What are Penny auctions?

Penny auctions are sales on products in which bids are raised one cent (a penny) at a time. The auction is controlled by a digital clock which runs down to "zero". Any time somebody makes a bid, the clock resets the timer upwards 10-20 seconds to enable other persons to bid as well. When finally the clock reaches "zero" the person with the latest bid is the winner. bidvaluable flea-market

Some auctions provide for special options which can be used to automatically place bids within certain price ranges. Use them to bid if you are not able to be online all the time during the bidding.

To participate, you have to register at the auction site (normally for free) and you have to buy a certain amount of "bid credits" (which may cost between 10 pennies and one dollar). Each Bid will consume 1 credit.

These auctions definitely involve some risks. The main risk is that each bid costs money, and if you lose, you have spent money for nothing. Consider this when deciding to participate in a penny auction. But still, with some experience and good strategies (later we talk more about these) you are able to make real bargain buys.

Are Penny Auctions real or Scam?

Because of their popularity, there are many Penny Auction sites available on the Internet including sites which are not as honest or transparent as they should be. Fraudulent methods used are, among others:

o Some sites have associates that bid on items to raise the number of bids.

o Some have automated the process and have bots placing bids.

o Some sites do not even send the products sold (!).

o Some sellers use codes to trap email addresses of bidders to get a huge list of valuable email addresses.

Always do some basic research before participating in a new, unknown, penny auction site: Do a Google research so see what others are saying. Check the Alexa page ranking and some of the history of the site. Have they published clear Policy and Rules? Do they show who won which products in the past and for which prices?

15 Tips for successful bidding:

1. Determine your bid budget and stick to it. Take into account your bidding costs + final price you are willing to pay + shipping costs (if apply) and the amount you are accepting to lose if you don't win the auction!

2. Watch the auction timer. If the counter almost reaches zero again and again before starting over, it means that there are probably not very many members bidding on that item. This means your chances of winning are higher.

3. Consider bidding on less-expensive items because generally, fewer people bid on cheaper items and your chances of winning are higher.

4. Time your bids wisely. Bidding right after the start of an auction, for example, is usually a wasted bid.

5. Observe the list of recently won auction items (if the site publishes them!) to determine the best day and time that consistently have the fewest bidders (=lowest prices).

6. Buy your bidding credits in bulk if you can. The cost per credit is usually much lower. Take care that usually bid credits may expire after a certain amount of time.

7. Take care not to run out of credits at the last moment of the bidding! This can be costly (and heartbreaking)!

8. Check out the auction item's description page to be sure to know EXACTLY what you are bidding.

9. Follow the bid log listing of all bidders on the auction (if available) to see who is bidding and how frequently.

10. If you use auto-bidders do so with care!

11. Always read the Rules & Policies of the auction site before staring bidding.

12. Don't wait too long to bid. Due to connectivity issues, computer crashes, latency (network delays); you're running the risk that your bid won't go through in time.

13. Keep calm and don't get overly excited when bidding. You'll be more likely to break your budget and/or use your bidding credits up faster than you need to.

14. Avoid getting in a bidding war with other bidders! Sit back and enjoy observing how others waste their money!

15. Avoid picking an item on which to bid just because it looks like only a few members are bidding on it. Usually, experienced bidders wait until the last few moments to bid.

Recently a new penny auction site was released called PRICEBENDERS which is a department of TripleClicks, a division of SFI, one of the oldest and largest Affiliate Sites on the Internet. I have followed and tried this site for the last 2 months and I can really recommend it for the following reasons:

1. SFI is a leading Affiliate Managers Business with more than 11 years of experience. Consistently over 4000 new affiliates join SFI each week.

2. Pricebenders is the latest addition of TripleClicks, the SFI online store with over 30,000 products included.

3. Registering with TripleClicks is easy and free.

4. Pricebenders offers full details of auctions ended, the products sold, the winners and the prices for which they were sold.

5. Each TripleClicks member is limited to a maximum of 2 winning Pricebenders auctions in any given week and a maximum of 5 winning Pricebenders auctions per month, to give a fair chance to all members.

In addition, Pricebenders offer the following benefits:

1. Every auction has a contest attached to it called "Pick-the-Price". Simply log in, click the PTP button, and enter the amount you think will be the final, winning price of the item. If you pick the exact, final price, you immediately win 200 free bidding credits, a $58 value (or 50 bidding credits if you're the closest without going over).

2. For each 3 bids you place you can download for free a song with TuneFlow� which is an online music store that launched in June 2006. It currently features over 2000 artists from around the world! (Note: credit points for free songs will be accumulated in your account until the integration of TuneFlow in TripleClicks is completed).

If you register as a SFI Affiliate Member you will have the additional benefits with Pricebenders:

1. Member Rewards Points program.

Every Pricebenders bid will earn you 5 Member Rewards Points (MRP), and you'll be able to redeem your MRP to buy any product at the TripleClicks store!

2. Pricebenders auctions exclusively for SFI affiliates.

These are auctions which will feature business products, services, and resources designed just for SFI affiliates.