Penny auction software - Softmedia.biz

Q and A on Penny Auction Software #2

2012-01-20T07:52:00.000-08:00

Only one big question this week but that doesn’t make it less interesting or important.

Q. If I’m going to make money from my penny auction site is there a way I could artificially raise the price of the product or if it is possible to define a minimum price limit for an auction?

A. We often hear this question, and we have to note that a lot of people who plan to open a penny auction site have a strong misconception on how to make a site profitable. The important thing is this – penny auctions income doesn’t come from selling products! The majority of income is generated by active bidding ( user participation in auctions and buying of bid-packages). Earlier we described the income formula here.

For the second part of the question, we strongly do not recommend usage of bots, use of any other methods of manipulation to artificially raise the price of your prizes, or your income. Treat your customers with care and respect and they will keep coming back to your site, generating more and more profit in a more natural way.
Spend time to develop your strategy and plan ahead - our penny auction software provides a lot of ways you can make your PA site more entertaining without any foul play .

Penny stories #1

2012-01-19T07:23:00.000-08:00

Recently a penny that used to worth only 1 cent way back in the late 1700s was sold at auction in Florida for a stunning record braking $1.38 million! Now that’s one pricy penny.

The supposedly “historic” penny was made at the Mint in Philadelphia in 1793, during the first year that the United States started making its own coins after gaining independence from Great Britain.

You can read more at http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/historic-penny-sells-1-38-million-florida-auction-setting-record-article-1.1002456

Q and A about penny auction software

2012-01-13T06:01:00.000-08:00

Q. I need penny auction software for selling my specific products

A. Truly speaking, there’s a difference between regular e-commerce and penny auctions.

What we offer is a platform for entertainment auctions, and like any form of entertainment it’s profitable only when there’s a crowd involved. Your products can be one of a kind unique items, but they will bring you money only if you have plenty of visitors.

So the broader the product niche the more bidders you can attract and the more income you can generate.

Q.One thing I would like to ask is what modules do you recommend for start?

A. Excellent question. There are a lot of feurures to choose from, both adding completely new features and extending default ones, the desire to achieve total control can be tempting but it’s important never to loose focus.

We divided our penny auction software modules into five different groups to make it easier for our customers to workout a development strategy plan for their auction.

Don't focus on just one aspect of your auction features, choose a balanced mix between: usability, marketing, communication and administration modules depending on your business plan and customers' needs. Also after launch you can introduce fresh features as newly added to promote your website and let people know that your working hard to provide them with the best experience.

Why do penny auctions really fail?

2011-12-15T05:36:00.000-08:00

A while back one of the most well-known blogs on the penny auctions Penny Auction Watch published an article by Chris, the founder of a PennyPurses.com.

We thank Chris for pointing out the importance of preparation. In addition to Cris insiders’ expertise, we’d like to add a few words based on our experience.

• From every 20 people (or groups) wishing to enter the penny auction business, around 15 have a very small business experience;
• From every 20 software providers 15 are incompetent or even frauds.

So when you do the math, you'll get a number of 6.25% that’s the number of all PA that actually have a chance on success. And from our experience that number is more or less accurate.

In conclusion we’d like to share a short abstract from one of our clients’ reviews, founder of Lokuaz.com penny auction.

“I read penny auction forums and I think that people have a wrong impression about the industry and how to setup a company. It is as difficult as setting-up any other company where a very important variable is to create a good relationship and trust with your suppliers. I think that our good relationship with Softmedia is based on the fact that we had a clear business plan and budget, clear idea of what we wanted from the software and our software partner”.

Subscribe, stay informed and good luck!

Belgium to block unlicensed online gambling sites from 2012

2011-11-27T00:36:00.000-08:00

The Belgian government announced that it will block access to unlicensed online gambling sites from January 2012. In addition, websites on the 'blacklist' will not be able to process financial transactions coming from, and going into the country.

Peter Naessens, Chief of the Belgian Gaming Commission, reiterated: "After the 1st January, 2012 ISPs will be required to block the access of Belgian citizens to unlicensed internet gambling websites. Belgian banks will also be required to block the financial transfers coming from and going to these unlicensed websites."

So, it is a right time now to think about other entertaining websites for Belgians, for example penny auction sites.

