HappyBidDay Starter Auctions are a Steal

So HappyBidDay is having these special starter auctions for new members. I am not eligible for them because I am a veteran bidder there, but if you are not yet a member, you should certainly check this out. These auctions are ending at a ridiculously low price and competition. The last 2 I checked ended with just 1 bid! (Here auctions start at $1.00 and not 0.00).

As you can see, both the above auctions ended with just 1 bid being placed. This is a great opportunity for people who are yet to join HappyBidDay.

For those who don't know, HappyBidDay is an excellent site for a number of products, but most notably, their Amazon gift cards with free bids are easiest to win. They are also run by very honest owners so you can be assured they are not a scam. They are not as popular as Quibids (yet) so the competition is low.
If you are new, you can use the coupon code HAPPY20 to get 20% off your first bid pack purchase. Also take note of their special 'insurance' for bid packs - if you don't win, you will be recredited the bids.

OrangeBidz Review

This is my OrangeBidz review

OrangeBidz is a penny auction that is much newer than the more established players like Quibids. This means you can get some great deals on the site as it is still growing. OrangeBidz gives some great deals on new products.

I was surprised to see the number of auctions already up on the site. OrangeBidz is relatively new and it has been online a little more than a week. Even now, there are more than 10 auctions per day, which is high for a new penny auction site.

OrangeBidz reveals all the previously ended auctions and their final price. This is unlike Quibids that hides this data. You can see the list of all closed OrangeBidz auctions to get an idea of the price and your bidding strategy.

OrangeBidz has all the usual good aspects of a good penny auction: no shill bidding, no bots bidding to increase the price, etc. It is a fair penny auction without any hidden fees. The bidding cost is $0.75/bid irrespective of how many bids you buy.

In my OrangeBidz review, I came across a great feature: OrangeBidz has no shipping fees! This means there are no extra costs associated with the auction, which is indeed good for the bidders.

OrangeBidz is also very active on social networks, especially Facebook. This is something Quibids does too, but Quibids is very competitive if you want to win some free bids. However, OrangeBidz is relatively new and you are not just another person out of the tens of thousands. There are regular competitions and contests that help you get some cool deals and some free bids. Penny auctions that are active on Facebook are more popular for obvious reasons in the long term. In addition, free bids are certainly a great way to start off bidding on a penny auction.

The customer service is prompt and helpful. This is an important aspect for a penny auction because it keeps the bidders happy and addresses all their concerns.

Another very positive aspect of OrangeBidz review is that it has very fast shipping. In fact, they ship the products the same day that they are won! They can afford to do this as they are new and there are not thousands of products every day.

I think OrangeBidz is a nice penny auction if you are looking for low competition penny auctions where you have a higher chance of winning than Quibids and other established penny auctions.

Check out OrangeBidz and let me know your thoughts on my OrangeBidz review.

Penny20 Review: Review of Hidden Limit Auction

This is my Penny20 Review
Penny20 is a new auction site that is already taking huge steps towards increased popularity. It isn't a penny auction site, but it is does fall under the "Entertainment Shopping" category. This means you can expect to get some really good discounts at a far lower loss and risk. Here is how the auction model works:

Penny20 is a Hidden Limit Auction
The first thing to remember in the Penny20 review process is that it is a Hidden Limit Auction. This is neither like a traditional eBay auction nor like a penny auction such as Quibids. The way it works is this: Every item has a fixed price and people start bidding on it. You will not know how much has been bid up to now. If you happen to be the last bidder to reach the predefined fixed price, you are the winner.
There are a couple of features you should know to win:

• If you bid up to 5% of the item's price, you can get a 'Reveal' feature wherein you will know about the bid amounts of all the bidders on the auction. This is priceless information in a Hidden Limit Auction! You can then decide your bidding strategy.
  
• You can buy all the remaining bids at any point of time and therefore win the product. No one can outbid you in this case. If you have already used the above 'Reveal' feature, you know exactly how much you will end up saving.
  

Penny20 is Not a Traditional Auction
Now lets review Penny20 from the point of view of how it differs from traditional auctions like eBay. As mentioned earlier, Penny20 falls in the category of 'Entertainment Auctions'. Thus it is not the plain vanilla type where everyone bids an amount and the highest bidder wins. In a way, a hidden limit auction is a bidding-fee auction model in which every bid needs to be paid for. This is unlike a place like eBay where bidding is free. The upside of course is that since the bids are paid, you can get a significant discount on the item you want to buy.

