Largest Penny Auction Site

What is the largest penny auction site? A lot of bidders wonder about this. The answer is Quibids. It is actually by far the largest penny auction in the world. It has always been at the forefront of penny auctions, even though initially Quibids did not identify itself as a penny auction.

As an industry veteran, I am impressed by how Quibids survived and thrived as plenty of new penny auctions came and went bust. Even as other penny auctions were dying, Quibids was building a mark for itself. It has a nice, slow and steady progress growth.

What's also impressive is that the growth of new bidders has slowed at almost every site except Quibids. It still attracts a good amount of traffic every single day. You can look at the Alexa rank of Quibids and you will know just how impressive it has been all the while. No other single penny auction even comes close to being the industry heavyweight. I think Quibids does some things just right, e.g. Buy Now on all the auctions from a very long time, so it couldn't be criticized as gambling.

That being said, the obvious drawback is everyone knows about Quibids! This means increased competition because there are not enough products for everyone to bid on. This of course works against bidders. Worse, Quibids separates bidders as new, experienced, etc. and the more winnings you have, the harder your competition gets.

So which penny auctions do you bid on? 

Quibids Can Lose Money Too: Quibids Losses

Penny auction bidders usually think that the sites make a killing with all their bids. Although that is true in many cases, it isn't in others. There is a huge risk involved from the website by hosting penny auctions. After all, theoretically, they can lose almost all the money they paid for the product, although it is rare.

It is not just the new penny auctions that lose money on auctions. Even established penny auctions like Quibids can sometimes lose money on certain auctions. This is becoming increasingly the case as people seem to be saturated bidding on penny auctions and the industry as a whole has slowed down. This means, more and more individual auctions on Quibids might actually lose money for the company. On the whole, averaged out, Quibids probably still makes a killing, but it is interesting to note how the site can lose money too.

The big-ticket items that retail for excess of $2000 or so are the ones that are usually risky for a site like Quibids, although they can also be highly lucrative. Remember how they sold a car and make a cool 30 grand profit? Most of the times, in featured auctions of the week, Quibids prefers Apple products. However, of late, Quibids has been more adventurous and this is good for the bidders. By providing niche products, there will not be as many people interested in the product and there will be reduced competition. Of course any reduced competition is bad for Quibids.

Here is a recent auction.

This product is valued at $2076 by Quibids. Let us say this is actually the case and consider this for our example. Now, looking at the final price, we know that 1339 bids were placed in all. This means the total revenue for Quibids for this auction was 1339 X $0.60 = $803.40. The total loss therefore was $1272.60. This could actually be an underestimate of the loss because a lot of the bids could be virtual. However, overall, it seems that Quibids makes more money on virtual bid vouchers than real bids, so I wouldn't consider that too much.

This example is just to show that there are auctions where Quibids loses too. It is a risky game, after all. For all the new penny auctions out there - remember that the going can be tough at times. If the industry leader Quibids has trouble finding enough bidders, chances are, you might too. Be prepared for losses irrespective of how large your bidding base is. 

Quibids Mystery Auctions

Quibids mystery auctions are a surprise! Well, Quibids is not known for these mystery auctions but some other penny auctions sure do this. That being said, Quibids is the largest penny auction site out there, and it is always good to see some innovation and excitement from this industry leader. So what has Quibids done of late? Well, it is starting the Quibids mystery auctions. What are those? It's a mystery!

Well, the official blog post tells us little. All it says is that you'll see in April, so bidders should look forward to something fun then. There are 9 mystery auctions being run by Quibids.

Who is the QuiBids Girl in QuiBids Advertisements?

The Quibids girl unmasked! She became famous because that was the first time people heard of Quibids. Unfortunately, the original advertisement of Quibids was removed from Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pn046Ms5uXs)
However, if you are wondering who that Quibids girl was, it's D'Arcy Kate Fellona. She's a model and actress, in case you are wondering!