Social Gaming to top $5 Billion by 2015

2011-11-13T12:09:00.000-08:00

In a new report issued by Parks Associates, the firm forecasts that the social gaming industry will increase it’s revenue by five times between 2010 and 2015. The revenue increase is fueled primarily by increased advertising revenues and virtual goods sales. According to Parks Associates, these driving factors have already pushed social gaming revenues north of $1 Billion in 2010, and they see the trend continuing. The research firm presented the findings of their Social Gaming: Market Updates report at the Game Investment Conference in Austin, TX.

“Gaming on social networks has quickly become the most visible category of online games,” said Pietro Macchiarella, Research Analyst, Parks Associates in a statement. “Right now more than 250 million people play games like Zynga’s CityVille and FarmVille on Facebook every month, and both game developers and marketers have taken notice. Big brands such as McDonald’s and 7-Eleven have carried out cross-promotions with existing social games.”

Macchiarella also points to improved user monetization is a factor contributing to the industry’s success. He notes that early entrants to the field missed key monetization and revenue opportunities, but rapid advancements in gameplay has allowed for more effective incentives for users to purchase virtual items. Examples include virtual tractors and seed, items that improve or enhance gameplay, as well as rare items (swords, shields, etc.) to build status.

Penny Auction profit

2011-09-09T06:53:00.000-07:00

Our customers often ask us: "Can a penny auction business be profitable?"

From our experience we can give an answer: Yes, it can be.

We have seen the following cases.
The iPad went for $202.15. As each bid increments the price by $0.01 it means that Bouncybids got 20,215 bids and earned $12,129 (one bid costs $0.60):

As the retail price of this iPad is about $1,200 the profit is 12,129 – 1,200 = $10,929 USD or 910% !

The Amazon Electronic gift card of $250 value. It was won for $23.32, which means that 2,332 bids were made. 2,332 bids * $0.60 = $1,399 income. $1,399 – $250 = $1,149 profit or 460% !

So, these are good results. And it is a true proof, that when running penny auction business goes step by step and is accompanied by well-organised marketing strategy, it can be profitable and succesful.

Good luck with your penny auction business!

Penny auction software - 2 strategies

2011-08-05T04:36:00.000-07:00

Customers, who purchase penny auction software from us, often ask us what strategy is better in order to run penny auction business. We can say that there is 2 main strategies:
1) aggressive;
2) step by step.

The first strategy contains significant promotional budget. As auction items are used quite expensive electronic goods, such as computers or gadget and not less than 20 live auctions per day are held.

The second strategy "step by step" characterizes modest expenses on advertising and promotional campaigns. Auction items are the goods at a price from 10 to 50 dollars. The number of live auction are about 2-3 daily or even 2-3 per week. Customers like new small penny auctions because the competition is low initially.

We are convinced, that both these strategies have a right to "live". Even the fact, that aggressive strategy gives an opportunity to make money fast, it containes risk and big initial expenses. That is why, deciding to run penny auction business, think over, what strategy mainly you will choose.

Penny auction sites

2011-07-01T05:43:00.000-07:00

From time to time our potential customers tell us that their country is saturated with penny auction sites.
We believe, that if penny auction web site is professionally and good made, it will gain much interest even it is not first on the market. Modern attractive design, interesting features together with online advertising give the site more opportunities to be successful.

There are many features, that could attract customers. These are, for example, voting system, that gives a possibility for registered customers to vote on future auctions. Auction items, that gathered the most number of votes, start first.
Customers appreciate when their wishes are taken into consideration. Another not less interesting feature is Higher Lower game. This is for those, who like to try their luck in playing cards. Basically it is a simple card game, but with a possibility to win additional free bids.

Usually customers want much attention for themselves and, for example, everyday quiz may be useful. There the customers can answer question and get free bid(s) for this. Thus they get more satisfaction from their participation.

It is known, that bidders bid against each other and they all want to be ahead of their competitors. In order to know how powerful the competitor is, they need some information. It is possible to use the following - customers can see other customer’s 30-days bidding history. They pay money for this service and get history information.
At the same time exists the ability for the customer to hide his bidding history from others. It makes the competition more passionate.

Such features make a penny auction website more good-looking.

.............. /Natalie Shtangrat, Softmedia international sales manager/

Why seat auctions do not generate an interest?

