DealDash Basics: Sunk Costs and Why Bidders Keep Bidding

Hello! Are you new to DealDash and not sure where to begin? 
Well first of all, let’s start out by explaining what DealDash is, how you bid and why you should try it.
DealDash – found at DealDash.com, is an online pay-per-bid entertainment auction website. Opened in 2009, it’s actually one of the longest running penny auction sites of its kind.
A variety of items are sold on a daily basis and many bidders get great deals.
DealDash can be referred to as a lifestyle brand entertainment auction site thanks to the wide vary of items to suit just about everyone’s lifestyle. From the large number of gift cards, gift cards for everything from fine cuts of meat and seafood, restaurants, and retailers, toys, baby items, video games, cleaning supplies, furniture, jewelry, appliances, electronics, gardening, fishing, exercise and so much more.
What is an entertainment auction aka penny auction site?
A penny auction, unlike the traditional auction site think eBay, BiddingforGood (by the way, real cool way to support charities and get great deals on merchandise, vacations, etc. too!) requires bidders to purchase bids – penny auctionss run on a totally different format.
Each bid serves as an entry fee for a chance to win.
Bids are sold in bid packs of 180, 400, 800, 1500, and 2500 bids and currently all bids cost $0.18 each.
Once you place a bid you will be spending $0.18 each time *Unless you get your bids cheaper, right now they are on sale for 70% off the regular price.

The auction clock is totally different too – 10 seconds on the countdown does not really mean 10 seconds remaining in the auction.

What happens is if someone places a bid after you do, at any time, the timer will reset to 10 seconds, or 20 seconds, depending on the particular site. On DealDash the reset time is 10 seconds. So say Bidder X places a bid when the timer states 8 seconds remaining, then bidder Y places a bid right after bidder X when there are 3 seconds remaining. You can see where bidder Y’s hopes of winning could be crushed at that point, but this the nature of the game and X could then place another bid after bidder Y and the timer would be reset again.
And other bidders could be in the running, too, placing bids and resetting the timer with each new bid.
But remember, each bid costs money $0.xx or if you purchase bid packs at a discount sometimes around $0.16 each bid.
The more bids you purchase at a discount the more competitive advantage you have over other users who paid more money for their bids.
Whether or not you’re a competitive person, or someone who gets annoyed easily, these traits could really start to come out once you have money on the line trying to win an item you really want that everyone else seems to want too.
Everyone is in the same boat, the way you react and the amount of bids and time you spend may differ from another bidder.
Anger + frustration can also come into play. Penny auction and bidder behavior embody the popular law of attrition talked about in game mechanics and sunk cost theory.
Sunk Cost – in this case would be the amount of money that is spent beyond the value of something to reclaim the value of what has already been spent trying to win. So a bidder would keep bidding in order to reclaim the cost already “sunk” into trying to win.
To illustrate sunk cost, here’s an example with two different bidders.  Bidder X and Bidder Y. Bidder X has been bidding on an item valued at $50 – so far they are still bidding against either bidder Y or multiple bidders and at this point they have spent $55 in trying to win, but haven’t yet won it, bidder X could either give up and write the money off as a loss of trying, the sunk cost, or keep trying to reclaim the sunk cost of $55 if they bid more and end up winning. There is And while there are tips and strategies that different users utilize and win, there is not one sure tip or definitive strategy that will assure success.
DealDash’s brilliant buy it now offering  helps with the sunk cost problem.
 
Say bidder X, at $55 in has decided to buy it now they can purchase the item at its stated value of $50 and receive all of their bids back into their account – a definite win if you wanted the item anyway but couldn’t get it at a discount. It wouldn’t make much sense to keep bidding if you didn’t want to lose more money in bids especially if you ended up not winning. Though you could try and bid more and see if you win, but when you decide to buy it now all bids will be returned to you.
Tune in next time for more tips!