This is because people seem to be curious about this, especially because the ad has been removed and I cannot even find it online anymore!

New QuiBids Advertising Girl

Since I wrote this post, there has been a new QuiBids Advertising girl! She replaced the original model above, D'Arcy Kate Fellona. The new model is Kari Klinkenborg. She's a model too (of course!) and has featured in several photo-shoots and even movies. Here's her IMDb profile, for instance. She's also available on Model Mayhem for work, if you want to hire her for your own projects (profile since removed).

Weird Quibids Auction

I recently wrote about a Quibids auction TRS Ballistic Premium 3 Pc. Luggage Set.  It was one of the featured Quibids auctions, and I predicted that it might not garner as many bids as other featured auctions at Quibids.

Well, now the auction has ended, and at a price of $3.05! That's a $2,250 product! It is a very rare occurrence and as such is weird by itself. However, here is something even more strange - the auction history doesn't show the names of the bidders. See the picture below.

Does this mean something very wrong occurred during the auction wherein people were unable to place their bids or things of this nature? If so, it is a serious flaw and Quibids needs to address it immediately. Perhaps they should also refund the bidders.

Did you participate in the auction? Did you see anything like this before at Quibids? 

Diamond Earrings at Quibids

That's the featured auction of the week - 1/2 cttw. Diamond Earrings & Pendant Set. This is a good time for the offer, with Valentine's Day approaching. I have always argued that Quibids needs to take leadership in the penny auction sphere, being such a large and influential player. In addition, Quibids is perhaps the only penny auction which can single-handedly change the course of the industry.

This is a good sign - a diamond set is unlikely to attract as many bidders as a Macbook bundle which is usually the norm at Quibids for featured auctions of the week. Even if it isn't Apple products, it is usually some technology related items. A diamond set, however, might produce more passionate and determined bidders.

Even if Quibids doesn't make a killing off this auction, it is still a good thing as it gives bidders a chance to win something substantial without spending a ton of money on bids. Quibids, being as large a penny auction as it is, can afford to take a few losses for the bigger picture - bidder satisfaction. It would be interesting to note what price the auction ends.  

Quibids Goes Blogging!

That's right, Quibids is getting serious about blogging. I saw this trend about a month ago, but now it is promoting its blog already in the email newsletters that it sends out to all the members. This of course is a good idea - businesses need a blog to be open about their business. This is especially the case with penny auctions because the industry tends to be very closed. Quibids, as the largest penny auction in the US, almost has a moral responsibility to ensure that the industry doesn't go fall into the ditch.

There are a few penny auctions that blog seriously. PennyGrab blog is updated frequently with inside information about the site is a great resource for bidders at their site. There at not too many penny auctions that blog actively though.

So here is the Official Quibids Blog. What do you think?
One advice to Quibids - have the blog in a more prominent position on the homepage than at the very bottom. This way, bidders will be able to find it easily.

Bid Latency at Penny Auctions

This post about bid latency at penny auctions like Quibids is a guest post by one of my readers. Thanks a lot Jay for sharing this with my readers. I am sure they will find value in this.

Latency creates conditions from which penny auction sites like Quibids benefit, and players lose. The site benefits because players are making bids later than they think they are, so either 1) their bid could get to the server too late or, more likely, 2) Multiple players bid with a very low number of seconds left because they don't see the updates reflecting other bidders bids that were made a couple of seconds earlier. From the reading I have done online, people are blaming Quibids (for example), and while the site's servers can certainly be a part of the puzzle, there are other sources of this issue which are beyond their (and possibly the players') control.

The effect can be observed, by watching a number of bids -- just watch, and observe how many go down to 1 second and just sit there, and then all of a sudden things start up again, with one or more bids received - perhaps even with the clock starting below the current interval. I have seen latency approaching 10 seconds or more this way on rare occasions, usually at nite. Also, if the site has an indicator of the quality of your network connection on it, watch that and see if and how it varies.

