Ebay Alternative Auction At Swoopbug.com

Dec. 16, 2009 - PRLog -- 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


How Does SwoopBug Offer Such Low Prices?
Help center > Frequently asked questions
How Does SwoopBug Offer Such Low Prices?
　
　
Every day SwoopBug sells products at 60-90% below their retail price. The most common question we are asked is “How do you offer such low prices?” SwoopBug is able to offer such low prices on its products because of the unique auction model that we use.

Traditional auctions consist of people bidding higher and higher prices until the item being auctioned is finally sold. However, during a traditional auction the item often sells for a price around its actual market value. The SwoopBug auction model ensures that almost every auction will end with the winner paying a price far below the retail value of the product. This is possible because each bid in a SwoopBug auction costs $ 1.00

For example, SwoopBug will often auction Amazon.com’s amazing Kindle. The Kindle costs $259.00 when ordered from Amazon, but it recently sold in a SwoopBug.com auction for only $8.70! Here’s how that is possible:

SwoopBug purchases the Amazon Kindle for $259.00. It then schedules an auction for the Kindle to end sometime in the near future. Each auction has a banner in the upper left corner that indicates what cent increment the auction is. That number can be $.01, $.02, $.05, $.10, or $.20. It represents how much the final sales price will increase each time a bid is placed.

So an auction is scheduled for the Amazon Kindle as a $.02 auction and as the timer counts down bids begin to be placed by users who are competing for a chance to win. Eventually, the bidding ends at the price of $8.70. Because it was a $.02 auction that means that there were a total of 435 bids placed during the course of the auction.

435 bids x $.60 bid = $261.00 ( this formula is based on 60 cent bids ) formulas change according to the actual bid cost ) but the concept remains the same

Cost for SwoopBug to Purchase the Amazon Kindle = $259.00

Cost for the Auction Winner to Purchase the Amazon Kindle = $

The bidding in this auction paid for SwoopBug cost to buy the product. As a result the winner of the auction was able to win a Kindle at a 90% discount to its retail price.

But what about the users that didn’t win? In order to make our auction model as fair as possible, SwoopBug offers every user that placed bids on this auction the ability to redeem the value of their bids towards a “Buy it Now”. When a user chooses to execute a “Buy it Now” SwoopBug applies the value of all the bids placed in that auction towards the cost to purchase a second Kindle. The user pays the remainder of what it costs SwoopBug to purchase the second Kindle. This way there is no bid that is ever wasted on SwoopBug.

What auction types or formats are there?
Help center > Frequently asked questions > Auctions
Penny Auction
In a penny auction, the price rises by just one cent with each bid placed.
Park Avenue Auctions ' For the Elite '
the difference between this auction and all the rest is simple, you need to have the money to purchase. if your concerned about the price or if you do not have a large enough bid pack you are at the wrong auction catagory. most of these items are Name brand quality items with high ticket value, some range in the 20 to 30 thousand dollar catagory. Although you can expect to find a bargain here be prepared to spend some big bucks.

# # #

We are a penny auction site offering Name Brand items for auction at an almost 95% savings from retail store prices. A most significant difference between swoopbug and most other auctions is we deliver all our merchandise from our own warehouse..