Online Auction Sites Where the Bid Lowers the Auction Price
Auction Bids To Zero
How about online auction sites where the item gets cheaper with every bid that comes in. How interesting is that? This particular auction house category is titled….’Bid to Zero’.
Imagine if you were bidding on a car or any top brand product….and your bid….did get to zero! Forget it….it won’t happen. Someone will zap it up before that possibility!
With these auctions….the item starts off at the normal sale price….and then goes down with each bid.So if it reaches a price that someone is happy to pay….that’s it….sold. Really….won…would be more accurate.
Reverse Auctions
To continue the same scenario as above, while an item price is being bid down….there could be twenty people biding. Out of those 20 bidders….5 bidders may be looking at paying….say….$500 for the item. All five bidders claim the bid at $500. In this case the online auction sites use a special formula to decide the bid winner.
Another auction bid type is the unique reverse auction. As the name suggests the above scenario does not happen.The bid has to be ‘unique’. To add to that….there are two variations.
1. Highest unique bid….unmatched at the close of the auction….wins the biding.With these the maximum bid is set at a below normal sale price.
2. Lowest unique bid….has to be unmatched at the close of the auction. Another couple of bidders could of each bid…an identical lower price, but their bid would not be unique. With this type of auction the starting price would be at the normal sale price.
You can see that internet technology is the catalyst for these auctions. Offline….the purpose of an auction is to attain the highest possible bid price. The Collins Dictionary defines an auction as ‘a public sale where articles are sold to the highest bidder’. The emphasis with reverse auctions…seems to be more on its competiveness…as opposed to the actual price.
The Next Generation: Social Competive Interaction
It should never be forgotten that the primary purposes of the online auction sites are to sell products. Because the items are sold at a fraction of their normal price…is neither here nor their. It is great for the successful bidders, but every auction bid is paid for. I’ll explain that further.
To participate…you register online,select a username and get some ‘bid credits’. When you go to the site and login with your username….you’ll see your available ‘bid credits’ displayed. As you bid…the number of available bids reduces. If you’re biding on the ‘Bid to Zero’ auction house….the bids are 50cents to 66cents each. That bid puts the item price down 20 cents. The residue….the difference in the bid cost and the item price reduction….goes to:
1.The cost of the purchase of the item
2.The cost of the freight and handling to the winning bidder
3.To administration costs of the online auction sites and their profit
All the costs are taken care of…by the participants purchase of ‘bid credits’. So the emphasis….as I alluded to earlier…is towards the competive nature of the participants. Social competive interaction online….expressed in a style of auction entertainment….WOW! Whenever I was biding at an (offline) auction….I never saw it as entertainment….except when the Guy chasing flies…had an item knocked down to him. That gave everyone else a laugh!
Internet technology has made this form of social competiveness possible. Not the same as the ‘survivor series’ on TV….but maybe more rewarding.
New International Internet Auction Site
A United States company is the latest developer of one of these online auction sites. In building this new system they have gone with quality top brand products to offer. It would be fair to say they have picked the eyes out of the best methods…currently used in similar European auction sites. Eventually they will have as many as eight auction houses…all with various auction styles.
They are making the auctions available on an international basis. Something the other auction sites have been slow to do. I have been advised that they will probably have special delivery arrangements for large items won by bidders living outside of the US…..makes sense!
You Can Become a Business Associate
Also different about this new auction entertainment website is that a business opportunity has been incorporated. Business associates will be able to market the opportunity for the specific purpose of encouraging people to buy bid credits.
What seems sure…is that this social competive interaction as they call it…is highly likely to be very popular. Therefore the business opportunity will very likely….be lucrative!
My Summary
Are these real auctions? You can look at it this way:
Those auction houses where the bid causes the price to rise….even if the rise is fixed at only a penny or a nickel for each bid…do qualify under the definition of an auction.
The auctions where each bid causes the item price to fail….surely are not auctions….but ‘reverse auctions’. As in ‘done’ and ‘undone’.