Penny20 is Not a Penny Auction
Now lets see a Penny20 review compared to penny auctions. Penny20 being a hidden limit auction is quite unlike a penny auction. The most important difference is that penny auctions end by the clock whereas hidden limit auctions end by the total amount collected. Thus there will be no auction where the auctioneer makes a killing, as commonly happens with penny auctions like Quibids (read my post on how much Quibids made on selling a Honda Civic car) At the same time, the auctioneer will also not make a loss.

Penny20 reduces Risk Compared to Penny Auctions
Penny20 falls in the entertainment shopping niche of auctions, but it greatly limits the risk and loss associated with these auctions. The first thing to remember is that the final price is fixed, therefore the auction cannot keep increasing in price (though it can go on for a long time - time doesn't affect the price, unlike in penny auctions). Any loss is therefore limited. In addition, there is a good feature of Reveal that tells you about the money invested by other bidders when you bid 5% of the final price.

A simple winning strategy is therefore this: Bid up to 5% on an ongoing auction. You will know what others have bid. If you are lucky, others have bid a lot in the auction and you can buy up all the remaining bids and emerge the winner. If not, you can wait and hope that no one else buys up all the bids. If at least 15% of the amount is covered through bids and you have invested 5% of this amount, you will emerge at a profit (beware though that the auction end price may be higher than the market price, in which case you will have to go over 15% before you decide to buy up all the remaining bids).

In this scenario, the maximum you can lose is 5% of the auction end price (if someone else buys up all the bids before you and wins) but you can win at any price (if you see that the pot is 70% full, you buy up all the remaining bids and end up paying 30+5=35% of the final price).

Penny20 Might not give you 99% Discounts
This is a tough one to decide: I don't think there is any realistic way in which you might get these huge discounts. This is because in all probability, there will be someone who knows exactly how much has been bid (by investing 5% of the auction end price) and when he sees the bids reaching close to the auction end price, he will buy up all the remaining bids and therefore win. It is highly unlikely that you might "accidentally" bid once and that reaches the auction end price and you win.

That being said, this is certainly possible. I see this scenario as a realistic one if there are some small ticket items and everyone just bids as soon as it is live. The auction may last for a minute or two and perhaps no one really knows the details on how much others bid. It is possible but not likely. This of course is determined by the scale - how many bidders are online and how aggressive they are with their bidding.

This is a scenario that I'll have to revisit after 6 months or 1 year but as of now, I don't see it being very likely.

Penny20 is New and Legit: Doesn't mean Discounts
This is not necessarily good for you as a bidder. If it were a penny auction and you were 100% certain that the site was legit, you can get heavy discounts because there are not enough bidders. On Penny20, it is the other way: since the auction end price is fixed, if there are more bidders, you can hope to get better discounts.

That being said, you can always decide to buy up the remaining bids and get some discount. It makes sense to join the site and get a feel for it in any case.

Penny20 lets you be a Seller
Penny auctions don't allow you to sell products on their website. All products are sold by the site themselves. At Penny20, anyone can sell anything, so in a way it is more like eBay. However, eBay charges a fees from the sellers to list their items. Penny20 doesn't charge anything from the sellers. It is thus a more open marketplace where you can buy and sell.

Penny20 Founders are Trusted
This may not sound like it is important but you would be surprised by the number of scams or number of sites that close shop after a few days/weeks/months. Penny20 founder and CEO is also the founder of Subjex, a publicly traded 11 year old company, so he sure knows his way around business. Personally for me, this is an important aspect.

I hope you found my Penny20 review useful. You can join Penny20 and look forward to a huge and vibrant community of bidders. Andrew Hyder, the founder of Penny20 has a goal of 1 million happy members in a matter of months, so let's see if he can reach that goal! You should read my Interview with Andrew Hyder of Penny20 as well.

Good luck bidding!

ScoreLuxe Review: Penny Auction for the Serious Bidder

This is my ScoreLuxe Review
ScoreLuxe is a penny auction with a difference. This site puts up auctions only for the more coveted items in the field of penny auctions. This means you will not see $10 Walmart cards or $15 ear plugs being auctioned here. You will find only high end products and gift cards - there are no cheap stuff. Here is a ScoreLuxe review for those who are interested in such items.

