Are the penny auction websites really worth it? Have you guys been able to get some big wins?
I actually managed to win a 1g gold bar for around $6 on Skore-It (I think they merged with some other site) with 15 free bids that I got from an ESPN commercial promo. It was the very first auction I bid on. I owe the win entirely to a combination of luck and to the two-or-so hours I spent analyzing the auctions in real-time to try to understand different bidding techniques, as well as understand which auctions will get you the best chances of winning.
The main problem is that almost every auction has at least one power-bidder, i.e. somebody with an insane amount of bids who isn't afraid to use them. The reason that some people win plasma tv's and I-Pads for 10 cents is usually because those same people are the ones that will spend $2000 in bids on a $500 item just to get a message across, which is, "I'm crazy and I will bid until I win, no matter the cost." A lot of times, it works. People begin to recognize their account handles and won't dare bidding in an auction with them. You could almost say a lot of auctions are won with the first bid.
Due to my limited number of bids, I employed a different strategy, though it may not apply anymore due to a lot of changes on these auction sites. There used to be auctions that forbid the use of a bid-bot, or an automated bidding agent. I would bid only on these auctions because I knew that nobody had done anything crazy and annoying (e.g. like setting his bid-bot to automatically bid 5,000 times so he doesn't even need to be at the computer).
There also used to be auctions that, if you lost the auction, would allow you to convert the value of the sum of your bids used in that auction into credit applied towards the purchase of that item. I would then only bid on items with a direct cash value like prepaid credit cards. This way, even if I lost an auction (which was frequent), I never really lost any money.
yep, that's why I like eureka.com.hr
it's a new website with not that many users, I only invested around 35$ and I'm the power bidder
it's a good thing they have this, no matter how much you spend in the auction, you can use the value of the bids spent as a discount to buy the item you're bidding for
so you can never actually lose money if you want the item you're bidding for
I was talking to the admin and his general idea is to make the site profitable for the average Joe
it even has a cap, you can't win more then 3 auctions per week
this is good for preventing the big investors from taking everything from the new guys