In at least one case where I was bidding under a "waiting game" strategy I lost because while the time on my screen said 1 second, it had received its timer update late due to Quibids/Internet/ISP network latency. My bid arrived at the server too late to count because I had, from the perspective of the server, made the bid *after* the auction had already closed.

Also, because the "bid history" list from Quibids is updated independently of the auction status, it can cause the kind of discrepancy between the two that I noted when I read one of your blog articles.

There are several places where this latency can originate -- and at least two of them I know are occurring (numbers 3 and 4).

1. In the javascript that the browser runs to display bid activity - by intentionally delaying requests for updates. I have not seen any evidence of this, and in fact one can observe multiple updates to different bids on the same page, and updates that occur within a second or two, which lead me to believe this is not occurring.

2. In one's own PC or network. On one's own PC, one should run the leanest fastest browser possible - being sure that this speed includes the javascript implementation (at least for Quibids, because their bid pages rely on it). If one is using an HTTP proxy, perhaps bypass the proxy for the penny auction site to reduce latency.

3. In the ISP (e.g. Charter, AT&T, TDS, Comcast et. al.). This is almost certainly a biggy. It will increase in the evenings as people watch streaming content, during major sporting events, etc. It includes not only network speeds, but the time it takes to resolve a DNS name (like www.quibids.com) to its Internet IP address.

4. In the Internet between you and the penny auction site. (Used to be one could use traceroute to get an idea of what the network topology might be, but traceroute is pretty universally blocked these days).

5. On the penny auction site's server and network infrastructure.

Strategies:

a. Understand that if you are employing the waiting game strategy, then waiting until literally 1 second can be really risky. (I have seen blogs that implore bidders to absolutely wait until 1 second. Not advice I would give). As an alternative, you can afford to wait 1 second more than your largest network latency.

b. Consider using the site's bid automation (bid-o-matic, for example). This clock is on the server, independent of your machine, and is thus unaffected by network latency.

c. Run the fastest browser you can on the fastest machine you can.

d. Stay away from times when ISPs, the Internet and Quibids are more busy, at least until you have a firm grip on what your latency situation looks like.

e. Find a way to measure the latency of the response from the penny auction site so that you know what it is for your environment at a given time of day. (The Quibids site actually tries to help with a little indicator at the bottom of their page. It would be an interesting experiment to see how much delay affects it. In fact, I just noticed a period as I wrote this where it thought the connection was completely unavailable).

f. Consider that when Quibids shows you only some of the auctions that are actually going on, this may actually be a GOOD thing, because one thing they may be trying to do is keep their bid server farm response time even and fair (at least, I would if I were in their shoes). In fact, were I them, I would regionalize it / arrange it by Internet topology so that bidders that had connections which took fewer hops to get to the server didn't have an unfair advantage over bidders that had more complicated routes to the servers. In so doing, I'd also keep my network charges down.

g. Beware of using a wireless connection.

h. Do not put your browser window in the background, even for a second, unless you have the site's bid automation (e.g. bid-o-matic) running.

Author: Jay Jaeger

Better Quibids Data: A Welcome Relief

There is better Quibids data right at Quibids now! I think it is part of the effort by Quibids to move its business more mainstream, as it advertises on TV and wants to attract not just the few people who are already a part of the penny auction industry but a wider range of general audience.

Now, Quibids has better ways to look at past prices. I have previously complained about the misleading price information on Quibids. Previously, when an auction was underway, Quibids would say "Recently sold for $0.01" and the $0.01 was almost always the case because some obscure auction somewhere might have ended that way. This practice seems even more misleading because of the Quibids trap page. What is to prevent them from artificially dropping an auction price to a cent, just to use it for publicity?

However, now Quibids has a better practice of showing the least prices and a "..." where you can click to get all the recently ended auctions for that item you are watching. This is good because previously you had to copy-paste the item name and even then the search results weren't accurate. Plus it was too much effort. Now the pricing system is much more transparent.

