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.

Home Based Business MLM – Can You Really Make Money With Home Based Business MLM Style?

The home business industry is one of the fastest growing on the planet right now. It’s really not surprising either, given the state of most peoples’ finances. Home businesses are typically a great opportunity to help with cashflow by providing a secondary income stream, or even replacing a working income. There are also tremendous tax advantages associated with a home based business MLM. However, the burning question for most people is can you REALLY make money? And it’s a reasonable question. After all, you have to wonder why over 90 % of people who get involved in the industry don’t make it. The answer, in fact, is an emphatic “yes you can!”, but only under certain circumstances. This article explains.Home Based Business MLM – How To Actually WinIf this is the first time you’ve heard the statistic that the industry has a 90% failure rate, you may be surprised. What you may not realize is that those documented “failures” are really just people giving up. Now to be fair, they’re giving up with relatively good reasons – they haven’t been able to make it work. They haven’t been successful at really generating significant income using their home based business MLM vehicle. But often it’s not their fault.It takes a few simple, critical things in order to be successful with home based business MLM. While these things are SIMPLE, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are easy to create or to find. But if you can find them, and you commit yourself to being coachable and doing what it takes to succeed, financial freedom is virtually guaranteed. It’s just a matter of time.These are the critical Elements for A Successful (Profitable) Home Based Business MLM:Home Based Business MLM – Partnering with the right companyIf you’re going to stand behind something, you’d better be 100% certain that they can stand behind their product, their resources, their infrastructure, their leadership, and their long term sustainability. You’d also better be sure you’ve partnered with a company that shares your values and beliefs about what’s most important. Personally, if a company is ONLY about making money (you can tell if that’s all they talk about) then you’re in the wrong place. If, however, they have a bigger mission and vision that is parallel to your own, you have an opportunity for some great synergy. Partner with only the best home based business MLM company, partner for the right reasons, and partner for life.Home Based Business MLM – Having A Great Team Who Understands What Leadership Really Is So many people think leadership is about telling people where to go. This is especially true when you see someone who has been able to create results for themselves. These people tend to say “do this, then do that…” and then leave a person to figure it out for themselves. The home based business MLM industry is FULL of companies and people who use this model for “Leadership”. But leadership truly is showing someone how they can get from where they are to where they want to be…and then TAKING THEM THERE. I remember when I finally partnered with the right team and what a difference that made for me. We operate from a “learn, do, teach” model with more support than I’ve ever personally seen in the industry. That’s how it should be done.Home Based Business MLM – Understanding What Kills Most Businesses Often the home based business MLM model relies on having a decent number of connections or contacts that you are able to share your product, service, or business opportunity (or all of the above) with. What kills a good percentage of our 90% failure crowd is simply running out of people to talk to. They don’t understand how to market themselves and their business. They don’t understand how to put what they have to offer directly in front of the people who want it. This was another critical element for me personally. When I learned how to have an endless stream of people coming to ME, asking me about what I had to offer, the whole game changed. And nothing is more fun than helping people in my organization experience that same shift.The home based business MLM vehicle is by far the most fair, most accessible, and most powerful tool for financial freedom and wealth building available today. And provided you adhere to and conquer the simple elements above, you will win.

Home-Based Business Vs Work From Home Job – Which Is the Best One for You?

A home-based business is just what it sounds like – your own business. That means that there are going to be some costs involved with getting started and maintaining it. These costs vary from home-business to home-business, but are normally quite low cost and easy to recuperate. Traditional businesses cost thousands of dollars to start and maintain, and include such expenses as: start-up fees, legal fees, overhead, employee salaries and benefits, legal fees, advertising, and much more. Most home-based businesses are extremely cheap to start and run. If it is a Network Marketing business, the costs are even lower. In these types of opportunities you become an independent marketing associate of the company, and simply plug into the system that’s already in place. Your website, marketing tools, the product or service, legal stuff, etc., has all been put in place for you and your job is simply to market the system/product. The network marketing model has been gaining in credibility more in recent years as more and more people earn significant part time incomes from the comfort of their home. The most powerful element of the network marketing business opportunity as a home-based business it the potential for the associate to earn tens of thousands of dollars per month over time, by building a team of associates whom they train and earn leveraging dollars from. Affiliate marketing does not entail building a team, but involves the affiliate learning marketing methods to drive a steady stream of qualified traffic to their website in hopes that visitors will make a purchase, of which the affiliate then makes a commission.A work from home JOB, on the other hand, is simply an extension of the employee/employer relationship, conducted from the comfort of the employee’s home. Examples of a work at home job could include: telemarketing, customer services, technical support workers, writers and editors who work on salary instead of contract, etc. The benefits of having a work at home job as a opposed to a home-based BUSINESS is that as long as you do the work you are hired to do, there will be a paycheque. In a business there is a paycheque only if you’ve acquired business (sales, recruits, etc). In a home-based JOB, there are usually no costs associated, and there is less work and/or responsibility. However, a job pays the employee for their time only, and there is no way to build a residual long-term, growing income. The income potential is limited and the person is virtually renting their time for money. They are not building equity as in a business.It takes a certain mindset to operate a home-based business and it is not for everyone. This is for the: risk-taker, dreamer, visionary, ambitious, wealth-seeking type of personality. If that fits you, take some time to find a home-based business opportunity that you are happy with, learn how to be an effective Internet marketer, and then take massive action.