2011-05-04T03:34:00.000-07:00

From time to time our customers inquire from us to deliver seat auction software to them. And then we are using many efforts to persuade them not to order this. After the last conversation we decided to bring our arguments here.

For those who do not know what is seat auction: customers pay fixed entrance fee; when the needed number of participants have paid this “seat” fee, penny auction starts and bidding is free of charge for them.

One of the main reasons is the length of time it takes an auction to get started. So, customers should wait unpredictable period of time till auction starts.

Another important factor seat auctions don't give any success is because there is no instant gratification. Many people start bidding in penny auctions because of the fast action. Within a few minutes (or maximum hours) they will either have won or lost. If a bidder knows he is going to have to wait hours/days (or even weeks) to participate in a seat auction, he is surely losing his interest.

The whole reason why many bidders participate in penny auctions is to relax after a long day of work. And even the fact, that seat auction format does not contain the risk of the customers' losing much money, it does not give much interest.

The more experienced bidders who use auctions to make a profit view seat auctions as a bad investment. As the probabilities of them winning are basically equal with everybody else, the chances for a profit decrease remarkably.

Social games in numbers

2011-04-03T01:36:00.000-07:00

55% of all players - women.
43 years - average age of the player in USA and UK.
76% users of social games play with the users from same age group.
89,6 million people - a world audience the most popular social game,CityVille from company Zynga

/Appdata.com/

Penny Auction as part of the iGaming Business

2011-02-18T07:57:00.000-08:00

Sometimes people wonder under which label of business penny auctions stand. Is e-commerce? Is it Retail? Is it Gambling?

We believe that they are a little of everything mentioned above, but cannot bear any of those restrictive labels.

Softmedia happily and satisfactorily sponsorship and participated in ICE 2011 held in London 25-27 of January. ICE 2011 is the biggest global show in gaming world and we believe it was a great opportunity to spread our brand through what might be the future of our business.

Having access to wide amounts of online consumers, bookmakers and online gaming providers already have one of the most essential requisite for a successful enter in the exciting business of penny auctions.

We are ready to co-operate with the iGaming Business, what about you, are you ready to take the challenge?

Penny auction and a hosting server

2010-12-16T13:04:00.000-08:00

We composed, with a little help from our customer from Austria, the following arithmetic task:

At your penny auction website you have:
- 10 live auctions;
- 150 bidding customers;
- 350 just logged in customers, not bidding;
- 1500 not logged in, just visitors, followers.

Question: how many requests will receive the server per minute?
/Please give any number what you want – average, or minimum, or maximum.../

We look forward to receive your estimations and we will respond fast - is your answer close to real or not. And you will know the level of your penny auction tech. knowledge. Please write to mail@softmedia.biz. Thank you all in advance.

Guidelines for Penny Auction Site Owners

2010-10-17T12:30:00.000-07:00

Pennyauctionwatch.com published recently an article "Guidelines for Penny Auction Site Owners". From the title we concluded that it will focus on how to make the PA website successful.
In fact, the article is about what not to do. Despite this, we fully agree with the following tips.

What Not to Do

* Never, ever, ever shill bid- Don’t use fake admin bids/bots, this can be a script or it can be the site owner bidding. against customers or users that are employed by the site to bid and are not paying for the bids.
* Never divulge users personal information to a third party. Make sure you do not fail to BCC e-mail addresses when bulk mailing.
* Never tell other bidders how many bids another bidder has.
* Never give out free bids under the table.
* Don’t false advertise, don’t use “fake news advertorials” or create shill watchdog sites.
* Never pretend you’re a customer of your own site, this is shill reviewing and is prosecutable (see United States v. Denlinger).
* Don’t inflate retail prices.
* Don’t have hidden fees or fine print, display terms & conditions in a readable font.
* Don’t auction off items you cannot afford to lose and do not intend to fulfill.

Thanks, Amanda!

Penny auction script search

2010-09-17T02:41:00.000-07:00

We would like to bring here some typical discussions between us and our customers.

Customer1: "Hello,
The price is really high for our budget, we are considering http://www.phppennyauction.com/ "

Customer2: "We don't want complicated script but we want simple and lowest possible priced penny script.
We want this kind of working : http://www.bidrivals.com/ "

Softmedia to Customer1: "Hello,
Good, that you sent this e-mail to us. We will save you a some portion of money.
Press here: http://www.google.ee/search?q=phppennyauction.com+scam
Please read also below our answer to Customer2".

