The saddest experience on DealDash is running out of bids minutes after you start. I can tell you from experience that blowing through bids too quickly is a waste of time and money. Sure, you can buy more bids, but that defeats the purpose. I can keep 200 bids for hours, and I win a lot!
Having spent plenty of time on DealDash, I have made all the mistakes and getting “bid-crazy” is the worst offense to one’s self. By bid-crazy, I mean, suddenly, you just start clicking at everything in site. It’s just bid-crazy! You’re never going to win that way, and if you do it’s a fluke.
The easiest way to know if you are getting bid-crazy is to spend an hour bidding, and suddenly all your bids are gone with nothing to show for it. That’s because you didn’t spend any time thinking about the items you want. I guess if you don’t mind losing, that’s not a problem. But if you signed up for Deal Dash, you signed up for great savings, and if you think about what you’re doing, it’s easy to win.
My number one secret to conserving bids is checking into the auction to see how many people are in the auction. If there are 100 people in the auction and the average selling price is around $300, you are not going to win early in the auction. If you do, it’s a stroke of luck that required no strategy….it was just luck.
There is a certain strategy to conserving bids, the best thing to do is to place a few bids early in the auction and then back out for a while. By placing a few bids as apposed to just one, you, 1. May win it for only pennies, that is awesome! 2. You are in the auction in the beginning and, if you read my blog regularly, you know how I stress to know your competition, and being in the auction early, you will see who is also involved, do they stay or do they go? So,… getting to know the other players habits is also a good idea.
Watch the auction, don’t place a bid and abandon the auction. (Well, there are exceptions to that, which I talk about in my New Strategy blog coming soon.) Stay in for a good amount of time. One exception to that is, if you are a stickler about free bonus bids, back out if there are a bunch of “newbies” bidding, they haven’t figured out yet that conserving bids wins more than spending them frantically.
Figure out the average selling price, and get back into the auction when it’s near, I suggest 10% prior and stay in 25% after. These are general rules I follow when trying to win a big ticket item. Once you know the competition, you may be able to do this on small ticket items too, but be careful! Small ticket items usually go for a great deal less than retail and you have to stay very sharp and involved with them.
You can waste your bids, and feel sad, or you can conserve your bids and win! It’s that simple. It never pays to pounce on your opponent, if you do every two bids of yours cancels themselves. If you’re not using the BidBuddy, you are not conserving bids. There is always another auction right around the corner.
Good Luck and Happy Bidding!
Written by Donna, DealDash user since 2014.
Useful tips on how to win auctions