Penny Auctions Trends
Online auctions have grown in popularity since eBay was founded in 1995. While eBay has become a household name and other traditional auction houses, including giants Sotheby’s and Christie’s have joined the party, perhaps the most exciting space in online auctions is penny auctions. The prospect of saving money is certainly a primary objective for consumers who participate in any online auction. Entertainment is an equally strong motivation for many online auction participants. For these individuals, penny auctions offer highly competitive, fast-paced live auctions around the clock that are uber entertaining.
Like all industries, market demand determines winners and losers. While quite a few penny auctions that have come and gone – most notably– Beezid (you may remember this is the company that paid $25,000 for Lindsey Lohan’s 14-second YouTube ad while she was under house arrest), two mainstays, DealDash and QuiBids are the undeniable penny auction leaders. Both companies have been around since 2009, have loyal customer bases, and appear to be sound companies. For years QuiBids was the largest penny auction site until 2016, when DealDash overtook QuiBids in the United States.
How Do Penny Auctions Work?
Unlike, traditional auctions, penny auctions are pay-to-play, meaning that users need to purchase bids ahead of time then use one bid for every new bid placed. All penny auctions start at $0 and there is an auction counter that lets all players know when the auction is scheduled to close. Every bid a user places subtracts one bid from his/her balance and increases the price of the auction one penny. In a penny auction, once the auction timer reaches 10 seconds remaining, every bid will reset the timer 10 seconds. Each player must then decide in this short 10 second window whether to place a new bid to outbid the previous high bidder. If no new bids are placed, the final bidder wins the penny auction at the final sales price. Sounds easy, but it’s not.
Winning on DealDash and QuiBids
Both websites have two features designed to prevent a user from leaving empty-handed. A Buy-It-Now option allows bidders who do not win an auction to purchase the item outright and get all their bids back! Essentially, the user gets the item for the listed price and all bids spent in that auction are returned to the user’s account. Terms vary, so check out the links describing how the DealDash Buy-It-Now and QuiBids Buy-It-Now work.
The bottom line is that if you want to win more auctions on DealDash and QuiBids, you’ll need to thoroughly educate yourself on the nuances of each site, the products being auctioned, and knowing your competition (i.e., the other players). It may sound cliché, but a little homework goes a long way towards winning more auctions.
Another cool program designed to reassure new players, is a guarantee to win program. Like the Buy-It-Now feature, the guarantee to win terms do vary by site. Again, it’s best to take a look for yourself at DealDash Guarantee and QuiBids Guarantee.
Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware)
Playing penny auctions is not for the faint of heart. Bidders experience a wide range of emotions – from absolute joy and exhilaration to utter disappointment. While these emotions may be felt after winning/losing any type of auction they seem are more pronounced in penny auctions. Perhaps the tagline from ABC’s Wide World of Sports sums it up best: The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat!
Stay tuned, in our next blog post we’ll get into the product-mix offered by DealDash and QuiBids, respectively. Product-mix is probably the most important factor when deciding which online penny auction site to play.
Happy Bidding Fellow Bid-Ninjas!
