The trick in any competitive bidding situation is to be at an advantage relative to your competition. In penny auction bidding, the same is true.

You Cannot Change The Rules

To begin, let’s quickly review the things which we cannot change in penny auction bidding. We cannot change the rules which each penny auction website has in place. While the Quibids, DealDash, HappyBidDay, etc. models are all similar, each offers a unqie set of rules which guide the auction and beeing keenly aware of these rules is important in trying to put yourself at an advantage over other bidders. A few unfortunately true situtaions

  • Power bidders are everywhere: Power bidders are penny auction bidders who usually play for more than fun. They come in with big budgets and don’t hope to win, they plan to win and as a result, can drive auctions crazy.
  • Bids cost money (usually): In general, the penny auction model is one where bids cost money. There aren’t ways around this except that some specific auction features can help you get bids cheaper.

Gain Advantages In Penny Auctions

1. Bid Price

Let’s say that you are bidding against 100 other bidders in a single penny auction. One surefire way to extend your advantage is to acquire bids at a price which is less than most others in the room. Why? This means that you can profitable bid more often than anyone else. There are few key ways to get bids cheap.

  1. Get Free Bids: Sounds obvious, but it’s not always easy or possible. Some penny auctions offer free bids at sign-up, free bids on holidays, free bid promotions, free bids for signing up to social media, etc. Research each penny auction to figure out all the ways to acquire free bids and take advantage. Read more about penny auction free bids here.
  2. Get Discounted Bids: Let’s say that you paid $.60 per bid and more other bidders in the auction paid $.30. You’re in trouble. They can expend 2x as many bids as you for the same cost. In this, you need to study each penny auction and how cheaper bids can be acquired. On most penny auction websites, buying in bulk is the cheapest way to get bids. You have to be prepared to shell out big bucks sometimes which is the downside. Other penny auctions offer free auctions where bids can be won for cheap.

2. Limit Competition

If you had the choice between bidding against 3 and 300 others, what would you choose? The answer is obvious but many bidders get hung up on what they are bidding on while not paying mind to how many bidders they are bidding against. Consider penny auction websites like HappyBidDay and Quibids which both offer a form of auction which locks-out new bidders at some point. As the auction matures, only existing bidders are allowed to remain which makes it easier to gauge how many bidders their are and sometimes helps keep the auction closing price lower.

3. Know Thy Competitor

One things that power bidders do well is to pay attention to other bidders. Over time, they get to know who the other aggressive bidders are, what they bid on, etc. In doing so, they have a better ability to gauge whether or not to partake in a n auction. Try this: Start a document/spreadsheet where you can record user names of other bidders and how they behave. Over time, you’ll get to know better the big players enough to know when to stay away and when to get in. One thing to keep in mind is that MOST penny auction website allow users to have only 1 username making it harder for tricksters to bid with multiple accounts.

4. Be Prepared to Buy It

We can’t emphasize this enough. If you are bidding on an item which 1) has very little price variation (you cannot get it on discount anywhere else) and 2) you absolutely must-have, bid only on penny auctions which offer the “buy it” feature (list here). It’s simple, if you lose the auction, you can just buy the item and usually get all your bids back (varies based on penny auction) which gives you another chance to win something else in another auction.

Have any other penny auction bidding tips? We look forward to your comments below.