Softmedia to Customer2: "Hello. We have experience 2.5 years in penny auctions, 10 years in software development, 20 years in business, and can say the following:
1. Lowest possible price, what you can find in internet, is probably 2 dollars, or 49.
2. Lowest possible price for the script, which is really working, is USD 3,000. Truly.
3. This is not e-commerce, this is online gaming business. It is not for everyone. www.Bidrivals.com is a global project, has 11-12 servers in datacenter in Finland. We estimate the total investment between EUR 700,000 and EUR 1.2M. We can send our pricelist, starts from 3000, and other detailed information."

Customer1: "Yes, send the list please."
Customer2: NA

First Penny Auction for casino players (... and v.v. :)

2010-08-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

"We are officially the first penny auction site that specifically caters for poker, casino and sports enthusiasts!" - declares UK Penny Auction Bidibot.com.

And really, they draw credits for well known online casino and online poker websites. Bets for the sports betting websites are promised soon.

It is nice, that Penny Auctions have attracted increasing attention from gaming industry' professionals.

Good to inform all our readers here about our participation in the 9th European iGaming Congress and Expo, 19-21 October in Copenhagen, Denmark. Welcome to Softmedia stand no. 392.
Our idea of participation is to inform internet-gaming businessmen about possible synergy between Penny Auctions and gaming websites (affiliate deals and much more).

Links:
Bidibot.com
EiGExpo.com

Big players are starting to recognize Penny Auctions

2010-08-07T01:52:00.000-07:00

According to VentureBeat.com, Skype cofounders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis’ investment group Atomico Ventures, have just recently invested US$6 million in UK penny auction site MadBid.com.

MadBid.com was launched in August 2008 in London UK and they are now the UKs leading pay-to-bid auction site.

Full story: venturebeat.com/2010/07/26/atomico-ventures-skype-madbid-com

Penny auction scam

2010-08-06T01:13:00.001-07:00

This link below is for all who are dreaming about making money using shill bidders:

www.pennyauctionwatch.com/2010/05/penny-auction-pardoo-gone/

Please spend 10 minutes of your time and read the story from there.

Penny auction profitability continued

2010-06-28T02:11:00.000-07:00

We made a short Study of Penny Auction website productivity depending on intensity and quality of the internet traffic to the website.

*) Counted as interval between first purchase and last visit.

As can be seen, 100 unique visitors to the auction website bring from 1 to 4.5 paying bidders, each of them can bring $50-60 during his “life”.

The numbers above are taken from real working websites with irregular advertising expenses. We estimate that permanent advertising support can improve average “life” expectancy and income per customer up to 2 times.

The dependence of income in $1,000 per month (Y) on the number of unique visitors per day (X) may be as shown at the following chart:

The revenue percentage will be bigger in case of bigger traffic, because operational costs do not grow as fast as income.

Expected revenue is 30-50% from total income due to the advertising cost, the cost of prizes and operational expenses.

We welcome all followers to share their opinion about above mentioned numbers - are they relevant or not?

Penny Auction profitability

2010-06-22T03:03:00.000-07:00

Penny auction business became a relatively big industry and because of this the number of interesting information in internet about penny auction profitability is growing.

If earlier the information was mainly spread through blogs, Wikipedia is coming to the fore now.

For general information we recommend the following links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_auction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoopo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_bid_auction

Penny Auction Traffic and Performance

2010-05-28T03:38:00.000-07:00

Customers often ask from us: how many simultaneous bidders your software can manage, how big traffic endure my website?

We understand, how important this question is for penny auction site owners, but there is no direct answer. Very much depends on your server and server software configuration.
Obviously, if you take two times more powerful server, then the software will run faster. However, the more productive is the software, the lower are the subsequent costs, because, as a rule, you have to pay for the software once and for the hosting server all the time.

Productivity of your auction can be found even before its launch. There are many opportunities to learn reaction/download time of your website into the user's browser. We use the Firebug extension for Mozilla browser Firefox.
You can install this extension in your web browser from here - getfirebug.com and to check the download time of the pages (in milliseconds) of the popular penny auctions, such as:

Deacentavos.com - about 75 ms,
Swoopo.com - about 110 ms,
Bidcactus.com - about 225 ms,
Bigdeal.com - about 230 ms.
etc.