I have always argued that Quibids, as an industry leader, should take the lead in making penny auctions more open and transparent. An important step towards this is making price information public and available for analysis. What do you think?

3rd Party Audit of Quibids

Looks like it is time to separate the wheat from chaff when it comes to penny auctions. They have gone out of their way to establish stricter rules regarding how they operate and Quibids now has a 3rd party independent audit report. You can read the Grant Thorton Quibids Report. This is an audit from a certified CPA which should help Quibids try to project a better image of itself.

Quibids has been an industry leader among a lot of things, and this is just another of those. Quibids however isn't the only penny auction to do this. However, it is definitely a step in the positive direction, especially at a time when people wonder if Quibids uses bots or other methods to cheat the customers. A lot of aggressive strategies look like bots but are actually humans.

The penny auction industry needs better controls in terms of authenticity and not scamming customers. Quibids is taking some steps towards a more open environment. After all, it is in their best interest - if people don't trust penny auctions, companies like Quibids suffer.

Ghost Auctions on Quibids

Quibids just announced new ghost auctions on Quibids! These are very similar to the mystery auctions that a lot of other websites have. However, they still do it the Quibids style!

So here, you are guaranteed a product that is worth more than $50. To make matters more interesting, Quibids has promised to tantalize the bidders with hints but not what the actual product is.
So for example, the name of the auction is The Ghost of Frozen Desserts. Now you know something about the auction but not a lot.

I think this is a good step by Quibids. I have always maintained that Quibids is the largest and most trusted penny auction but they are a little behind on coming up with exciting auctions and variations. Well, that should change now. Last week I wrote about the newly introduced Quibids games, which is a great addition and innovation from Quibids.

With this Halloween special, Quibids has entered the realm of mystery auctions, which is a double edged sword. If people don't bid crazy on them, they can be a great bargain, but if someone spends hundreds of bids only to find that the product isn't what he wanted or expected, that can be a little disappointing. Also, I am not fully sure how Buy Now would work here but it probably is still the same.

I hope Quibids is faster with innovations to roll out more exciting features. Being the industry leader, Quibids can surely make or break the reputation of the industry, so all eyes on you, Quibids!

Quibids Games

Quibids games have been introduced! Quibids is the largest penny auction in US. It is good to know that Quibids has taken the initiative to launch something new and exciting. It is high time after all - nothing seems to be happening at Quibids! Now there is good news - Quibids games.

This is a great addition to penny auctions and will definitely increase the time that users spend on the site, thus increasing the average number of auctions a user bids. It is a smart move in my opinion - it will provide something extra for bidders.

So what is Quibids games? How does Quibids games work?

Well, it is simple. Just look for the game logo on top of auctions, like 1xGP. After you win a game play (GP), you are free to select any game to play. Depending on the game, you can win free bids. It is an exciting feature to have and quite appropriate for a penny auction. There is currently just one game but I hope Quibids will have plenty more in the future.

I think the Quibids games is going to be a hit and other penny auctions might soon copy the model.

Quibids Poll Results

I had the Quibids poll running for a while now on my blog. Now, it is time to move on! Thanks to everyone who voted - I really appreciate it. I am closing the poll now after 500 votes. Here are the results:

Quibids Poll Results

Here are some more details:
Of the 500 people who voted,
126 - 25% made a profile using Quibids
162 - 32% made a loss using Quibids
107 - 21% ended up about even using Quibids
105 - 21% have never bid on Quibids

These are some interesting statistics as it shows that many people make a loss on Quibids. That is why, it is very important that you read the Quibids strategies, Quibids alternatives and other information on this blog. Also, never forget to use the Buy Now option and only bid on those products you want to buy.

