The Finer Points of Internet Auctions

WHAT IS A PENNY AUCTION?

Penny auctions have exploded in popularity with the massive growth of the internet. However, few people know the true origins of penny auctions.Beginnings actually stretch back to the Great Depression. Those were hard times for everyone, but even harder for farmers. Farmers struggled to bring in steady income because of droughts and crops not selling as well as they had previously. As a result, the banks would foreclose on the farmers who couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments.

The banks weren’t satisfied with just repossessing the house, they wanted to raise as much capital as possible, so they resorted to selling off the possessions of the owners of the repossessed houses. There was not much the farmers could do about it so they began bidding ridiculously low prices, pennies, on the items while threatening others who dared to bid higher than a few pennies.

The auctions of today hardly resemble their tremulous beginnings. Being part of a penny auction today is exhilarating, fun, and addictive. It combines the selling format of auctioning with a little bit of chance factored in.Auctions are a game of strategy but also a game of luck.

The premise behind penny auctions is giving people the chance to win an item at a drastically reduced price.Auctions make that possible by spreading out the cost of the product among multiple bidders. In order for a person to take part in an auction, they must pay a set price for each bid. For example, if a person wanted to bid on a fifty dollar Amazon gift card then he would spend a dollar for each time a bid placed. If he ended up winning the gift card, then he would only have spent a few dollars for a fifty dollar gift card. Usually penny auctions sell bids in packages.

HOW PENNY AUCTIONS WORK!

The main foundation of penny auctions is the pay-per-bid format. It is the key that allows bidders to win items at the fraction of their retail value and allows the auction owners to keep their site profitable. Most y auction sites run on the same premise: people pay a set amount for each bid, whenever a person places a bid within the closing seconds of the auction time will be added, the last person left with a unique bid after the clocks runs out will win the item. There are a large variety of items that can be won, but they tend to be popular electronics or gift cards to popular stores.

There are two types of auctions: lowest unique bid auction and highest unique bid auction. Lowest unique auction sounds confusing but it is actually quite simple. A unique bid is when only one person has a bid at a certain price. Bids usually start at one penny, a bidder can then place a bid at two pennies. Until another bidder places a higher bid, the most recent bidder will be the lowest unique bid because that was the only bid at two cents and nobody bid higher. However, penny auctions generally don’t stop at one penny. It is not uncommon to find auctions that end up at a couple hundred dollars based on the popularity of the item being auctioned. However, the same principles apply for those auctions. Highest unique bid auctions follow the more traditional auction format such as eBay. The person with the highest bid at the end of the auction wins the item.

Auction site owners turn a profit by selling bids. Say twenty people are bidding on a ten dollar gift card at one dollar per bid, at the end of the auction if there were twenty bids placed in total then the site owner would have made twenty dollars with a ten dollar profit.Auctions do seem like a win-win situation:The site owner makes money while the bidder gets an item for dirt cheap. However, not everyone wins in penny auctions. The people who paid one dollar each bid but left with nothing to show for their investments will not be so happy.

HOW TO WIN!

Penny auction has a lot of chance mixed into it, but one can incorporate strategy that will help raise the chances of winning. Playing smart can make all the difference between gambling and auctioning.

The first crucial tip to winning penny auctions is to know how to manage your bids. Your goal should be to win as much as possible without spending a ton of money buying bids. Managing your bids means that you should already know how much you are willing to risk in order to win an item. The amount of capital you are willing to risk will determine how many bids you can use. Once you know how many bids you have to spend on an item, then you will be better able to manage how and when you place a bid. That will keep you from blowing away all of your bids in the first few seconds of the auction.

The next tip is to practice time management. When fighting in the trenches of penny auctions, you have two enemies: other bidders and time. Knowing when to bid is a must if you want to have success. Placing a bid when there is a lot of time left on the clock is never a good idea. You have to remember that the key to winning a penny auction is being the last one standing when the clock runs out and that each bid increases the amount of time left. It would be a good practice to wait until the last few minutes of the auction before you begin to bid.

The final tip for successful auctioning is to keep your emotions under control.Auctions have a lot of similarities to gambling, and just like gambling, your spending can get out of control. If you keep your emotions level, it will keep you from making rash decisions and blowing loads of cash. Keep your mind clear so that you can gage the behavior of the other bidders and outsmart them.

HOW TO AVOID SCAM SITES!

Penny auctions are a great addition to the web whether you want to win an item that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to afford or if you simply enjoy the thrill that comes with bidding in auctions. Unfortunately, scam sites have tarnished the reputation of the legitimate penny auction sites. However, there are ways that you can protect yourself from scamers and enjoy your auctioning without having to worry about losing your money due to dishonesty.

Checking the reputation of the auction site before you start spending your hard earned money is always a good idea. Chances are other people have tried the site before you and some of them have left reviews. The reviews are your way to gage whether a auction site is trustworthy or not. If a site is getting overwhelmingly negative reviews, then that is a clear indication that you should steer your business elsewhere.

Another tool you can use to protect yourself is checking the Alexia ranks of the auction sites. Alexia rank will give a solid view of how much traffic the auction is getting. If you see a huge difference in the amount of traffic Alexia is projecting and the amount of active bidders on the site, then warning signals should be ringing in your head. Some auction sites have been known to set up robots that automatically bid on projects in order to keep the auction going and inflate the price. That is known as shill bidding. You can sniff out those sites by comparing the traffic the site should be getting to the amount of users using this site.

