I learned the secret to saving bids is by not wasting them.
The best and easiest way to not waste bids is by placing our bids into Bid Buddy, the automated bidder. Thanks to a new training video DealDash created most shoppers are now doing that. Nonetheless, there are a lot more tips and strategies for shoppers to learn how to save bids.
Below are some lessons I learned over the years on how to save bids.
Select your auctions carefully
Not all auctions are alike. Some are a lot easier to win than others.
How can we know which auctions are the easiest ones to win? Good question. Perhaps the best place to start is by looking at the Winner’s List and clicking on the Featured Wins. We can then see which auctions sold for the fewest number of bids. That list can, and often does, change from week to week. Auctions that sell low one week might sell high the next week. However, if we check this list out on a regular basis, we can often see a trend.
For new customers on DealDash, it’s usually a good idea to start shopping in auctions with a fairly low Buy-It-Now listed. Then if you do not win, you can afford to BIN and get all your bids back free to use in another auction.
Usually, the higher the BIN the more bids it will take to win the auction, but not always. Even most high-dollar items will eventually sell at a bargain price. Therefore, if we see an auction with a high BIN that we really want to win, it might be a good idea to check out the selling price of the last 30 times the item went up for auction.
Let’s say the auction sold at a bargain price using 100 bids or less about one time out of every five times it went up for auction, but the other four out of five times that same item sold at a much higher price and previous winners used 2,000 or more bids. In that case, we might save more bids by placing 100 bids each time the next 5 or 15 times that item goes up for auction. Using this strategy, instead of placing 2,000 bids all at once, we could improve our opportunity to win the auction with fewer bids.
My mother often said, “Never put all of your eggs into one basket.” I wondered why. I figured if we dropped our basket we might break all of the eggs, but if we put our eggs in several different baskets and only dropped one basket, we might still have some good eggs in the other baskets. I believe investors often use that same strategy when they never put all of their investments in one place. Putting this same idea into practice on DealDash, we might win more auctions by putting our bids into several different auctions.
Know your competition
If we want to save bids we must become familiar with the screen names of other shoppers and know how they shop.
I know I will never be able to out-bid some shoppers in any auction, and that’s why I have a list of power bidders with an endless supply of bids that I always avoid. If those screen names join an auction I’m already in, I immediately cancel my bids and find another auction.
How do you know who the power bidders are if you are a new customer? This is another good question. One good place to start is to go to the Winners List. Screen names who won more than one auction in one day are most likely power bidders you might want to avoid.
To save bids we should also write down the screen names of everyone who recently won a large bid pack. We most likely will not have enough bids to beat them. We should also check the Winners List for shoppers who recently won any high BIN auction they might have exchanged for a large number of bids.
Shoppers who win a large bid pack will seldom call it a day and go away. Therefore, whenever a shopper jumps into our auction at the last minute it’s a good idea to check to see if that shopper recently won a large number of bids or a high-dollar auction.
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.