Author: DealDash community

After being an active shopper on DealDash.com since Feb. 8, 2012, I have seen a lot of changes and I have learned a lot of lessons – some from simply watching other shoppers and some from my own hands-on experiences.

Therefore, I decided to share some of my observations over the years.

Consistency Matters

If there is a particular auction that we really want to win, consistency matters. Regardless if the auction product has a high-dollar value or not, if we bid on the item each and every time it goes up for auction, eventually we will win. Some auctions are a lot more difficult to win than others and might take a lot longer, but the key is to never give up and to never stop trying.

I bid in one auction 44 different times before I finally won. One thing that helped is that the auction I won was limited to “only one per customer” so all previous winners were eliminated from competing. Another thing that helped me win is the special feature where all new bidders were eliminated after the auction reached only $3.00. Sometimes other shoppers are used to not seeing the “No New Bidders” banner go up until the auction reaches $5.00. Therefore, when all new bidders get locked out of the auction earlier than that it often means fewer shoppers get in on the auction in time, which is good. That usually results in less competition.

I learned a couple lessons from this experience. First, I might have won that auction sooner when it closed early, but I got distracted and failed to add more bids in time. Second, I might have won sooner if I placed 500 bids four times instead of 2,000 bids one time. But the bottom line is consistency matters.

Continue reading “Lessons Learned”

If you have not been shopping on DealDash.com for a while, you might be missing out on some new and different features.

Buy-It-Now Discount (Runner-up)

One of the new features on DealDash that I really like is the “Buy-It-Now discount for the runner-up in select auctions.”

That special is running now as I am writing this blog. This means that even if we do not win an auction, but we come in second as the first runner-up, we might be able to BIN (Buy-It-Now) at a reduced price, and still get our bids back free. The discount in the selected auctions is usually 50 percent off the full BIN price, but sometimes it might be even more than that.  Isn’t that awesome?

Multiple Auction blasts

Sometimes DealDash schedules multiple auctions to go up for auction all at the same time.

At the time of writing, 50 gift cards will all go up for auction all at the same time. I don’t know if that makes it easier to win a gift card or not, but we have the opportunity to find out.

I wanted to see what would happen if I placed three bids on all 50 gift cards. That’s not easy to do, so I only placed bids on about half of them. Too bad I was not on my computer to watch when these auctions went active. I checked a few hours later and found that I came close to winning three of them. I probably only would have had to place a few more bids. But that’s what makes shopping on DealDash so much fun — simply trying new and different strategies. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t, but we never know what will or will not work until we try.

Continue reading “What’s New on DealDash?”

Are you a happy DealDash.com shopper?

Happy shoppers become loyal customers, so what does it take to become happy DealDash shoppers? I thought about it and came up with a list.

Follow a Budget

Happy shoppers are responsible shoppers. It’s difficult to be a happy shopper if we over-spend our budget.

It’s easy for new customers to get caught up in the fun and excitement of shopping on DealDash. When I first discovered DealDash, I did. I had so much fun, I didn’t want to stop, and I quickly became an avid shopper. However, I decided to slow down, figure out a monthly budget and become a responsible shopper.  

After I planned ahead, always bought my bid packs when they went on sale and followed a budget, I was enjoying shopping on DealDash more than before.

Avoid Distractions

Happy shoppers avoid distractions.

It’s important to choose a quiet time to shop on DealDash when we will not be interrupted with phone calls, visitors or other distractions. Choosing the right time of day or night to shop can make a huge difference.

Continue reading “How to be a Happy Shopper”

One thing I love about DealDash.com is that there are always plenty of bid packs available. I love winning bid packs because that gives me a lot more bidding power for my money.

With so many different bid packs available, however, it could be confusing to know where to begin. After winning more than 30 bid packs in the last few months, I’ve learned a few strategies that usually worked fairly well for me.

We each must develop our own strategies for winning any auction, but the following strategy for winning bid packs usually worked well for me:

Step 1

I check to see which bid packs I’m still free to bid on. Once we win a bid pack, we are not allowed to bid on that same bid pack for 30 days. Sometimes we might forget which bid packs we have already won, but DealDash makes it very easy for us to find out and make a list. If we open a bid pack, it will tell us if we have already won it and are still not qualified to bid on it again. Perhaps the easiest way to make a list of bid packs we cannot bid on is by going to our Dashboard, click on our “won auctions,” and write down all the bid packs we have recently won.

Step 2

Of the bid packs that are still left, I might place at least one bid in each of them so I do not get locked out.  The first ones I want to look at are the old ones because they often have less competition. I noticed the brand new bid packs are most popular and usually have the most competition. After the “No New Bidders” banner goes up that locks out all new bidders, I will look at the following:

• The number of bidders who are qualified to participate in the auction. I prefer not to compete in auctions that have more than 30 other competitors.
• The screen names of the competitors. I will run my mouse over each and every avatar to see if I recognize any names I have on my “never compete with list.” My list has the screen names of shoppers who have a habit of overbidding the value of auction and well-known power bidders.
• The screen names of competitors who recently won a large bid pack. Most likely, I would not be able to outbid any competitor who won 1,000 to 8,000 bids.
• The selling price of this auction for the last several winners. If the auction usually sells out for $7.00 I might want to wait and place the rest of my bids into BidBuddy at that point.
• The number of bids previous winners used to win the auction. If 8 of 10 previous winners used 200 or fewer bids to win the auction, most likely I could win the auction by placing 200 bids, too.

Continue reading “Bid Pack Strategies”