How to Avoid Untrustworthy Penny Auction Sites

Participating in penny auction sites is a popular pastime because not only is it fun, but it can also be lucrative when you know how to do it right. Who can resist the idea of owning items at a much lower price with the thrill of winning the bids over your competitors? But in order to win bids successfully, you should learn how to avoid being tricked with online penny auctions. Unfortunately, while there are reliable and trustworthy websites, there are also many of those that take advantage of people who are eager to win bids and end up getting fooled. Here are some ways you can learn how to avoid these unreliable sites.

Research on the website's age, because most of the reliable penny auction sites have been around since 2009. The general rule of thumb is the older the website, the more legitimate it is. Be wary of those that have been operating for just a few months because they don't provide much basis for legitimacy and you have higher chances of getting fooled. Popular and reliable penny auction sites are able to survive long enough because they run a good, honest business.

Reliable websites have high traffic statistics, because they are receiving more visitors. Popularity of a website is a stable indicator of whether or not it's legitimate, as you'll find that sites which receive low visitors have a tendency to be unreliable. You can also do extra research by joining chat forums as they can also provide good insight on which sites are reliable.

If the site features testimonials from participants and they can vouch for the site's reliability, it's an indicator that you can trust the website. People nowadays can be very picky about products and websites, and they are more than happy to share their experiences online to help others. It will be easy to spot a dishonest penny auction website if you find that people are complaining and writing negative reviews.

Scour the Internet for additional feedback on particular websites. Apart from joining chat forums as mentioned earlier, you can also find video discussions such as those found in YouTube and blogs of participants. Feedback from real people count the most so you know which sites to avoid.

Participating in penny auction sites are a lot of fun and can provide decent savings as long as you can avoid untrustworthy sites. All you need to do follow these tips to avoid being fooled in the future, and you'll find that joining trustworthy sites is a lot of fun and you can win items at a fraction of the price. There are few things that come close to winning bids over your competitors and enjoying savings at the same time.

Online Entertainment Auction Sites - How Do They Work?

So you need a certain product, but don't want to pay full price? Are you looking for something new to do online? Online entertainment auction sites may become your new hobby. Getting started can be exciting because there are so many things you can bid on and score awesome deals with! Finding those holiday gifts will become so easy, you'll never stress out about it again. So how do you start, how does it work, and what do you need? Read on to find out!

The first step to becoming a bidder on any online auction site is to sign up and follow the confirmation email link to activate your account. Once in, you are ready to buy your bids. Bids will usually be around the price range of $0.60 per bid, and sometimes come in big packages for greater discounts. Now that you are signed up and have buckets full of bids, you're all ready to go!

Next, you will choose the products that you wish to bid on. Online auction sites organize their products in categories, and pretty much have almost anything you are looking for. Browse through the list of products available for auctions ranging from electronics to gift cards, and start to plan your bidding strategy. The amount of times you can bid depends on the amount of bids you bought and have left in your account. Every time you press the "bid" button, 1 bid will be deducted from your bundle and time will be added to the clock. This allows other users to bid and keep the auction going until the very last bid is sent and the time runs out. To increase your chances of becoming a winner, watch the actions of the other bidders and find patterns you can break in their bidding strategy.

The next step? Well you win, walk away, or buy now! If you are the last bidder when the timer has reached zero, you are the winner! If someone has outbid your last bid, and you don't wish to go any higher before the timer is out, you lose. However, you can still walk away with the product. If you wish to buy the product for its original value, you have the option to "buy now" anytime after you have placed your first bid on the product. The dollar amount of your bids is added up, and subtracted from the original product price to give you a buy now value. You will never pay higher than the market value price for a product on an online auction site.

Online auction sites can be a lot of fun and really exciting when you score those awesome deals! If you are busy and don't have time to sit at the computer all day, there are various tools that are designed to help you. They act as an autopilot and place bids for you when you are away from the computer. You can set certain customization to the tool to bid the exact way you would be if you were sitting there. This allows you to go about your daily chores, and still score amazing deals with barely any work put into it! Who would of thought?

There have been many successful bidders that are determined to keep going. One enthusiastic bidder says, "By bidding on items that my family picks out ahead of time I am able to get big ticket items for them and be a hero to my grandsons. It is so easy to win the best items and it is very invigorating. I have won 3 TVs, coffee/espresso machines, gift cards, jewelry, watches, sunglasses, and many other items." Another bidder says, "Not only have I provided electronics for my family, we also are enjoying updated appliances that we would never had otherwise! I can't wait to prepare holiday meals this year." As we can see, many people enjoy the activity of online auction sites. So if you have some free time, and want to try holiday gift shopping, or just regular shopping online in your cozy pajamas without leaving the house, give online auction sites a try.