Have interesting research!

"Beezid.com is scam" - politician said

2010-05-21T14:26:00.000-07:00

Famous politician Kevin Tracy investigated popular penny auction Beezid.com and came to the conclusion, that it is scam, it is cheating.

"Beezid appears to be using bots (software that runs an automated task) to ensure people keep bidding" - Tracy wrote in his blog yesterday.

Full article here: www.ktracy.com/2010/penny-auction-scam-at-beezid-com

Penny auction in Chinese

2010-05-05T02:51:00.000-07:00

Our first penny auction in Chinese language is launched successfully on Monday.

A huge number of visitors and registered customers confirms a widely known truth - China is a huge market.

Welcome: www.Cometobid.com.tw

Penny Auction Investment Club news

2010-04-12T02:44:00.000-07:00

We have the first investor member in our Club. His information is here:

"My name is ... (we know the name), I reside in London, U.K.

I represent a group of INCUBATOR investors and internet marketers that have a opening for investing in internet based business's.
My role is to evaluate the business with my investors to see if there is an interest to invest and market the opportunity .

To evaluate any proposal we would require the following to base a firm decision as to funding requirements,
1, business summary.
2. business plan
3. Executive summary
4. financial forecast / cash flow .

Other details may be requested later.

please contact with the requested details initially by email (we know the email).

Thank you".

We welcome our customers to contact with new Club member through us - mail@softmedia.biz.

New customers please contact through the form at www.Softmedia.biz.

.

Penny auction software news

2010-04-08T06:31:00.000-07:00

At one website we found the following text:

"Penny Auction Software is a very special kind of software. Its major difference from a regular website is the immense load it creates on the database server. Regular websites require some response from the database only when a user switches between pages. Therefore, if a user visited, let’s say CNN.com and looked at 2 pages, it created 2 database requests. Thus, for an average visit of 1 minute, 3 or 4 database requests are generated for each user. (That is a simplified statement; in reality more than 1 request to database server are created)

For penny auction software the situation is very different. A Penny Auction website gets updates from the server each second for each user! So, if your website has 100 users, it probably makes 100 requests per second. Why should it worry you? Because most of dedicated servers will have a threshold of a few hundreds requests only and if the software is not optimized for the ideal state the result would be massive spending on buying new servers immediately after first advertising campaign."

We can comment this as follows: it is correct in general, correct for standard/initial versions of penny auction software.
Usage of different professional cashing techniques allows to raise the number of users to a degree without torturing the server.

How many (penny auctions) is enough?

2010-03-14T08:12:00.000-07:00

"There are two or three penny auctions in my country, does it make sense to compete with them?" - a customer asked.

We are confident that this makes sense. There are over 6 billion people in the world. And if only 400 thousand are in your country, as in Malta, why not offer services in several countries or globally?

Below you can find a short list of internationally known casino and betting websites.
Website: www.softmedia.biz/casino.jpg.
It just fell into our hands, but we know that it is far from complete. And how many internationally known penny auction sites do you know? Two, three, hardly more... Act!

Effective penny auction

2010-03-11T02:20:00.000-08:00

Customers often ask us: "How can I establish an effective penny auction?"

We can give you the following advice:
- make you auction website clear and simple,
- advertise it,
- don't forget to send prizes to the winners,
- give a reward for bids used.

It is that simple.

And a last bit of advice: let real customers bid at your website, not robots or "bots". Otherwise the real clients may require all their money back at any time. In the best case. In the worst case you will have to give an explanation to the police.

Penny auction news

2010-03-02T03:41:00.000-08:00

Dear followers,

Thank you for your participation.
Yesterday and today are fantastic days for us – our customers launched three auctions – one in Arab countries – www.anayabe.com - , another in Croatia – www.tiktak.hr and a third in Estonia - www.bidzone.ee

In March and April number of auctions will start.
Don’t forget to follow them :)

The penny auction business - is it legal?

2010-02-21T08:42:00.000-08:00

Our clients ask us this question from time to time.

Indeed, about two years ago such a discussion took place. Some commentators argued that penny auctions are gambling. But very quickly it became clear, that if an auction is held fairly, it is not gambling.

