7 replies to this topic

[DavidS31]

Penny auctions are the best way to make money online for me. You purchase bids in advance for around 60 cents, then everytime you place a bid the price of the auction goes up 1 cent. The items sell for really low prices and the bids cover the price of the product being sold. With a little patience and strategic bidding I can win most items I go for. I originally tried Swoopo and Beezid which worked alright. However, it's better to find lesser known sites like SmartBargainHunters.com for example (it's less than a week old). Lesser known sites have less users competing with each other and driving the prices up . On Smart Bargain Hunters you can usually win without ever using more than 100 bids on one product. 100 bids is equivalent to $60 and most of the products are worth at least twice that. I also tend to bid in the middle of the night when less users are on. Once I win $400 products after spending around $60 I just turn around and sell it for close to retail value on Ebay. Rinse and repeat.

[mm22]

This sounds like something that might actually work... still as you say sites get "saturated" pretty fast so I find it hard to think of this as a reliable source of business in the medium long term...

[anwiii]

nice plan, but who are the idiots paying retail on ebay? haha i want a list. you know, maybe for items that are hard to get or where there is little competition, people can be prepared to pay that retail price, but i don't think you're talking about items like that. so who are these people paying retail?!? the majority of people go to ebay so they don't have to pay retail.

[mm22]

anwiii, on Mar 9 2010, 03:21 AM, said:

nice plan, but who are the idiots paying retail on ebay? haha i want a list. you know, maybe for items that are hard to get or where there is little competition, people can be prepared to pay that retail price, but i don't think you're talking about items like that. so who are these people paying retail?!? the majority of people go to ebay so they don't have to pay retail.

Well you know maybe if you present the item in the right way, and it looks really brand new, and you offer Buy It Now option... sometimes buyers just want to save time and get something quick and conveniently shipped to their address. That is also the reason they might use eBay, not just the price. But I agree this "idea" alone cannot get you much far, but if you already have an online store or eBay store or something, it makes sense exploring it.

[anwiii]

that's not the only thing that bothered me about the post. this person posted a link to an auction website. normally, i wouldn't be suspicious, but the only things up for auction is from the owners of the website. users don't auction anything off. this sounds like a scam to me. they can totally control the outcomes of their own auction prices.

some of the past auctions they advertise seem pretty low to me even with their weird format in buying bids for .60 a bid when bids only increase .05. even with that though, i tried to do some figuring and some of the listed stuff has been going for half and more than half off retail.

the website has been up for less than a month so i wouldn't even trust it right now. but i will investigate this site further and see what i come up with. it could just be they are willing to lose a lot in the short run to make a lot when people start buying bids....

[princeofvegas]

anwiii, on Mar 8 2010, 11:10 PM, said:

that's not the only thing that bothered me about the post. this person posted a link to an auction website. normally, i wouldn't be suspicious, but the only things up for auction is from the owners of the website. users don't auction anything off. this sounds like a scam to me. they can totally control the outcomes of their own auction prices.

some of the past auctions they advertise seem pretty low to me even with their weird format in buying bids for .60 a bid when bids only increase .05. even with that though, i tried to do some figuring and some of the listed stuff has been going for half and more than half off retail.

the website has been up for less than a month so i wouldn't even trust it right now. but i will investigate this site further and see what i come up with. it could just be they are willing to lose a lot in the short run to make a lot when people start buying bids....

Yes I would not trust it at all either.. however that is now some of these other bidding sites started out(i.e. bidz.com). And bidz had one of the best marketing schemes I have ever seen. At first, all items listed on bidz were theirs but they got their publicity buy starting an auction for a limousine at $1, no reserve. Now at the time this looked like a scam, however the winning bidder received their item and a truly low price.

Now that being said, I do have to say that the fact that this person has not made any more posts in the last few days makes it look a little like an advertisement to me. I would keep the post up there, just get rid of the live link to the site because this is a good topic and a way to get items for very cheap. I have done so myself.

[Tremayne]

i think it's funny how none of you guys realize that this guy is just trying to advertise his website "SmartBargainHunters.com" where he gets people to pre-pay money for "bids" and then they bid on items and probably never win or maybe he just makes a good comission, who knows, seems shady as hell to me.

[kira423]

I agree Tremayne, I have joined these sites, and they are all a scam, you pay for so many bids, and you use them 1 cent up at a time as he said, but even if you bid at the very end of the auction, you still loose by 4-5 hundred cents. It is just a big sham, don't listen to him!!!