction and purchase the item, any bids the member has made is applied to the purchase price of the item.( so the member still takes no loss) and quite often the purchase or buy it now prices is much less than what the member would have paid in a retail store.. the member is also rewarded for the bidding process by getting free bids just for participating. Swoopbug has done all possible to make sure the member has more than a fair chance at winning an auction.

For example, an auctioneer might put a $100 gadget up for auction in a system that charges $1.00 per bid. Each bid increases the auction price by $0.10. Let’s say that the starting price of the auction is $1.00, and that the final (“winning”) bidder manages to acquire the gadget at the price of $25.00. To get from $1.00 to $25.00 in $0.10 increments requires 240 bids. Each bid cost each bidder $1.00. Thus, the auctioneer has collected $240.00 for the bids, plus $25.00 for the sale of the item, for a total of $265.00. Assuming the auctioneer paid $90 for the gadget, the gross profit is $175.00. However, it is unknown what customer acquisition costs are to run an auction so even those auctions that appear to have high profit may actually not generate a profit.

The bidder who placed the last bid (for $25.00) has had to spend at least $1.00 for the bid, as well as the $25.00 to purchase a gadget which retails for $100.00. He may have spent more money on prior, unsuccessful bids. All the other bidders who have placed the prior bids have spent $1.00 for each bid they placed prior to the winning bid and came away with nothing material.

In the last few years, there have appeared a number of successful sites operating on this model, which they usually call “penny auctions”. Typically, consumer electronics such as cameras, laptops and MP3 players are sold. Bids typically cost 10-25c USD each(or 50p on Swoopo.co.uk, $1 on Winners24.com and up to £1.50 on MadBid.com in GBP),swoobug.com, each increasing the final value of the auction by 1-2c(or 1p), and extending the time of the auction by another 10 seconds or so. For example, bid4vouchers.co.uk sells bids for 50 British pence, raising the price by one penny. This means that any item which sells for more than 1/40 the RRP is a guaranteed profit. Any item which sells for the RRP is effectively selling at a 4,000% profit. Conversely, an item that sells for 1c is clearly a loss of whatever the site must pay for the item – it is generally presumed that the sites “drop ship” the items.[1] The most well known examples are perhaps Tenderosity.com, bid4vouchers.co.uk, bidray.com, gozila.co.uk and bidstick.com, with dozens now in existence.[2] Due to the real possibility of people spending a lot of money on the sites with no gain, or spending more than the retail value of the item they end up winning, a number of blog posts and articles analysing and criticising the model appeared.[1][3][4][5] Other articles support the concept as a fun and innovative form of auction.[6][7][8] One programmer, Andy Garcia, and Rupert Elder, a Graduate in Economics from the University of Warwick tried to “game” Gozila and MadBid, but failed to win any auctions before abandoning the attempt. [9]

While penny auctions appear to have much in common with lotteries and other forms of gambling, they appear to avoid being regulated as such. Bidrivals.com, for example, operates from Malta, provides a legal advice statement explaining why it is not a lottery

Discounts for purchasing larger numbers of bids.

The primary risk of the bidding fee scheme website is that it is misunderstood as a regular auction.[citation needed] Unsophisticated participants will not understand the distinction between a regular auction and a pay per bid auction, and so might apply poor judgment when participating. This has the secondary impact of polluting internet advertising with ads where a customer is unable to distinguish between regular stores or traditional auctions from pay per bid auction sites. As a consequence, the value of internet advertising and price comparison sites are diminished.

For example, one bidding fee scheme site placed an internet ad that advertised “A New PS3 at $80.35,”[citation needed] deceptively implying that a new PlayStation 3 was available for anyone to purchase at that price.

Bidding fee scheme sites also exploit the sunk costs fallacy that is endemic in the human psyche. The fallacy causes players to psychologically feel that the past progress of a bidding fee scheme game affects future behavior, thus biasing the player towards larger wagers.

Some bidding fee scheme websites provide automatic agents that automate the placing of “bids”. These agents are marketed in a way to make them seem comparable to the kinds of bidding agents (for example, PhantomBidder) used on auction sites such as eBay. However, in practice, these agents facilitate the rapid investment of large wagers by unsophisticated players who might not fully understand how the contest they are participating in works.[citation needed]

Because bidding fee scheme websites exist in a legal gray area, there is little to no verifiable enforcement of rules.[citation needed]

Much like any auction site, there is no protection from the practice of bid shilling, in which the auctioneer uses a puppet to place bids in his own auction. This practice is illegal in legitimate auctions, but is particularly nefarious in bidding fee scheme auctions.[citation needed] Due to the risk of shilling, even after the players have spent large quantities of money purchasing “bids” in the auction, the auctioneer can still deprive any of the players of a winning bid by placing an additional bid of his own. To protect oneself against the risk of such shill bidding, the best practice would be to use only reputable long-standing websites that disclose their management, investors or other details of the company.[citation needed] Those sites that do not readily divulge who is running the site, complete with contact information, should be avoided.[citation needed]

Since the profit is made through bidding fees, the bidding fees are not refundable. Also, as with any other site, bidding fee sites can appear and disappear quickly so it could be possible for a bidding fee site to collect bidding fees for several auctions and disappear before awarding the prize.[citation needed]. In contrast, in August 2009, Swoopo began a “Swoop-it-now” function which allows losing bidders to apply all their lost bids towards the purchase of an item. This constitutes a significant change in the business model by decreasing risks for the bidder.

Since the webmaster is the only one who can see the bids, it is also possible for the webmaster to bid on the item himself, which would be unfair to others but hard to detect. This would, however, be illegal and once again, bidders can protect themselves from this by only bidding at sites operated by long-standing reputable companies.

PR Log (Press Release) – Dec 21, 2009 – beginning january 1  2010 Swoopbug will start the 1st ever you cannot lose auctions. here is how it will work, you must buy a $250.00 bid pack.  You can bid as much or as often as you like, your bids will be returned to your account at the end of each auction until you have won at least one auction.

Your assured that at some point you will win an auction of your choice. No one in the penny auction market has attempted such a bold move to try and level the playing field.
Right now, at all the other penny auctions sites, you pay to bid, and if you do not win you lost your money forever, at swoopbug if you don’t win the auction you get your bids back and get to keep trying until your a winner.  and don’t forget, they offer a free trial just to get acquainted with how the auctions work

There is quite a large variety of merchandise available, LCD ‘TV’s, Home theater systems, Digital cameras, Tolls, Toy, Scooters, and even cash cards for those that want to just go shopping.

Remember Swoopbug alway “keeping UP with Keeping prices DOWN”