Penny Auctions | 101 Profits Online

Are you making these Penny Auction mistakes?

May 23, 2016 By Benjamin

When starting out in Penny Auctions it’s easy to get carried away and dive head first into the action but this can cost you dearly. It’s necessary to take time to observe the auctions and take the baby steps that will get you there eventually.

Be realistic when starting out.

When you see the really low prices items are going for, you might think that winning will be a piece of cake. It can happen that someone places one bid and wins the auction, i’ve seen it happen but it’s very rare. You’ll most likely be going up against bidders with more experience so your chances are slim. Instead, go for the first win auctions that are restricted to those who have never won an auction before. Then the Junior auctions which are for those with less than 9 wins. After that, you can then proceed to the general but try to avoid the Big Dog Auctions till you’ve identified common bidder behavior and have over 10 wins to your name.

Bidding on high ticket items

You’ll find high value items like HD TV sets, Apple computers, iPhones, tablets and so on. These auctions are fiercely contested and can last over well 12 hours. There are many experienced bidders on these auctions so you’ll need a different strategy to win. Concentrate and devite more time to winning these auctions. You can also consider the ‘Buy now and receive you credits back’ option for such auctions.

Diving right in

Do your homework before you get into any auctions so you know what kind of auction you’re getting into. Once you’ve understood the terms and conditions, read up on the Auto Bidder and the Buy now feature. When used properly, these tools can come in handing when things are getting out of hand.

When you have a clear understanding of the Penny Auction model, you’ll have an advantage over those who haven’t taken the time. And there are a significant number. You maybe able to identify them by now. if you haven’t yet started with Penny Auctions, click here to join Pricebenders.

Are you bidding from outside North America?

May 23, 2016 By Benjamin

news There are some new developments with Pricebenders. This is important if you’re not a resident of the US and Canada. Several months ago Tripleclicks announced that they would only ship physical items to members living in the US and Canada. Those outside these two countries could only bid on non physical items or exchange their wins for a certain amount of bid credits.

Now Tripleclicks has announced that you can have the physical item shipped to a US address at no additional cost. So these are the options you have now for physical items;

You can exchange your Pricebenders auction wins for more bid credits except if the auction was also an auction for bid credits and a few other items. If the you do not see the exchange offer for an item, it means the item is not eligible for an exchange. The item you won goes back to inventory to be auctioned later.
You can exchange the item for a Gift certificate and then use that to buy the same item or any other of your choice from e-commerce stores from your or near your country.
You can have the item drop shipped to your address by an online retailer like Amazon that has a branch nearer to your location. For example, Amazon has branches in Mexico, Italy, the UK, India and Japan among others. To just use the YCD (Your Drop Shipping) manager in your Tripleclicks members area.
And of course you can have the item shipped to a friend or family member in the US or Canada.

So keep this in mind when bidding on a Pricebenders auction.

How I got a Samsung Galaxy tab 4 at $20.77

December 17, 2015 By Benjamin

Yes, you read that right. $20.77 for a Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 that retails at $199. I got it at that price in a Penny Auction. This is a screen shot of my auction win.

I don’t have a screenshot of the actual auction page because my workmate (I was at work) clicked away from the page out of curiosity. He was so shocked by what I told him. He clicked around to see more and when I clicked back the auction had been replaced by the next one.

I wanted a screenshot like the one below.

Tcredits — A pack of 10 bid credits I won later.

Now all this happened after working hours while I was waiting for my colleagues to finish their work so we could close for the day. I checked out the auction page at Pricebenders to see where I could try my luck and landed on the Tablet. Something I’d wanted to get for a long time. But I didn’t have the money to spare for it.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 — The Tablet when it arrived

I kept checking back on the auction since I could not afford to monitor it the whole time. I still had a few things to put away before leaving work. And the clock was still counting down from 30 minutes. It would have been a waste of auction credits to start bidding at that time.

I enabled the alert chime to let me know when the time runs down below 10 seconds. It also alerts you when you’re about to be disconnected from the auction due to inactivity.