We believe that banks have highly qualified lawyers, so we provide here two links to information about an investment of the French bank "Crédit Agricole" in the German penny auction Dealstreet.com.

http://www.ca-privateequity.com/en/att00000616/UKUpsideShopping4_12_09.pdf (PDF)

http://www.credit-agricole.com/banking-:-account-bank-and-business-banking-171/press-releases-195/general-press-releases-203/credit-agricole-private-equity-invests-in-germany-upside-shopping-gmbh-4132.html (HTML)

In this post we would like to encourage other investors to invest more boldly in the penny auction business. And for this we are opening a Penny Auction Investment Club.

If you open a penny auction and need further investments - contact our Penny Auction Investment Club. If you are a venture capitalist looking for investment objects - let us know.
We guarantee the confidentiality of your information and your private data.

We welcome your e-mails at mail@softmedia.biz

Penny auction blog

2010-02-11T01:45:00.000-08:00

With this post we want to thank those of our readers who do not just read our blog, but also actively participate in the discussion, send us comments, questions and suggestions.

We are interested in active contacts through this blog, because the penny auction business is rather young and each of us can take part in its development.

So, we are looking forward to your letters, comments, and questions. We welcome any questions. Of course, we reserve the right to not answer all the questions, and to not publish all the comments.

We welcome you to discuss with us penny and other types of auctions and their software!

About penny auction with accelerating timer

2010-02-10T08:12:00.000-08:00

In addition to our previous post about how to start a penny auction slowly, we would like to tell you about the system, that is used at Bidrivals.com and Ziinga.com.

1) the auction is started with a countdown timer that is set to 5 hours, for instance.
2) all bids made to the auction before the countdown goes below 15 secs do nothing to the timer. It just keeps counting down.
3) any bid placed within the last 15 secs resets the time to 15 secs.

Interesting that there is no information about this system on the above mentioned websites.

... plus free hosting!

2010-01-23T13:44:00.000-08:00

A penny auction is not an ordinary website, since it is necessary that the image on the visitor's screen updates every second. This means that each visitor's browser accesses the hosting server 1 time per second. If at the auction website, for example, there are 150 visitors, which is not much, this means at least 150 calls to the server per second. It doesn't matter if these visitors are registered users or not, wheither they are bidding or just watching.

This means that shared hosting is not very suitable for commercial exploitation of a penny auction. Only for a slow start. Same thing for so-called VPS (Virtual Private Server).
We always recommend that our customers use a dedicated server. Therefore, an offer of free hosting for 12 months gives us the impression that this software will never be used for a commercial run.

When we say "No"?

2010-01-16T13:23:00.000-08:00

We received the following request. In fact, it was a claim:
"It’s funny how before we signed the contract all I was hearing was yes and now all I am hearing is no".

Here is our answer:
"All the technical details should be finalized and agreed upon during the initial discussions and signing of the contract, but not at the stage of performance. It is the „alpha and omega“ of professional software development. Statistics show, that 70% of software projects are not pursued to the end because of changes during development or implementation. To make changes at these stages is a sure way to kill a project.

We try to meet customer needs as much as we can. But consider two things:
Firstly, our product is a software product from a conveyor, not a software development service, and to make changes is not easy.
Secondly, to discuss each change several experts must be involved, who are not always easy to pull away from their current work.
Therefore, every such discussion is a headache.
We hope this explanation gives you an understanding that we are not swindlers".

Where we found the statistics - here are some old, but still valid surveys:
http://www.it-cortex.com/Stat_Failure_Rate.htm.

Once again, colleagues: second thoughts are best!

How to start internet penny auction slowly?

2010-01-09T03:18:00.000-08:00

If you have a limited advertising budget, then think about a so-called "accelerating penny auction".
It works as follows - initially any auction item has a date and time, when the auction should finish. In general, it is possible to bid on items before this time. The last bidder at the finish time is the winner. But every bid adds 1 penny to the starting price and also adds a short time interval, for example, 90 seconds, to the end time. In fact, after the initial end time the auction works as an ordinary penny auction.

The idea is, that the owner of the auction has more time for advertising and a slow launch of his auction, because the end time of the auction may be a few days away.

Who should open a penny auction?

2009-12-05T03:10:00.000-08:00

We get a lot of requests about penny auctions.

Matters are different:
"Do i need to register under my company name?"
"I need Penny Auction site for baby products"
"I am looking for penny auction software that I could utilize in a charity".

