What is Quibids?

A commonly asked question is What is Quibids? One major reason people want to know what is Quibids is because there are many Quibids advertisements all over the internet. I have seen these advertisements from smaller blogs about auctions to newspapers like The Guardian! No wonder then that people are wondering what Quibids is and how does Quibids work.

In one line, Quibids is a penny auction. For those who do not know what is penny auction, it is a special type of auction (also called as bidding fee auction) that differs from the traditional auction sites like eBay. Here are the main differences:

• Bidding Cost: In traditional auctions, bidding is absolutely free. This is so for sites like eBay. However, in penny auctions like Quibids, each bid costs money. At Quibids, every bid you place costs you $0.60.

• Bid Value: In traditional auctions like eBay, you can place any bid value that you want. In penny auctions like Quibids, you are only allowed to bid to increase the price by 1 cent. This means you spend $0.60 for a bid and increase the price of the item by $0.01.

• Timer Increment: In traditional auctions, there is a timer that counts down to zero, never resetting and when the timer hits 0, the last and highest bid placed is the winning bid. In Quibids, the timer increments each time a bid is placed by 15-20 seconds. This happens every time you bid.

• Buying Obligation: Traditional auctions make money through the selling price of the item and therefore if you win an auction, you must purchase it. At Quibids, the main source of money is through the bids, so you are not obligated to buy a winning item but it is almost always in your best interest to do so.

• Loss and Risk: Traditional auctions can never get you in the red - if you lose an auction, you lose no money. However, at Quibids, if you are not careful, you can lose a lot of money.
  

I hope now you know what is Quibids. If you plan to join the site, you should definitely read my Quibids Strategies and Quibids Review. This will help you get over 90% off retail and also cut your risk. If you have any questions on what is Quibids or how Quibids works, just comment here and I'll get back. Good luck bidding!

How Does Quibids Work

This post is for the beginners who want to know how does Quibids work. For the people who are already members of the site and know your way around, you should look for my Quibids strategy series. For starters, you can look at the Best time to bid on Quibids, Quibids strategy of Waiting Game and Volunteer's Dilemma.

So for the newbies again, how does Quibids work? How are they able to give away Macbooks for a hundred bucks? Is Quibids legit? How can anyone offer 90% off?

So let's get the obvious out of the way - Quibids is legit and it is making loads of profit. It is not a charity that gives away brand new items for a few bucks. So how does Quibids work?
Simple - Quibids uses a Bidding fee auction model (link to Wikipedia page) which is usually called the penny auction on the internet.

There are 3 fundamental differences between penny auctions and ordinary auctions. If you understand these, you will know exactly how Quibids works and how they can offer up to 90% discounts and still turn a sizable profit.


Pay Per Bid: Bidding is NOT Free
This is the most fundamental difference between a penny auction like Quibids and a traditional auction site like eBay. Quibids makes it profit from the bids. Whenever anyone places a bid, she is charged $0.60 irrespective of whether it is a winning bid. As you can imagine, this adds up quick.

For example, a typical Macbook auction can attract more than 10,000 bids. This is a very conservative estimate. This translates to $6,000, which is a healthy profit margin for a Macbook selling at $100.

Do you see the point? Quibids doesn't make money from the price of the item they are selling. They can afford to give away the products for free! Their income stream is from the bids.

Simply put, Quibids is a win-lose type of situation. The winner can get a great deal on the purchase but everyone else loses. Contrast this with a traditional auction scenario which is a win-break even situation: If you win, you get a good deal and if you lose, you actually lose nothing. In Quibids, if you lose the auction, you will lose money.

Timer Increments
This can be a confusing aspect to beginners who ask how Quibids work because they do not understand how the timer is increment. In spite of what Quibids claims, the simple reason for this is they want to make more money.

A fixed timer can give rise to the auction strategy of sniping. Everyone will bid at the last moment. This will significantly reduce the total number of bids placed and as stated in the previous point, Quibids makes money off the number of bids placed.

So Quibids simply increments the timer by 10/15/20 seconds each and every time a bid is placed. This is also a reason why you will never know when an auction will end. It will always be 2 seconds away when someone bids and the timer increments. I have seen auctions go up to 12 hours for the big-ticket Quibids items.

Bid Value Incremental
In a traditional auction, you can bid any amount. However, at Quibids, you can only bid so that the price increments by 1 cent (sometimes 2/5/10 cents). Why is that?

As previously stated, the source of revenue for Quibids is not through the selling price of the item but through the bids placed. From their standpoint, they make a maximum profit only when the number of bids placed are high. So their aim as a business is to see to it that people bid a lot on a product.

The simplest way to accomplish this is by lowering a price. When someone sees a Quibids macbook selling for a couple of bucks, he is more tempted to bid than when the same product is bidding at a thousand dollars. Thus to maximize the number of bids placed, Quibids will not allow you to bid any amount but only an amount that increments the cost up 1 cent.

So now you know how Quibids works, you can start off your Quibids journey! Don't forget about Free Quibids Bids that you get on signing up. Also, before you start bidding, go through all the Quibids Strategies tutorial that you will find on this blog. This will greatly improve your chances of success and you can make some really good profits. Good luck!