Full FeedPay to bid? Meet swoopo.com
New to the US market is swoopo.com an auction site, but not one like you know and hate love like eBay. No, swoopo is a very different and interesting concept. The price you pay is the cost of bidding plus the ending final price. Confused?
Each bid costs $1. Yes, you pay to bid. You can buy bids in groups of 20 up to 500. So every time you bid, you are charged $1. Now the flip side of this is the prices are very low on goods. For example, a 2nd gen 8gb iPod touch just went for $73.80 (final sales price, who knows how much that person spent in bids to claim it). They seem stocked with lots of gadgets, laptops and even jewelry.
But wait, there is more
It gets more interesting. The rules are bids are increased in $0.15 increments. So, that iPod grossed the site $565.65 (final sales price divided by the number of bids plus sales price). Each bid pushes back the auction timer 15 seconds giving others a chance to respond to the bid. Bidding starts for each product at $0.15, which is figured into the above equation.
It looks like the company will do OK. Getting paid $565.65 for a $229 product says there is some power in this model.
Scammers?
Like anything though, some people believe it is a scam.
“This site is a complete joke! It is just a big SCAM. I stared at the counter until it went down to 1 second hit bid, and NOPE I didn’t win…”
One commenter on that complaint site says swoopo isn’t a scam, and he himself had won several laptops at amazing prices.
Buyer beware. Let us know in the comments if anyone gives this a whirl. Math majors only, please.
Site [Swoopo.com]
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Swoopo is a pretty genius idea imo as far as a business model! Get people to pay for every bid, continually increasing auction times with each bid as well the shear competitive nature of people in general really helps drive their revenues.
As for Luckberry.. it seems to be reliable. I’ve tried it several times, they have suchlike rules and offer decent items..
their young age turns out to be pre-eminence in this case. the fewer participants bid, the more chances of winning everybody has! close reasoning, isn’t it?;-)
i succeeded in winning lcd 65′ for eur 107 and saved eur 300, so i’m mightily pleased!! soon i gonna spend the left bids trying to win xbox for my son ;-) i’m more determined than ever!
ps. by the way no problems with delivery occured
on June 3, 2009 at 04:52 AM - LINKI think Swoopo is too hard to win on because people that have bid a lot on an item aren’t willing to lose because they have already put so much money into it. When http://www.GottaNabit.com launches it will be a waaaaaay better place to win items at cheap prices. At least 40-80% off every item and you dont pay per bid.
on June 15, 2009 at 06:54 PM - LINKMaybe Goose, but for people interested in sites like swoopo, there are other alternatives that aren’t as busy as swoopo which means it’s easier/less expensive to win. I tried one called bidfire and I won a nintendo wii for very cheap. I was surprised it actually worked out, but now I have my wii. I noticed only a few different bidders were going back and forth and I just took a stab at it and won.
on July 29, 2009 at 02:54 PM - LINKIn my opinion the problem is that in many penny auction sites you pay event $1 per bid. I found a website where one bid costs 10 cents. Of course you have buy the biggest Bid Pack. But still - it’s much much chipper to bid. Check it out: http://www.for10cents.com
on August 3, 2009 at 07:38 PM - LINKI have been watching this site for the past few days and came to a conclusion that it’s a OKAY site
Like say I am going to buy a GAME (Costs around $25-$30 RRP)
The winning person WILL bid over 10 times so basically
You pay $10 on bids and $10 to keep the game
Now you just wasted $20 and only saved like $5
I’d rather go Ebay because thats a known site and scam levels on there are pretty low
You have gaurantee there too
on August 23, 2009 at 08:03 AM - LINKIf you know your stuff and are going to swoopo and KNOW the auction is going to end around $30 then START BIDDING AT $27 Save yourself some pennies genious!
Swoopo has alot of products. But it’s so expencive. this sites alot cheaper than swoopo, http://muulu.com 50 cents per bid, second pack you buy is like 30 cents. Plus free shipping and 1 in 4 bids give you an extra bid. Find that anywhere else.
on September 8, 2009 at 12:20 PM - LINKI really appreciate the discussion about swoopo. I’m new to the online “buying/auctioning” world and wanted to get some real feedback about current “bargain” sites out there.
I was wondering if anyone knew anything about http://www.BIDZONE.com??
I found the site yesterday and it seems new since I have yet to find any comments about it. All I know (or read) was that they’re currently offering free registration with 5 free bids. They’re different than Swoopo in that their “auctions” reduce the product price rather than increase it. Each bid cost 50cents and each time you bid the product’s price reduces by 50cents. seems pretty interesting and offers a better deal then other sites I’ve found so far.
Figured I post something just to see if anyone can give me more information! Thanx!
on September 16, 2009 at 03:25 PM - LINKSwoopo states in there help section,
on September 27, 2009 at 11:56 PM - LINK” Enjoy the thrill of bidding but never leave Swoopo empty handed. You can still get the product even if you don’t win the auction. Any time during the auction, you can choose to buy the item at a discount equal to the amount of bids you’ve placed in that auction. You’ll never have to pay more than the Worth Up To price for any products on Swoopo. The auction will continue as usual, so other bidders can battle it out.
” so it appears to me that this entire thread is on the wrong track, my question is how they make any money at all.
Swoopo isn’t a scam, but it’s basically gambling. There is some level of skill involved (knowing when to bid, strategies to bid), but you still need to get lucky.
The trick is to only bid on items you are willing to pay retail price for anyway. For example, I’ve been planning to purchase a PS3 Slim since the price went down. Instead of paying $300, I bid on Swoopo and got it for $90, + 28 in bids, and $12 shipping. I saved $170 because I was smart about my bidding. However, had I not been lucky enough to swoop the PS3 at that price, I would’ve kept bidding. Once my bids + auction cost = 300, I would’ve just stopped and bought the PS3 at retail price from Swoopo (which you can do with most products, there are a few they don’t allow this, I think gold bars they don’t).
If you feel you’ve been scammed, you went in blindly and didn’t think your strategy through. There IS skill involved in the bidding process. Knowing when to single bid and when to bid butler, knowing when to let others bid while you sit back and wait. Waiting until the auction is closed to new bidders before you get serious about it.
I have friends that have bought dozens of items from the site, and then turned around and sold them for profits on ebay. A friend of mine last week bought a $1700 HDTV for $500 total. How? He was smart about it, and most importantly he was committed to paying full price if he had to (he would’ve turned around and sold the TV for a slight loss if he had to).
Is it risky? Absolutely. But if you know how to play it right, you CAN come out on top and save yourself hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.
on October 1, 2009 at 12:48 AM - LINKI bought my bids when they were 75 cents each and now they reduced them to 60 cents. When I requested them either refund me or add the appropriate bids to the account. They said they would and after 2 weeks of nothing, I sent them an email letting them know that I was unhappy and requested the bids be returned at the paid price. I did not get paid the proper price and have no satisfaction from these people.
*** I WARN ANYONE AGAINST “SWOOPO” AND ANY DEALING WITH THEM***
on November 7, 2009 at 10:22 PM - LINK