Common Misconceptions Of Auction Websites

Users new to online auction websites often require some time and help before they completely understand the auction platform and start winning auctions. It's not any fun for a new user to struggle on indefinitely. You should enjoy yourself while taking part in online auctions. It's natural to feel daunted going into your first couple of auctions, so here are some common misconceptions of auction websites, as well as some tactical advice for you beginners that you should consider when devising your plan of attack.

1. Setting unrealistic expectations

This can't be stressed enough, but users need to set realistic goals when participating in online entertainment auctions. If someone is new to an online auction, he or she shouldn't expect to win a laptop on the first try with only the cheapest bid pack available. Not saying it couldn't happen... it definitely could and it has happened. BUT, it is highly improbable. Know and expect that you'll be bidding against users with far more experience.

While everybody loves an underdog, we encourage new users to start using auction sites by participating in smaller auctions first. After all, you've gotta crawl before you can walk, right?

2. Going for the big catch

It's not wise to immediately go after the most popular item on an auction site. There are a lot more competitors vying for the popular products, and many of them are our highly skilled veterans. Once acquainted with the site, you'll then understand that going after popular products warrants certain measures to protect your bid investment. It is recommend that you commit to only one such auction at a time and that you don't get too involved without considering using the "Buy Now" feature (if you don't win, that is).

Don't spread yourself too thin when bidding on the big-ticket items. Be willing to devote more time and money to increase your winning. It's been found that any participant willing to spend about 1/3 of the value of the item in bids greatly increases his or her odds of winning the item.

3. Jumping right in

By limiting your understanding of the system, you are setting yourself up at a severe functional disadvantage. As with anything you invest your money in, do research before jumping into entertainment retail auctions. Each auction is going to be different from the others, so read and understand the Terms & Conditions on the site, familiarize yourself with the "Buy Now" option, the automatic bidding tool, and pricing structures. We also recommend carefully watching other auctions to see how they unfold. All this will help you to understand "the nature of the business" and to help build your overall bidding strategy.

Online auctions should be a fun and exciting experience for customers. A stronger grasp on the online auctioning system will help enrich your experience and facilitate a better, more fun shopping experience.

Making Money Online Out of Auction Websites - Moving Your Business Online

An introduction

First of all you need to know why is important that your offline business is to be moved online or enhanced by making an online side of your business. The main reason for moving your business to the online mode is that you can reach a whole new range of customers and you can reach them much faster and easier. This will give a boost to your business and your profits will grow.

Getting your tools together

For this you need to get hold of the proper tools. First of all you need a domain name for your website. Think on a good name, something to represent your business, your auction business maybe. You will have to get this domain, from a domain registrar, and there are tons of them out there. They usually sell the domains, at around 10-20$ a year.

The second thing you will need to is to get a hosting space for your website. For starters you can get a shared hosting, though a vps would be better. The best and most expensive is to get a dedicated server, but at first you don't really need it. After this you have to link your domain name to your hosting. Either do that yourself or hire someone at 10$-30$ an hour to do this.

The last part is to get an online auction software. There are plenty of resources available for this already. There are free scripts, which work good until you bump into a problem and since they are free you don't have where to complain when that happens. Also there are paid options available which work better since you are getting a lot of support for your payment. This second option is better for non technical users which just want their auction website to be online without any technical knowledge.

They usually look for turnkey solutions, something ready made. Here is how WordPress comes in hand. Its a very good cms, and basically these days all sites are migrating to it. You can use an auction theme for WordPress and you will be amazed on what this can do. By using WordPress you can also forget about seo, because it does that automatically as opposed to classical auction scripts. By only using a plugin (you should know WordPress benefits from thousands of free plugins) you can maintain your website at high seo standards. The plugin will do this for you.

You can see more in the resource box about WordPress auction themes since they are the php auction scripts of today and of the future. And they come with a bunch of monetization features, like taking a percent or a fixed fee out of the final price and many more.

Launching your website

After all of that you can just launch your website and expect visitors. Don't forget marketing and publicity is also important on these kind of online businesses. Also paid web advertising is a solution for that.