CONCLUSION!

New legislation may come out later down the road that will officially make penny auctions gambling, but until then, it is a fun, exciting auction that allows one to win the item they’ve always wanted but couldn’t afford.Auctions are also quite lucrative for the site owners because of the pay-per-bid strategy they’ve incorporated. Penny auctions had humble beginnings with farmers who just wanted to get back at the banks who kicked them out of their house. More recently, auctions have enjoyed an explosion in popularity with the rise of the internet.

There are two main formats fora auctions, lowest and highest unique auction, however they both run on the same premise where the last unique bid wins the item. Winning a penny auction will require a certain amount of mental tactic and a bit of luck. However, you can increase your odds of winning by practicing certain techniques such as managing your bids wisely, learning how to work with the time, and keeping a level head and your emotions under control. When you combine those three strategies to your bidding plan, you will find that you win a lot more often.

It is important that you do your due diligence to protect yourself when participating in auctions. Not every auction is run by honest and trustworthy people. There are people out there who just want to take your money. You can protect yourself by ensuring that you only bid on sites that already have a very positive reputation from real users.

How to Generate Ideas and Get Started on Your Home Based Business

You’ve sat at home all day, you have the motivation and the desire to work and succeed, yet you are probably wondering just what is it you can do to achieve this, right?The answer of course, is to set yourself up with a home based business. However, this isn’t always such an easy thing to do. There are so many ideas out there that it can be difficult to select the best one for your skills and experience. Not only that, but then there are also other things to consider. You might be wondering if a certain idea is profitable or not, how much time you will need to spend doing it each day, and even if the business is going to be legitimate or not!Another thing to remember is that there is a very fine line between what is a home based business, where you are the boss, and what is a home based job, where you are still an employer. Indeed, with most home based businesses, especially when you first start out, you will probably find that you are filling both roles at once.While it might seem difficult to decide where to begin, the best way to start is to consider your skills and experience, together with your own interests. You should also consider what is profitable, so it may pay to carry out a little research about what services people require that you can deliver. Remember to keep an open mind too, and be prepared to do things that are closely related. The most important thing is that you never pass up the opportunity to use your talents and skills to create income!When you come to decide upon your new home based business, one thing you mustn’t do is make your decision based only on the potential earnings you can make. You’ll need to make sure that whatever you are doing is something you will enjoy doing, something that holds your interest, because you will be spending an awful lot of time working on it. Of course, income is a big consideration but just be aware that it’s not the only one.And now for some ideas. There are hundreds of types of home based businesses that people operate successfully, amongst them many common ones that are operated by hundreds of people and all carry a big demand. You might want to consider accounting, buying and selling on eBay, pet grooming, answering calls, cake decorating and design, cleaning, child care, desktop publishing, family history tracing, freelance photography, online marketing, business consulting, freelance writing, researching, proofreading and editing, recruiting, resume writing, web design or secretarial services. All of these are very common and profitable home based business ideas, and there are many more out there as well.So consider what it is you are able to do, bearing in mind that not only do you need to do it well, but you need to do it quickly as well. With most home based businesses, time is money. One last thing you might want to consider if you’re still unsure is to check out One24 a ground floor, unique company offering a no risk, no upfront cost home based business opportunity with the potential to retire in 2 years.

Reaching Out the Advertising Market From Home

Online marketing has become one of the essential media tools in promoting new or existing products and services, and at the same time, reaching out consumers from any corner of the world. Online advertising has become the centre of attraction to business owners. The reasons behind this are that online advertising is cheaper compared to billboard or usual advertising, all of this for the fact that large target audience can be covered at no time. This leads to more chances of interacting with people who are actually interested in an advertised business.

Various types of online marketing

Even for experts, it is very difficult to identify which is the best online advertising method. You can choose any of the following methods according to your preferences and goals. The only thing you need to understand that whichever method you will use, it should reach your targeted audience. Your method of advertising and content of the advertisement should be such that it not only generates attention but also convinces customers to purchase your product. Here are some various methods of online advertising:

Article marketing: this type of method is commonly used when you want to run your advertisements for a longer period of time.
Search engine optimisation (SEO): this comes on the top of the list when you need quick and fast results. It is one of the best methods for online advertising and helps your business get entry in the global market easily.
Pay per click advertising: this is relatively a favourable method to do advertisements online.
Forums
Link exchange
Banner advertising
Affiliate advertising
Email advertising
Online classifieds advertising
Others: also there are other methods of free advertising i.e. giving advertisements on social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter.
Whichever method of online advertising you choose, it will definitely bring good results in the promotion of your products.

Various rules of online advertising:

1. Set objective of the advertisement: in your advertisement, your objective should be clearly defined. Your message should be precise and clear in your advertisement. You can easily reap maximum benefits of your online advertisement campaigns if you know how and what to advertise to reach out to your audience.

2. Decide “where” to put your ad: you should be clever enough to acknowledge the best site where you can put your advertisement. You have to do a little research to find the best site for the promotion of your product. You can consider online yellow pages, search engines, Service Provider directories and other large web sites.

3. Be creative: tailor and mould your message according to your target audience. Use the language that appeals them the most. It is equally important to present your idea according to the mindset of your targeted audience. This step needs creativity and will make your advertisement outstand in the market.