Quibids: New items, new promotions

Quibids has been actively churning out new products and deals for its customers. This is natural, because with the hype, Quibids can make healthy profits off just one item.

For example, a few weeks ago, Quibids had a promotion offer selling a car. That's right, it is a big deal! Quibids put its market value at $20,000. The car was Honda Civic Coupe LX. This is the auction page screenshot after the winner was declared.


As you can see, the item sold for $1740.78, which is a significant saving for the winner. Unfortunately, there is only one winner and everyone else loses. In any auction, there are only two winners - the auction winner and Quibids!

Lets us calculate how Quibids rakes in the money through these auctions by doing a simple calculation from our side.

The auction is a 2 cent auction, and the total value the car sold at is $1740.78.
Thus the total number of bids placed by all Quibidders is 174078/2 = 87,039.
Total revenue for Quibids from this auction = 87,039 X $0.60 = $52,223.4
Total profit for Quibids from this auction = $52223.4 - $20,000 = $32223.4

From a single auction, Quibids has made over $30,000 in pure profits! Quibids claims a small revenue, but really, I am sure they rake in the moolah. The company wants to be open but is surprisingly closed like most other penny auction sites. Quibids is not an outright scam but if a company makes so much money at the expense of its customers, it is something to pause and ponder about.

Now, let us see how much all the Quibidders except the winner, merkmerk, have lost.

Total number of bids placed = 87,039
Bids by the winner = 2,044
Total bids lost = 87,039 - 2,044 = 84,995
Total value of lost bids = 84,995 X $0.6 = $50,997

Thus, in this single auction, all Quibidders combined lost over $50,000! Unbelievable, but true. Quibids and other penny auctions seem to be worse than gambling, where even compulsive gamblers will have a limit to their losses.

Quibids Strategy - 2: Best Time for Bidding at Quibids

This QuiBids strategy is as much valid in 2013 as it was in 2010 when it was originally written. Like with any other penny auction, low competition is the key to winning at QuiBids, and if you know the best time to bid on QuiBids, then you know the least competitive times to bid at.

QuiBids is a penny auction site that helps customers shop for items in a penny auction model. Thus, by its very nature, the ease of winning and the cost of items depends on how many people are online at a given point of time and how many auctions are simultaneously going on. Using the right Quibids strategies, you can win some items for really less, like QuiBids Macbook for less than $100. This is not a QuiBids scam, though QuiBids does rig the model in its own favor (who wouldn't?)

Since the guys at QuiBids are smart people and they have access to tons of user data relating to times, they try to ensure that the bidding process is uniform throughout the day. This means by bidding at one point of time, you should ideally get no advantage when compared to bidding at another point of time. Another way QuiBids tries to make auctions more 'fair' is by restricting some auctions only to certain users, depending on criteria that are not public. This has caused some outcry in the past, but those are the rules of the game.

However, as I would have suspected, the QuiBids guys are not that smart after all :) No, the process is not as smooth as it ideally should be. QuiBids strategy of trying to have an average of similar users/items for bidding doesn't seem to work practically.

Here is a list of times that you should bid during and some times that you should avoid bidding. This is from my own personal experience as I follow QuiBids auctions very closely and see how they work. If you think these aren't accurate or you have a different experience with your own QuiBids strategy, please let me know in the comments below.

Do note that this QuiBids strategy for bidding is not universal and you are NOT guaranteed to win auctions. Penny auctions depend on a million factors that are beyond your control. Worse, it depends on the behavior of other users, which is totally unpredictable. Therefore it is impossible to have a QuiBids strategy that will always work, and anyone who claims the contrary is simply a sham. There are no 100% guaranteed wins at QuiBids or any other penny auction really.

Here are some tips that will help you get the right QuiBids strategies with respect to the bidding times.

Best Times:

• Days: The best days to bid are Wednesday, Tuesday and Thursday, in that order. Some of the cheapest Quibids auctions have been won on Wednesday, somehow. There could be many reason for this. People are generally occupied with more important things during the weekdays.

• Times: The best time to bid in Quibids is around 2pm-5pm, EST. If you live in different time zones, convert it accordingly. This time there are few people bidding and lots of Quibids auctions to bid on. The ratio of users/live auctions is usually highest during this period, which is what determines the best time as Quibids strategy.

Worst times:
It is important to avoid these times as there are just too many people who are bidding on a given auction.

• Days: Weekends are the worst. Try to avoid them. There are just too many people who are free on the weekends and have nothing better to do than sit in front of their computers. You can see this yourself. Sunday evenings are perhaps the worst time for Quibids auctions from the user's perspective.

• Times: The worst time to bid on Quibids is somewhere around the night. In EST, this comes to about 10pm - 2am. This time has too few auctions and too many users. Try to avoid these times.

Demonstration:
This is a recent addition to this blog post to demonstrate exactly what I am trying to tell in this blog post.


Cheap Plasma TV for $4.10, bidding on a Wednesday during 2-5pm EST


Costly Plasma TV for $170.36 bidding on a Saturday night:


So now you know how important it is to bid at the best time in QuiBids. The competition on a Saturday night is going to be huge. Don't just look at the final price. Think of how many people had lost hundreds of dollars on this day trying to win this item. I am sure you can understand how relevant this QuiBids strategy is in order to help you win.

Let me know how your QuiBids experience goes after following these QuiBids strategies.
Also see QuiBids Strategy-1: Volunteer's Dilemma