Today, I want to tell you about a little site called Swoopo.com – in a word the site is genius.
Basically, it is an auction site that you have to pre-buy bids for at the reate of 60 cents a bid, for which there is no bulk discount. Each bid increases the price of the auction from 2 to 24 cents depending on how the auction is structured.
Here’s some examples of a very nice little camera, a Nikon D90:
2c Auction that ended at $40.46 – a quick little math (final cost divided by the price per bid minus 1) will show us that 2,022 bids were placed. At a cost of 60 cents a bid, Swoopo made $1,213.20 from the bids alone, however they also get paid for what the auction ends at and a nominal fee for shipping and handling, disclosed at the bottom of the page as $12.90.
The other thing you can see on this page is what it cost the winner $357 for 595 bids + $40.46 for the final price. They also display how much they saved and what the percent was, so this particular user, Swtkava27, saved 65% off the total cost of this lovely piece of equipment.
2c Auction that ended at $115.24 – mathing will show us that 5,761 bids were placed. At a cost of 60 cents a bid, Swoopo made $3,456.60 from the bids, which they could quite easily use to purchase a couple more of these fancy cameras. This particular winner, Toertchen, got an even better deal, saving 85% off the cost, paying only $51.60 for the bids and $115.24 for the camera.
Let’s look at one more, this time a 6c Auction that ended at $85.38 -the math says that 1,422 bids were placed. At a cost of 60 cents a bid, Swoopo made $853.20 from the bids, not enough to purchase another camera, so on this particular auction they didn’t make enough to cover their costs.
Little bit of warning, as others have pointed out, this site is like Retail Crack. The timer increases every time a bid is placed, which means that sniping works a bit differently.
Also, if you mouse over the timer on a live auction, you will see a message that says “10 second countdown starts at xxx”. For the 2 cent Nikon D90 auctions it is supposed to occur at $82.20, for the 6 second ones at $246.60.
This is a lie.
This is something that I found out from personal experience and frankly that pissed me off a bit as I had planned a bidding strategy around it. Alas, just something that was a bit upsetting about it all.
Verdict: Not for the faint of heart or easily addicted.
Sites like Swoopo are more for fun than for people actually looking for a bargain. I suggest you look around at the other auction sites similar to Swoopo. Hasteno.com is a new one that I’ve been playing on and I’ve actually won a couple things. Playstation 3 games going for $.08 (2 bids!) and a Nintendo Wii going for $2.16 is ridiculous. Before you completely discount the idea, you should check them out.
Thomas – Thanks for the comment! I wasn’t discounting the idea of Swoopo (or Hasteno), just trying to provide a fair warning to anyone who has a heart condition or addictive nature.
Hasteno.com seems to operate under the same principles as Swoopo.com, however it is much younger so deals are probably easier to achieve at this stage.
Quick bit of info about them for our readers: $0.60 a bid and you have to pre-buy all your bids (just like on Swoopo); all bids raise the price $0.04 (rather than Swoopo’s variable price per auction).
I’ll probably try it out, so if you want to send me a referral email, feel free!
Thomas, have you actually ever received your items from Hasteno? Several reviews describe that site as a scam considering their paypal address is a gmail address and that their IP address is a proxy based out of Europe…rather than California as advertised. I just started playing on that site and won a few items, but I never received them.
Brian –
You can say goodbye to your money. Please see Jon’s article on Hasteno. Click the homepage link to go direct to it.
John
Try to register a username on Swoopo that contains any uppercase characters and your registered username will be all lowercase characters. Be suspicious of bidders who have usernames containing uppercase characters because they did not go through the normal registration process. Try it yourself, your username will be all lowercase. Be suspicious.