What makes this site attractive is a very neat design, a 100% satisfaction guarantee with the product and the no BS approach to penny auctions. Frankly, you cannot go for the "safe" here and you will only be bidding on high-end luxury items. Gift cards too are auctioned only for these luxury places like SpaFinder, Victoria's Secret, Bloomingdale's, etc. This is the aspect I like about ScoreLuxe review: It is a niche penny auction that doesn't auction everything under the sun but specializes in its niche.

If you like to pamper yourself but find spending $500 in a spa hard on your conscious, ScoreLuxe is a perfect place for you, as you can get the gift card much cheaper. You can also find designer goods, especially from Louis Vuitton.

However, ScoreLuxe is not limited to just the luxury items. You can find high-end electronics, most notably Apple iPad. You will also find Amazon gift cards to help you buy electronics online.

Coming to the iPad, it is a very common item that is put up on penny auctions, but ScoreLuxe seems to have it at one of the cheapest industry rates. As a comparison, consider the prices at ScoreLuxe and Quibids:



ScoreLuxe is over 10 times cheaper! And of course it is also much less competitive for these products.

It is hard to compare the other items because ScoreLuxe usually has unique items that are not common in other penny auctions. However, if you have always craved for indulging in some world renowned brands, here is a great place you can do it without spending hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Visit ScoreLuxe to see the items yourself.

Quibids vs Bidhere - 1

Here, I'll discuss Quibids vs Bidhere, two of the most famous and biggest penny auctions on the internet today. There are several important distinctions here and hopefully you will be in a better position to decide where you want to bid more after reading this post.

Both Quibids and Bidhere are legit penny auctions that are quite big. Being big is good for them because they don't have an incentive to cheat you. There are some smaller penny auctions out there that are not as reliable. However, if there is a younger penny auction and you trust it is legit, you will usually have a higher winning chance there than on either Quibids or Bidhere.
However, the advantage of Quibids and Bidhere is that they are both big and offer a very wide variety of products. You can therefore get many products that you are genuinely interested to buy.

So here is a comparison of Quibids vs Bidhere with respect to the most important features of the two sites -

Win Limits

This is the first important difference between Quibids and Bidhere that you will notice. Quibids has limits on the number of auctions that you can win. On the other hand, Bidhere doesn't really have any limits.

Now I cannot really say which one is good. Really, it depends on the type of bidder. If you are highly experienced and know all the penny auction strategies, you might want to be able to win many more items and would prefer no limits. However, if you are a relative beginner and like to bid and win conservatively, you will see that having limits is very good.

Why? Because it restricts the number of people who are highly aggressive and have huge investments. Remember penny auctions can become statistical games when there are huge investments. The small guy is therefore unable to compete with the big fish.

So what the limits of Quibids? Several. Here are the Quibids limits -

• In a 28 day period, you can win a maximum of 8 products.
  
• In a 24 hour period, you can win a maximum of 3 auctions.
  
• In a 28 day period, you can only win one big-ticket item (price >$999.00)
  
• In a 28 day period, you can only win one same product valued >$285.00
  

So these were the Quibids auction limits. At Bidhere, there are just no limits. This can potentially lead to people abusing the system.

Buy It Now Feature

Quibids is one of the best penny auction sites out there in this regard, and I really like them for this. Their buy it now feature allows you to almost eliminate the risk involved in bidding on penny auctions. This feature allows you to use the money spent towards the bids in purchasing the item at the retail price. The way it eliminates risk is that if you win the auction, you get the good discount but if you lose, you can still buy the item at the retail as if you were just buying from any online retailer. Of course there will always be small price differences, shipping costs, etc.

Bidhere has a different policy in this regard. Only some auctions have the Buy Now feature on this penny auction. Even then, there are limits -

• In a month, you can use the Buy Now feature at Bidhere a maximum of 4 times.
  
• In a month, you cannot purchase the same item more than once using this option.
  

These are quite limiting, considering the fact that Bidhere has no limits on the number of auctions you can be bidding on.

In the next part, I'll discuss Quibids vs Bidhere with respect to the types of auctions, winning chances, special gifts, bonuses and other interesting features. Stay tuned! And subscribe to the blog to keep yourself updated.