Looking at these requests, I recall the discussion, which was several years ago about who should open the e-shop. Then quite strongly sounded the opinion, that the best candidate for the position of the owner of e-shop is the owner of traditional, offline store.
Why? Because he has everything he need except the website.
He has the goods for sale. He know how to serve and support customers. He know about everyday advertising. He know about delivery. He has the company, accountant and even terminal for credit card payment. And the last, but not least - he is a proven merchant.
We have made more than 10 penny auctions. Most of our customers are individuals, who want to start their first business. They are very enthusiastic and want to launch their auction website quickly.
Till now the percentage of successful launches we have is 15-20. Some projects have not been brought to the end, some worked for 3-4 weeks and were closed by their owners.
What I would like to say? With this post I would like to encourage experienced businessmen, foremost e-commerce businessmen, to think about entertaining shopping.

Swoopo Clone PHP Script on Money Makers Network

2009-11-21T03:29:00.000-08:00

http://www.moneymakersnetwork.info/products/Swoopo-Clone-PHP-Script.html

Swoopo Clone PHP Script

RRP:
Price: $97.00
SKU: SWOOPO

Another multiple shameless theft. Using another's trademark they knowingly sell defective goods.

Penny auction software from telebidscript.com

2009-10-20T03:17:00.000-07:00

Customer from Europe reported, that after making payment €800 to telebidscript.com he experienced dificulties to speak with them and telebidscript didn't delivered the product.

Another sad story about penny auction software

2009-10-06T22:44:00.000-07:00

"I bought the package off of Hotscripts. It has several bugs I have already found, so we aren't really happy with it. "
Randy, USA

What to say - probably all scripts cheaper than 3000 doesn't work.

Dubli.com closed zero-auction, finally

2009-09-30T02:28:00.000-07:00

Dubli.com had three options for the customers:
- X-price Auction, which they name Xpress (don't know why - this type of an auction is much slower if to compare with penny auction),
- Unique Bid - unique lowest bid auction,
- Zero Auction.

This was an explanation of zero-auction from dubli.com website:
"Dubli will list an item up for auction at the lowest possible price on the internet. In fact the Dubli price guarantee; guarantees the starting price of every item to be the lowest on the internet, or Dubli will refund the difference plus another 10%. if you find the same product at a lower price with in two weeks of your purchase.

In order to reveal the most current price you must spend one Dubli credit which cost eighty cents to reveal the current price. Every time the price is revealed by a Dubli customer the price of the product drops in increments of twenty five cents until the price of the product falls zero. In order to be the awarded winning bidder you must clicks to reveal the final price which drops the final price from twenty five cents to zero. It’s that simple!"

Not a smart idea. In reverse X-price auction you can buy the product every time, when you bid and price became open. In zero-auction you should wait when the joint efforts bring the price to zero.
Not a surprise, that they had to close this section, obviously due to lack of visitors.

Swopo clone - penny auction appellative name

2009-09-24T05:34:00.000-07:00

We ask our potential customers - please don't send to us e-mails like the following:
"Please send us info reg. your Swoopo clone software and access to a demo. Thanks".

We don't produce any Swoopo clone, Swoopo type or Swoopo like software! The name of our software product is penny auction software, initially it was "Cent auction software", because first penny auction was made in Germany.

Swoopo is a trademark of Entertaiment Shopping AG, who owns Swoopo named websites, like swoopo.de, swoopo.com and swoopo.co.uk.

Other producers of penny auction software, like our company Softmedia, are not connected with this company and this trademark.

Telebid script feature "Never make a loss"

2009-09-22T05:13:00.000-07:00

Some penny auction scripts provide among features so-called 'riskless' functionality. The logic is easy: if auction has not collected enough bids, it cannot finish. Usually this means that it is extended by adding 'fake' bid. So, timer is reset and real clients must bid once more.

Though this functionality might seem to be very attractive for auction owners, we strongly not advise to use it.

First of all, this is outright deception of clients. According to the rules, if time is run out, client should become a winner. But in case of 'riskless' auction client does not. So, the rules are violated. The solution would be to rewrite rules so that clients would know that they cannot win until the auction receives a minimal amount of bids. But it is easy to predict that nobody would bid at auction knowing about such 'warm-up constraint'.

