February 2014 - Page 3 of 3

February 10, 2014

If You're Not Going To Use The Buy It Now Option, Here's How To Be Smart About It

Ok, so let’s face it, you can lose a lot of money bidding in penny auctions if you aren’t careful. DealDash offers the buy-it-now feature allowing you to bid, then purchase the item for the stated retail price and get all of the bids you placed in the auction back. This is a really great, no – really awesome offering. If DealDash didn’t have buy it now you wouldn’t be able to do this and all of the bids you place, unless you’re the winning bidder, would really have been lost. So what do you do if you don’t want to use buy-it-now, but just a few bids here and there?

How do you bid smart if you don’t want to “buy it now?” There’s a few ways you could go about bidding in penny auctions without losing a lot of money if you aren’t prepared to spend the retail to buy the item.
1. Set Limits & Keep Track It’s smart to set a limit of how many bids you will be willing to spend/and in effect, lose, if you aren’t the winner. Make sure you set a number before you start bidding and limit yourself to this number, or else it’s very easy to continue to buy bid pack after bid pack and spend more money than you wanted to when you aren’t prepared to or willing to actually buy the item. Say it’s a $1000 laptop, you really want to win it, but at a discount, you don’t want to buy it.. so set a number: say $100… and be comfortable with that amount and bid accordingly.
2. Bid Smart: Get to know your fellow bidders Though not always easy, I cannot stress enough the importance of “getting to know” your competition. How do you do this? DealDash has a few ways to tell you more about a bidder. 1.) On the item page for each auction as soon as an opponent bids it will also provide you with a few pieces of information: For instance, user “Diannas” is currently bidding in the auction for the Comic Images BackPack Buddies Yoda.
When she bids this info shows up under her username:

Winning limit status: 3 / 6

Member since: 10/10/2012 Resident of: Indiana

Note how it shows her winning limit status and how long she’s been a member. By looking at this info you can kind of get a feel for their experience. If they’ve won before perhaps they have a strategy for bidding, maybe they “go all in” and use buy it now, or maybe they just get lucky a few times. Also, seeing as Diannas has been a member for nearly a year-and-a-half perhaps she’s a pretty experienced bidder as opposed to someone who just joined today and maybe just be trying to win with their first bid pack.

3. Bid Carefully

In order to bid carefully you must not bid carelessly. This means do not just throw away all of your bids in a few short minutes. Watch and see how many other bidders have been bidding before you start bidding… Don’t just all of a sudden jump in and waste your bids by “bid throttling” – continuously bidding over another bidder. Other bidders that were just bidding didn’t disappear, and they still have their bids, but will you have yours?

4. Use BidBuddy

Let the computer bid for you – use bid buddy: Using BidBuddy to Win DealDash Auctions and Save Money.

So really it’s easy to be smart about bidding. Just pay attention, set limits and get to know who you are bidding against and you will be on your way to bidding smarter, even if you’re not using buy it now.

Do you have DealDash tips that you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments section! Thanks!

February 5, 2014

Why DealDash Loves Coffee + Almond Biscotti Recipe for You to Enjoy!

Are you a coffee lover? Do you need a cup a joe to jumpstart your day? DealDash has items just for you, the coffee lover in mind.
So many K-Cups and Coffee makers to be won on DealDash!
The Keurig K-Cup machine is a great way to have fresh brewed coffee fast, perfect if you’re on the go or at home or in the office when you don’t want to make an entire pot of coffee.
Here are just some of the types of K-Cups that DealDash offers:

Gloria Jean’s Butter Toffee
Starbucks Breakfast Blend
Caribou Coffee Blend
Starbuck’s Sumatra
Starbuck’s French Roast
Gloria Jean’s Hazelnut Flavor
Green Mountain Coffee Nantucket Blend
Donut Shop
Kahlua Coffee
Starbuck’s Pike Place
Tully’s Coffee
Keurig Vue K-Cups for the Vue Machine
Barista Prima Colombia Coffee
Caribou Coffee French Vanilla
See all of the K-cup auctions that DealDash has lined up
!