I am starting a new poll, so do vote on that. Feel free to comment on any of the posts and I will get back. You can also reach me through email at quibidsblog@gmail.com

Quibids Review: Product Selection

This Quibids review is with respect to Quibids' product selection and variety that is available to bidders. You might also want to read a comprehensive Quibids Review, Quibids Review Compared to New Penny Auctions and Quibids Review Customer Service.

Quibids is the largest penny auction site in the US, and therefore it is not surprising to see that it offers a very wide variety of product selection. However, how good is it really?

Electronics: 
I think in the electronics section, Quibids does quite well. It has many popular products like iPhones, iPads, HDTVs, Kindles etc. Also, one good thing is that it also has some new electronics products which many haven't really tried. This is good because it gives bidders a chance to catch on to the next good thing in electronics and try out some cool gadgets. Some examples include Livescribe Smartpen and Night Owl 8 Camera Video Surveillance

One common complaint though is that Quibids doesn't have an iPad2 auction yet. This is a genuine and legitimate complaint. Many penny auctions have iPad2 auctions  and I don't see a good reason why Quibids should shy away from this product. It is quite in demand, after all.

Apart from these, Quibids also has many featured auctions of the week that are electronics. It has had a Macbook Pro bundle and this week there is a full Cannon Camera set. These are good products for the interested. This is a positive Quibids review with respect to its electronics products and I hope it maintains it in the future.

Jewelry: 
This is something that Quibids has recently started in the last few months. I don't remember seeing an auction for jewelry before that. I don't much like this product selection at Quibids for many reasons. Firstly, there are many good places to get cheap jewelry online and Quibids can be the costly way out. You can read my post on Quibids vs Ebay with respect to jewelry to know why it might be a better option to try out eBay instead of Quibids for jewelry. Also, I don't know much about sites like Bidz which specialize in jewelry but my guess is they might give better deals to bidders.

Niche Products:

This is an area Quibids will need to work in. This is because Quibids cannot take its position for granted. Sure, it is the industry leader today but it also needs to maintain its stand. Thus it needs to innovate better in terms of products it offers. This is my advice in the Quibids review for product selection.

There are several niche penny auction sites coming up every day. For example, many sites are opening that cater exclusively to the luxury segment and there are hardly any such products at Quibids. 

A possible future inclusion will be bullion. It turns out that it is a coveted item in penny auctions and it could be a good idea to include some gold and silver coins and bars at Quibids. There are specialized penny auctions coming up with the products but they are still far off.

Sites Like Quibids

What are sites like Quibids? People want to know because Quibids is getting more and more crowded and thus competitive. Sites like Quibids should have the desirable features of Quibids, such as product selection and being 100% legit. However, these sites shouldn't be like Quibids in terms of the competition. The best bet is to look for new penny auctions.

Quibids follows the model of penny auctions and there are many such sites that are coming up. Of course you should be very careful when you are looking for sites like Quibids because many penny auctions can be scams and they will not send you the product after you win. Therefore you need to look at trusted sites where there is not too much competition and you have a good chance of winning.

One good site like Quibids is HappyBidDay. I like it because it is relatively new and has some good product selection as well. In addition, they have a ton of free bids that you can use, so if you invest a little money in the bids, combine them with free bids and you have a winning formula. Right now, you get 50 free bids on registering!

I am not sure if this new penny auction can remain attractive forever. This is why I will update this information with various other sites. This is a very dynamic area when you are looking for sites like Quibids because sites and competition change all the time. You should be updated in order to get the best deals online on penny auctions.

Jewelry on Quibids

At Quibids, jewelry is becoming more and more common these days and I see lots of auctions for these items. These can range from necklaces to earrings. I have absolutely no problem with jewelry but I think they are misleading.

Jewelry is one of those few items that are hard to price and not uncommon to see ordinary auctions offering 70-80% discounts on the "retail" price. I think it is a marketing strategy: When you see a $100 necklace being sold for $20 you sure are tempted. This is bad enough in ordinary auctions but becomes worse in penny auctions like Quibids.

