Trying out yet another auction site - for buying, not selling. (http://www.QuiBids.com) Very interesting - you pay for every bid you make, so the effort is to find a strategy to bid as little as possible. Here's what I've figured out so far:
- wait to bid until something you actually want comes up. Makes it worth the time you'll need to actually get it, and it means that if you lose the auction, you won't mind paying the full price plus shipping. (They even recommend this.)
- don't bother with the voucher style bids...they cost a little less to buy, but once they're gone, they're gone. With regular style bids (you buy them...they're $0.60 apiece) the site subtracts what you bid from the full cost of the item if you don't win it, and offers an identical item to you at that lower cost. You don't get a bargain, but it minimizes loss - the gift cards (which I highly recommend as a training option) are particularly good . You might have to buy the card if you lose the auction, but the shipping charge is minimal, and you get the money you bid back to spend as you want.
- unless you're prepared with many hundreds of bids and a lot of spare hours, don't even bother with the real high ticket items like iPads and such. High PRICED items often go for very little, but high STATUS ones go way up and take a long time to stop. If you're determined, wait until the high status item is at least at 80% of what the next highest winner paid. Then you might have enough bids to win at reasonable cost.
- Do not scatter bids hither and yon, or wander away once you've started bidding on something. You might as well throw money out the window. This is not eBay.
- Don't bid right away on any item. Wait until the clueless run out of money. The exception to this guideline would be in the middle of a workday - the number of people bidding is much lower, and high priced items often go for pennies.
- In fact, don't bid at all except when the timer is at 1...on anything! And then stick with it. Every bid posted gets 10 to 20 seconds added to the clock, so there's no reason to bid anything at 8 seconds or 3 or even 2. And if the timer jumps back up, don't bid...someone else did it for you. The only thing I would recommend is to click "Bid" AS SOON AS the timer gets to 1 - I've lost a couple expensive auctions now by waiting just a split second too long.
- Watch yourself. When you're winning, move your mouse away from the Bid button. I've bid myself up a couple times by accident. (the timer was at 1, so I clicked...duh! I might have won it if I hadn't clicked.)
- Check the history of the item before you even start (there will be an identical one tomorrow, don't worry.) What was the price range it sold for? WHEN during the day or night did it sell? Is the price related to the time of day? (In many cases it is...middle 5 hours of a workday is the absolute best, at least for the things I've been looking at.)
- Make certain you have enough bids...you don't want to have to buy more in the middle of an auction.
- If there is more than one "Bid-o-matic" active, don't bid at all. If there's only one active, bid only (at 1 or 2 seconds) when the Bid-o-matic is currently winning.
- The most likely auctions to win are those where only one or two other people are still bidding, and they're smart enough to wait until the last seconds on the timer. If you're focused, you can outlast them. The ones where idiots are bidding at 10 or 15 seconds might be worth watching, but don't click "Bid". Remember: the goal is the FEWEST bids, because you're paying for them. The actual "price" of the auction is usually very low, but also completely irrelevant - FEWEST NUMBER OF BIDS is your goal to save money.
- If your bid total is approaching the item value, stop bidding when you get to the item value MINUS the shipping charge - you'll still be able to buy it, but you won't exceed the MFRP plus shipping. For God's sake, don't spend bids worth more than the item is worth.