After sometime, I noticed that the clock was running down a lot since the alert chime kept going off frequently. This was a sign that there were few people left bidding on the auction. I began placing my bids inconsistently to test if there were any people using auto bid (A feature was added recently that shows if someone is using auto bid). I wasn’t going up against an auto bidder, not with the amount of auction credits I had.

I’d stop bidding every time someone started using auto bid and would resume after they lost steam or gave up. I did the same with aggressive bidders. Occasional the clock would not run down as often and I’d bid less frequently. I’d bid once in a while to test how persistent a new bidder was after watching them for a while. In Pricebenders, you get to see who you’re bidding against in the Bid Log.

There was another thing I had to deal with. Many people on the auction still did not understand that waiting to bid at the last moment does not help. Actually, they risk loosing the auction if the computer fails to register their bid in time due to latency or other problems affecting their connection to the auction. So if the clock was counting down from 30 seconds, I’d bid at about 15 seconds left but not below 10.

That spared me the bidding frenzy that would pour in at the last moment. Due to latency, the system can register such late bids up to 5 seconds after the clock resets. I’d also avoid bidding when there were many people waiting for the last moment. Three was manageable.

I soon found that I was the only one bidding with any kind of consistency which meant I was clearly the power bidder in that particular auction. So I kept it up until I placed one more bid and watched the clock run down till it went Going once, Going twice and I won the tablet at $20.77!

If you’d like to see more of what’s going on here, click here to check out Pricebenders.

How to Win Against Aggressive Bidders

April 26, 2013 By Benjamin

If you regularly bid in penny auctions, then you must have come across aggressive bidders and wondered how to beat them. Aggressive bidders are the kind who do not wait for the clock to run out before placing a bid. Instead, they place a bid immediately after another person has placed a bid. This strategy works by playing on the psychology of other bidders. This is because no one likes to be outbid the next moment.

For example, you find an item you like and place a bid. But as soon as you place the bid, someone outbids you. Now you place your bid again and within a second, you are again outbid by the same person. This can be frustrating and after a few bids, the person usually just gives up.

However, you do not have to be afraid of aggressive bidders. You simply need to understand their psychology and their situation to really beat them. Remember that when bidders get aggressive, they have fewer number of bids left as they need to outbid every person. This is important to remember because when you spend 1 bid, the aggressive bidder might need to spend 5. This is because you are not the only other bidder – there are other bidders too. The aggressive bidder needs to spend bids to outbid every single bidder and thus loses bids.

Aggressive bidders can have a trick or two down their sleeves, though. You need to be aware of the strategies that they can use. For example, when there is an aggressive bidder and many other meeker bidders, they each rely on the other to place their bid, thinking they are protecting their bids. The aggressive bidder wants exactly this and places a bid while everybody else is waiting for the other to bid first. In the end no one bids and the aggressive bidder wins the auction. Don’t get caught in this trap!

So here is what you need to remember: to beat an aggressive bidder, you need to keep bidding. Never give up. If you give up, you are not just losing the auction to the aggressive bidder but you are also losing the amount that you spent towards your bids. Against an aggressive bidder, you can wait until there’s little time left on the clock to place a bid

An aggressive bidding strategy is not very sustainable and the aggressive bidder will sooner or later run out of steam. You are not the only bidder but don’t let the decision of others impact your own strategy. You can certainly beat aggressive bidders with this strategy. Just remember never to get intimidated.

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Best Time for Bidding on Penny Auctions

April 15, 2013 By Benjamin

The nature of penny auctions means that the ease of winning and the cost of items depends on how many people are on line at a given point of time and how many auctions are simultaneously going on. Using the right strategy, you can win some items for really less.

Generally, penny auction sites try to make the bidding process uniform throughout the day. This means that bidding at a certain time of the day should not give you any advantage over bidding at another time of the day.
However, this rarely works and the whole bidding experience is not as even as they’d like it to be.