So when Quibids auctions jewelry, it shows the full retail as the buy it now price. This price is grossly inflated. This means people who don't win and want to buy it now might be paying 4-5 times the actual cost of the item! This is certainly not pleasant.

If you really want to know the "real" price of a piece of jewelry, you should visit ordinary auctions like eBay. For example, eBay has a section on Daily Deals. Here you can scroll down to best deals on jewelry and you can immediately see discounts of up to 85%! This means the real price you should be comparing with when you bid on jewelry items at penny auctions like Quibids is the price at sites like eBay. Of course Quibids isn't going to make it easier for you, so I urge you to do your homework before you jump on jewelry auctions at Quibids. There are many places where you can get great discounts without the risk of penny auctions like Quibids.

Quibids MacBook Pro Bundle Sells for $535.40

The Quibids Featured Auction of the Week was again a Quibids MacBook Pro Bundle, priced at about $4000. The final price for the ending auction was $535.40. Congratulations to the winner, banyquis!
You can find the Auction here.

The winning bid was placed by a BidoMatic. This is not always the case with Quibids mainly because it limits its automatic bidding tool usage, quite unlike penny auctions like BidRivals where almost every auction is won by automatic bidding tools only.

So what were the economics of Quibids auction for MacBook Pro? Here is a small calculation:

Cost Price of the Bundle= $3935.95
No. of Bids Placed: $535.40/$0.01 = 53,540
Selling Price of the Bundle = $535.40
Total cost of bids placed = 53540x$0.60 = $32,124
Quibids Profit = $32124 + $535.40 - $3935.95 = 28,723.45

Total Quibids profit for MacBook Pro Bundle is $28,723.45! That sure is a significant amount. However, the winner got this for a 79% discount and had to place 461 bids to win the auction.

Quibids down: Not Working

Quibids is down and not working now. This is rare for Quibids - there is usually no downtime and it is the first time I see Quibids down. I hope they can send out an email to clarify what happened. Since penny auctions are so fast going, it is not pleasant to have such down-times.

Added to this agony, many auctions have been canceled so there are about 10 live auctions, which is very low. Take a look at the picture below:

You can see that these auctions have been reset now that the site is up and running. They were obviously given an offset but I wouldn't be surprised if bidders ask for a refund at least on the auctions that there have bid. Quibids should address this concern immediately.

If you were unable to connect to Quibids, you can do it now. Try again! Were you affected by this during bidding? Let me know in the comments!

Quibids Coupon Code 3 Free Bids

I just came across a Quibids coupon code I want to share with you. Using this Quibids coupon code, you can get 3 free Quibids bids on registering. Just follow these steps:

1. Go to Quibids
2. During registration, enter the code "WINNOW"
That's it! This will give you 3 free bids on registration, so you can start off with something. Good luck!

Note: You might also try this alternative to get 10 free bids on registration.

Quibids takes you to NCAA

The Quibids featured auction of the week for this week is a trip to NCAA semifinals and champions game for 2! You can find the auction on Quibids.

The package also includes:
Round trip airfare departing from any major city to Houston
3 night stay in a hotel close the Reliant Stadium in Houston

The package is valued at $3500, which I assume is just an approximation of the total price. Quibids makes good money through featured auctions of the week and this should be no exception. I am sure there will be some fierce competition for this auction as well.

If you wish to participate in this auction, don't forget to check out my Quibids Strategies that will help you win this auction. Specifically, you should know about how to win through Quibids Strategy Waiting Game as it can be very useful to help save you money in this big auction while also giving you a good chance at winning.

You are also likely to encounter aggressive or power bidders at Quibids especially at these big auctions. You should know how to win against power bidders at Quibids. In addition, you will see the bidomatic being used more often than not, so remember to read about how to win against BidoMatic.

Finally, I have a guide especially for winning big-ticket items like this one, so read my big auction winning guide as well. Good luck bidding!