These online auction sites are a new marketing outlet for the product manufacturers and merchants.They are good business for the auction sites, who make their money on shifting quality products. The bidders could pick-up a new car or TV or computer or a million dollar life insurance policy….for example. Also they could do that for an outlay of $20 worth of bid credits and a whole heap of fun! That seems to make online auction sites….a win-win-win situation….for all participants!
Darcy John
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-business-articles/online-auction-sites-where-the-bid-lowers-the-auction-price-671089.html
Which business idea should I pick?
I want to start an online company over the summer. My goal is to eventually make six or more figures a year. I have many ideas, but I’m not sure which one is more profitable. I can easily get all of the scripts to make my website ideas, since I’m an expert at coding and programming.
1. A website where users can list, buy, sell, auction, or trade websites and/or domains. Sign up would be free. Once the site gets a good reputation, I would then charge a small fee to list a website just so that the scammers would not want to post a scam. After a successful sale has been made, I would charge a small fee. The seller would be able to post a snapshot of the website, info, and the starting price for an auction and/or buy now price. There is some competition such as flippa.com, but hey, competition could be a good thing. If I can do something better than flippa, by either lowering fees, or adding features, people would want to come to my site. I would also sell ad space on the website. This idea is great because people are into the web flipping business, and many people want to run their own website in hard times like this.
2. A job website. I know, you think monster.com, but just read this please. Yes, it would be like monster.com. Employers and people wanting a job could sign up for free. At first, I would not charge anything to post a job opening to get many listings up on the site, but once the site gets going, I would then charge a small fee to employers to list the job that is open at their company. People wanting jobs have cool features such as a resume creator. They would then be able to find a job they like, post their resume, and the employer would be able to select anyone he wants for the job. I would also sell ad space on the site. Although sites like this exist such as monster, just like in the previous idea, if I can do something better than monster, i would get more visitors. This is a great idea since many people are looking for jobs now a days. They want an easy solution to get hired.
3. This next idea is a pay pal type of site. I know you are thinking that all of my ideas already exist, but listen, almost every idea in the world already has more than one person doing them. Think, pay pal was first, then came virtualgold and epay which were copies of pay pal, but now are making 5k a day! Even if an idea already exists, you can still do it if you make your site better in some way. So the site would allow users to sign up for an account using a credit card, and would be able to pay using their account. I would first have to gain peoples trust using the site so they will be willing to give up their credit card info to use. The basic idea is virtual money.
4. This site would be a image hosting site. Sort of like imageshack. Users would be able to upload their photos to a secure server, and store the photos. If they are out of town and they need a photo for let’s say a job offer,they can log into their account on the site, and access any photo. I would have a free upload where users can store x gb of photos for free, and i would also have larger plans which cost fees. Once photos are uploaded, they could be edited with the photo editor, sent to family and friends, or stored. Photo storage is a great thing since if a hard drive crashes, house fire, or something happens to your photos, you will have a backup on the site and your memories will be safe. I would also sell ad space on the website.
5. This would be a website for questions and answers. It would be just like this site, except it would have multimedia questions by video and or audio. I’m not a huge fan of this idea since YouTube is the leader and so is yahoo answers, but it’s an idea. I would sell ad space.
6. My last idea would be a real estate portal where buyers, sellers, and agents, could sign up for free and sellers could post their house for sale or rent on the site for a fee. I would also sell ad space.
Overall, I love the job site, marketplace for websites, virtual money, and the photo hosting site. I am not sure which idea out of all of the ideas could be the most profitable. I know someone is going to say that I need to have something unique, but I’m just trying to find out which idea out of these is most profitable. Even if you don’t like these ideas, which would you choose if you had too?
Thanks so much!
And ps,
The reason why vie asked questions like these many times is because I just want to get a site and start the company.
Thanks.
I think all of your ideas have some appeal, however, I also think it will cost a ton of money to do any of them. I’m don’t know how deep your pockets are, but they will need to be very deep to get a 6 figure income off the ground.
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personally, i’d do the real estate one, because in reality that exists the least in our internet, since its almost always split up into real estate companies
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