Secondly, our experience is that it is easy to discover if auction is 'riskless'. If you see that some client (or even several clients) is constantly bidding at last second on many different items then you should suspect dishonest game. Real clients usually do not bid on all the items at the very last second.

To sum up, 'riskless' functionality is both unfair and noticeable. It may discredit the auction and cause complaints to consumer protection bureau.

Advice to penny auction clients.
If you find a new penny auction and want to start bidding, it is good to find out who is the author of the software at first. When you know the software manufacturer, check that they do not offer cheating software features to their customers.

If you see that the auction may cheat you or you cannot find the software author, we advise you not to bid at this auction.

Reverse X-price auction - is this a viable business model?

2009-08-30T19:01:00.000-07:00

Bidooba.se is closed.
Bidooba.se was a nice designed Swedish reverse x-price auction website. It worked approximately from January till July. Another well-known reverse x-price auction is Dubli.com, which is still in profit, but maybe because of combining 3 types of auction in one website - reverse x-price, zero-price and unique lowest bid auction.

If we compare 3 types of auctions in one table, then we maybe should make a conclusion, that reverse x-price auction is not viable online. Let us see:

	X-price	Unique lowest	Penny
Bidding	Paid	Paid	Paid
Current price	Unknown	You define	Known
End price	Market price	Very low	Very low

Development of UK market - tight battle

2009-08-29T11:40:00.000-07:00

Interesting information was published in Redbread.co.uk page source. Redbread penny auction started 14 of August.
Here are the lines:

<meta name="publisher" content="Entertainment Shopping,
Inc" />
<meta name="copyright" content="Entertainment Shopping,
Inc." />

As we all know very well, Entertaiment Shopping AG is the owner of Swoopo. Swoopo has raised $10 million from August Capital this spring and previously raised $4 million from Wellington Partners.

If this is not a coincidence, then it seems, that part of this money is aimed at smoking out competitors - Madbid, Cookiebid and others.

How to fight against snipers (cheating software)

2009-08-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

"Snipers" use automated "sniping" software to place bids for them.

By common opinion, the use of software, that bid automatically at the last second, is not fair at the penny auctions. This tactics smokes other bidders out and kills the game.

What to do?
First measure, what was invented by owners of penny auctions, was administrative - to limit the number of wins in week and month per customer.
Some auctions have tried to use Captcha, when customer press the bidding button (a challenge-response test to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer). 100% guarantee, but complicate manual bidding.

We are programming the tool for eliminating snipers now, our clients will be free of these players soon.

How much profit can generate penny auction?

2009-08-23T04:40:00.000-07:00

The question we are asked quite frequently.

The answer is simple.
Suppose you have an auction with 10 active windows.
All 10 timers are updated every 60 seconds. One bid is one dollar.

Per hour you will earn $600. /Deduct the advertising costs, support and prizes - all of these costs you will adjust by yourself - and you will get your future earnings/.

Ad at GetAFreelancer.com

2009-08-22T07:39:00.000-07:00

The ad was the following:

Description

I have a penny auction site and there are a few things that must be done so it works properly:
The auto-bidding is not working, something with the cronjob/curl-installation
The timer / countdown is not working, it just says 00:00:00
Gd library is installed but it's not possible to upload pictures
+ little small things
You must be well known how a penny auction / swoopo clone works!
The website is done with swoopo clone so if you have worked with it before it's good.
Many positive reviews
Please notice, this is a pretty small project since almost the whole website is done, so bid low.
Budget: $30-250

O-oh, the script doesn't work in full. The author paid $650 or $599 or $299 or $49 for the software and, of course, don't want to pay more than $250 for "relatively small" repair.
The best variant for him would be, if nobody will answer to his request. Otherwise he will сontinue to loose his money.

Casual Gaming in near future

2009-08-21T01:31:00.000-07:00

According to CASUAL CONNECT Seattle 2009 Conference, the crisis has interesting effect on the Casual Games market. The market has grown, many companies have made great strides. In crisis times vendors become more actively to position their products as bringing happiness, a need in which for many has become even more relevant.

One of the reasons for the increase in gaming market is that the crisis is not so strongly affected the capacity to pay of ordinary users of online games. Now they refuse from major purchases (car, house), but continue to spend money on micropayments online. According to analysts, the average user spends for buying virtual goods and services up to $ 30 a month.