You have a better chance of winning an auction at certain times of the day and at a lower price . You must identity such times and bid accordingly to win and get great prices. Most penny auction sites do not publish the kind of data that you need to identify the best times for bidding. So you’ll have to do some more research with such websites.

Here is a list of times that you should bid and the times that you should avoid bidding for most penny auction sites. But take time to compare this with any given site and adapt accordingly.

The best times

Days: The best days to bid are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with Wednesday being the best day. There could be many reasons for this. People are generally occupied with more important things during the weekdays.

Times: The best time to bid is around 2pm-5pm, EST. If you live in different time zones, convert it accordingly. At this time there are few people bidding and lots of auctions to bid on.

The worst times

It is important to avoid these times as there are just too many people who are bidding on any given auction.

Days: Weekends are the worst. Try to avoid them. There are just too many people who are free on the weekends and have nothing better to do than sit in front of their computers. You can see this yourself. Sunday evenings are perhaps the worst time for auctions from the user’s perspective.

Times: The worst time to bid is somewhere around the night. In EST, this comes to about 10pm – 2am. This time has too few auctions and too many users. Try to avoid these times.

So the competition on a Saturday night is huge. And remember that behind the final price there are many people that lost hundreds of dollars trying to win that item.

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Penny Auction Tips and Tricks

March 25, 2013 By Benjamin

These Penny Auction tips and tricks will help you make the most of your bidding experience

Set realistic goals
Penny auctions can suck a lot of money if you’re not careful. It can also be addictive because of the thrill of winning an auction. Therefore, set your bid budget and stick to it strictly.

Understand the penny auction model
Many people complain about how bids cost money and are lost without a refund when you loose. It sounds unfair but that’s what makes the winning price so low. The bids that are used in an auction pay for the item while the winner gets to pay just a fraction of it. For every auction there is one winner and lots of losers. It’s important to understand how penny auctions work before joining and bidding on any item. There are huge profits involved but that’s the penny auction model.

Know the right time
Knowing the best time to bid can help you win items at a cheaper price. When you bid on items during less busy times, you have a better of chance winning. However, if there’s a lot of competition, things can get very difficult. Note the times when the site is least busy so that you can tell the best and worst times to bid. Generally the lower the winning price, the less bidders there were. But sometimes you need to consider the number of auctions available because there can be many bidders but also plenty of auctions so that the competition tends to distribute away.

Bid packs can be Useful
Bid packs are a great way to increase your bids. There are a number of bid pack auctions that you can win. When you win a bid pack in an auction, your account will be credited with the bids immediately. Suppose you spent 40 bids to win a 100 bid pack. Effectively, you have won 60 extra bids at the site! You can then use these bids to win other auctions and effectively spend less on the cost of participating in the auctions. But auctions for bid packs are usually competitive so expect some stiff competition.

Big-Ticket Items are Very Different
There are a number of big-ticket items like iPads, laptops, tablets, phones, etc. Therefore it is important to understand that the strategies to win these are very different from the ones you use to win $10 gift cards. Without appreciating this difference, you might wrongly apply the same strategy to both of them and end up losing a lot of bids. Counting on the actions of other bidders should be used for smaller items and occasionally for bigger items when there is reduced competition.

In addition, you should remember that the auto bidding system is a good resource to use in big-ticket auctions that last for a very long time. On the other hand, it is a bad idea to use this tool for smaller items, especially if you are using the waiting strategy. Also, you should try to avoid bidding in the initial stages of a big-ticket auction as there are many naive aggressive bidders. Let them all run out of gas before you swoop in.

Losing is Not an Option
If you follow this rule, you wont lose money at penny auctions. If you firmly decide that you will bid till the end, then you can be the winner. You will be surprised by the number of bidders who do not persist enough.
Remember to use this particular strategy only when you are sure to use the Buy It Now option where available. Without this, it is best to know when to quit.
You can also get aggressive to scare away the small time bidders so you can emerge the winner. This works very well when there are very few professional bidders.

So that’s a brief summary of the tips and tricks for winning with penny auctions. If you’re looking for a good penny auction site, then Click here to check out Pricebenders.

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