Many DealDash.com shoppers want to know how many bids they will need to place to win certain auctions.
Of course, we can never be certain exactly how many bids we need there are ways to get a good idea. If we are any good at math there are a couple different ways we can simply “go figure.”
There is a fast way or a slow way that takes a little more time and effort.
Past Winners
The first thing we must do is to look at the data from past winners.
The fastest way would be to check the data on the last 10 winners and look at the highest number of bids past winners used to win the auction. For example, let’s take a look at the 950 bid pack. Looking at the last 10 winners the most bids a previous “winner” used was 1,071 bids, so that “winner” overbid and lost more bids than he won. We would not want to do the same, so we might look at the most bids used without going over the BIN value of the auction, which were 567. Therefore, we could feel confident that we could win that auction by placing at least 567 bids or more to win the 950 bid pack.
Another way to come up with a ballpark figure might be more accurate but takes more time. Looking at the last 10 winners, two of them overbid the value of the auction and most shoppers will not do that. Therefore, we might want to throw those two figures out. Then add up the number of bids the other 8 winners used without overbidding — 388, 63, 49, 567, 124, 184, 225, and 315 and then divide by eight. I come up with 1,865 bids those eight winners used. If I divide that number by eight I come up with about 238 bids – the average number of bids it took to win that auction. Therefore, it would tell us that we probably should place at least 238 bids to win that auction. We could also consider the fact that five of the last 10 winners used fewer than 238 bids.
Other Factors
Doing the math definitely gives us a ballpark idea of how many bids it might take to win auctions.
It is impossible, however, for us to know exactly how many bids we will need to win an auction because of many unknowns and other factors that are always subject to change.
Some of other factors that can affect the closing cost of auctions are:
- How many other shoppers are participating and/or seriously competing in the same auction
- The experience level of the other shoppers competing in the same auction
- How many bids the other shoppers have to burn
- The day of the week and/or the time of day or night
- At what point we enter the auction (from the beginning, middle or end before all new bidders are blocked)
- The type of feature DealDash is running at the time (some features are more popular than others)
- How many shoppers have already won the same auction and have now been eliminated
Because of all of these other unknown factors we could win the auction with fewer bids than we anticipated, but if we “go figure” and go with the highest number of bids without overbidding, we will have a good idea how many bids we need to place.
This sponsored blog post was submitted by: Barbara L. Sellers. Barbara was compensated by DealDash for this blog post. Blog posts are written by real DealDash customers. The opinions and advice here represent our customers’ views and not those of the company.