Not only does DealDash offer K-cups, they sell Keurig brewing machines, Mr. Coffee singleserve coffee machines, DeLONGHI 5-cup coffee maker, personal KitchenAid coffee maker, Bunn coffeemakers, Kenmore Red 12 Cup Programmable Coffee Maker, Bella Dots Collection Coffee Maker, a Cuisinart Grind and Brew coffeemaker and so much more!
Now after you win some delicious coffee on DealDash how about biscotti with your coffee? Here’s one of our absolute favorite Chocolate Almond Biscotti Recipes, it’s easy to make and amazing when enjoyed with a cup of fresh brewed coffee!

DealDashTips’ Chocolate Almond Biscotti Recipe (Don’t forget your KitchenAid mixer also winnable on DealDash)! DealDash currently has four KitchenAid Artisan mixers up for auction today in a variety of beautiful colors: Pink, Canopy green, Empire red and Imperial gray
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
2 tablespoons Amaretto
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon anise extract (this can be optional)
1 cup whole almond, toasted and chopped a few times,
1 cup chocolate chips, chopped
Directions:
1
Preheat oven to 300°F.
2
Line 2 baking sheets with parchment.
3
Combine the dry ingredients and set aside.
4
Whisk the eggs, amaretto (or almond extract + rum), vanilla and anise extracts in your mixer until well blended.
5
Add the dry ingredients and mix until combined.
6
At this point the dough should be thick and sticky! This is a good thing.
7
Scrape the dough out onto a parchment lined sheet pan.
8
Make sure to flour your hands and shape into a long flat loaf shape about 10 inches long and 5 inches wide.
9
This will be messy, just try your best to make the dough look like a loaf.
10
Bake until firm and dry, about 50 minutes.
11
Remove from the oven and cool 10 minute.
12
Use a long serrated knife and slice into 1/2-inch wide slices.
13
Lay the slices cut side down on the baking sheet and bake another 20 minutes.
14
Turn the slices over and bake 20 minutes more, or until the cookies are a light golden brown.
15 Cool the biscotti before storing and enjoying!
Let us know if you try the recipe!

February 3, 2014

DealDash's No Jumper Auctions Explained!

Lam29, a bidder on DealDash, doesn’t like jumpers… Doesn’t like jumpers so much that whenever one of these ‘pesky’ bidders “jumps” in Lam29 gets right out and stops bidding…

“Bid Jumpers are the worst. If I recognize someone as a jumper I get out of the auction and don’t go back. Bids cost money and bidding is addicting!”
We know that no one likes jumpers, right? Well, unless you’re a jumper? But don’t the jumpers get annoyed by other “jumpers?”
And what’s a jumper anyway?
Jumpers are bidders who wait until an auction has been going for quite some time, with a lot of bids being used up by other bidders who have been in the auction longer than they have, in fact jumpers will wait until hours later to even place their first bid in a penny auction. What’s good is DealDash understands the “jumper” frustration and has been one of the first penny auction sites to introduce “No Jumper Auctions.”
How do No Jumper Auctions Work?

No Jumper™ auctions is a new type of auction that makes winning easier. The big difference between No Jumper™ auctions and normal auctions is that new bidders can’t enter the auction after $5.00. This means you won’t have to compete with users that didn’t bid in the auction from the start, before the price reached $5.00.

All of the penny auctions on DealDash.com are now classified as “No Jumper” auctions. What this means for the bidder is that no new bidders can enter “late in the game” – after the auction end price has hit $5.00. So, in order to bid and participate, you must place a bid soon after an auction has begun. As you will see by looking at the homepage, most all of the active auctions have yellow banners plastered over them stating that “No New Bidders” can enter the auction.
So, back to Lam29’s feedback – eventhough DealDash has a $5.00 threshold limiting all new bidders, their “no jumper” policy doesn’t limit anyone from waiting until bidders have spent bids and entering before $5.00.
On the other hand, DealDash users Mrs. Rutkowski shares,
” The bid jumper is a smart bidder if you ask me Its their money and their bids to use how ever they see fit
Its all part of a strategy in most cases but some times newbies do it not knowing how it all works
New comers should study these auctions and learn before jumping rite in and just clicking away
I like to jump other bidders because a lot of the time it will confuse and aggravate the other bidders giving me the upper hand. (SOMETIMES)
Happy Bidding”
Notice how Mrs. Rutkowski says she likes to bid over, “jump” other bidders because it confuses others and gives her an advantage.
Jumping is a bidding strategy, whether other bidders like it or not.
What’s your opinion of “bid jumpers?”