Penny Auction Software Tip

How to start penny auction without loss?

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:09:00 PDT

Q. I have a question, about the penny auction.
Imagine that I'm selling something with real value 10,000. The bidding starts at 1 cent. Each credit you buy is worth one euro. Let say the bidding goes to 2 cents, but the problem I see is a person who will bid, if it will be no other bidder, he will win and you will waste your money. How can I avoid that? By placing a bid, or what?

A. 1) Traffic is a king of penny auction business.
For getting traffic, your you should plan a good advertising campaign, think about marketing tools and let some people win items on your website and they will definitely tell others. You just cannot launch such business with 2 or 3 customers.

Any business cannot start without advertising, not only penny auction. We have seen, how with proper advertising, or existing base of customers, new penny auction business have made profit from the first month.

I want to say: if somebody “for extra insurance” will bid by himself, the website will live maximum 2 months, because if visitors can’t win anything and only lose money on the website, they will share this information with friends and will never buy a second bid package.

2) We have optional module #46 “Reserved price auction” - the auction is cancelled if the target “reserved” price is not achieved. All spent bids are returned to the participants’ accounts.

If the item’s real cost is 10,000, you can set “reserved price” at 100 – this means that the auction would be successful after visitors spend on it 10,000 bids.

Are penny auctions legit?

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Mon, 13 May 2013 07:53:00 PDT

Q. I believe there is no honest penny auction because the method fundamentally broken.

A. There is no so much differences, no any fundamental differences, between classic auction and penny auction.

1) Pay-per-bid model.

Some traditional auctions are also payable. In some cases you should buy entrance ticket, or pay regular monthly fee. So, the bidding fee model is not something extremely different.

2) An incremental bid is small.

Yes, it is, but it is not any critical difference. Thank to it, the last participant to have placed a bid wins the item and pays the final bid price, which may be significantly lower than the retail price of the item.

3) Honesty.

Penny auctions are online business. Like many other businesses in internet, for example e-shops. There are proven, reliable e-shop, and, besides them, many swindlers. Same with penny auctions - is it honest or not, depends on the owner, not on business model.

Controversial penny auction software provider on sale

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 03 May 2013 23:50:00 PDT

A controversial penny auction software provider Penny Auction Wizards decided to close the doors. An announsment is published at Ackwired.

Ad text is very attractive. Advertised price is a bit frightening - $100,000.

What we can say.
Penny Auction Wizards appeared on the market a year ago.
Professionally styled website is made in good Web 2.0 tradition.
But obviously fake promotional videos at the homepage aroused suspicion.

Portfolio consisting, at least in part, of the logos of companies that are market leaders and clearly can not be associated with this website, completed the unpleasant impression.
So, for us was clear, that a new star among questionable software providers is born.

As a conclusion.

It is a pity that such a good webmaster and SEO professional neglects, even partly, business ethics.

We believe that providing honest professional web design and search engine optimization services this man could grow a sustainable business.

We wish him to finish quickly a business that has lost buyers' confidence, and begin to provide professional Internet services on a new and fair basis.

Q and A on Penny Auction Software #33

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 06:44:00 PDT

Q. I wish to reward all my penny auction website customers, otherwise I have one happy customer and lot of unhappy at every auction.

A. Loyalty points, bonus miles, loyal customer systems are widely used in many businesses, from small coffee shops to airlines and hotel chains.

At penny auction it can work as follows:

customer receives bonus points when he places a bid. It is done automatically by the software. Administrator can define how many points will customer receive for each bid placed. For example, it can be set that customer receives 5 bonus points for each bid.

Another part of the system is Reward Shop. For example, Administrator can add/upload a product "100 bids package" to Rewards Shop, and set it price as 500 bonus points (or it can be even several times more expensive, as it is a bonus, for example 2500 points).

So, first customers buys bids. Then he bids on some auction and receives bonus points. After he can buy some product in Rewards Shop.

Good combination is a Reward Shop and built-in online games, like, for example, slot machines. Customers can spend their bonus points in your online casino, win or lose them. Playing for bonus points can be cheaper for them than playing for bids, because they can get 5 or 10 points for one bid placed.

Start with cheaper penny auction software first

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:56:00 PDT

Q. We want to start with cheaper penny auction software, and upgrade it when the business grows up. Please comment.

A. It is an illusion, that to start cheaper is more easy. That for $200-300, or max. $800-900 it will be possible to understand, is this business worth to pursue, or not.

In fact, to start cheaper makes your life more hard. Because, firstly, with a cheaper software you will close your website in 2-3 month anyway:

if you do not have enough customers, you will close;
if you will have enough customers, you should close; because your penny auction platform cannot serve them all.

So, as a result:

you lost time;
you lost your efforts;
you lost money (software + promotion + operations);
you lost you nervous energy;
you killed your reputation;
you messed up a reputation of a penny auction industry.

Do you think that after all of that it will be easy to start second time?

Penny Auction hosting

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 03:30:00 PDT

Q. I have a few technical questions for you.

Is a dedicated server essential for the website to run or can we host it on a shared server?
Do we need SSH?
Are there any additional things to keep in mind?

Many thanks.

A.

1)    Yes, dedicated server is essential for Penny auction website because penny auction software needs access to server resources permanently. At shared server penny auction can work only as a demo, with 5-10 users max.

2)    Do you mean SSH or SSL? SSH is important, SSL not.

3)    Server provider, or other organization who is responsible for your
server, should be able to provide:

initial setup of the server software, including server software required by our software platform;
server software administration and maintenance;
backup and recovery.

Penny auction software mobile versions

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 05:41:00 PDT

Question: Is there a way to get screenshots or a test version of the mobile penny auction software so we can take a look at it?

Answer: a) please find screenshots below;

b) Our Android version is freely available at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=biz.softmedia.bidclassic&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImJpei5zb2Z0bWVkaWEuYmlkY2xhc3NpYyJd

or at http://goo.gl/EC91U

c) Our iOS version is also available, but Apple does not allow demo applications to be uploaded into App Store.

Because of that we cannot send a direct link.

It has the same functionality as Android version, but user interface is done in iOS style.

We have attached screenshots of iOS version.

If you want to install our BidClassic demo mobile application, we will send it to you and you will need to manually install it. If you are interested, please do the following:

1. Send us your iPhone 's identifier (UDID).

a) Connect your device to computer and open iTunes.

b) Go to Summary tab of your device.

c) If you see label "Serial Number", click it once. It will change to "Identifier (UDID)" and you will see your identifier (something like "7vp9md22db5fd283ac1978e44baf78726933k196", may be divided into two lines).

d) Make a right button click on identifier (UDID) and copy it. Send it to us.

2. We will send you an e-mail with two links:

a) a link to so-called Provisioning Profile. Please navigate to this link from your iPhone and install this profile.

b) a link to app.

3. After profile installation please download app (.ipa file) to your computer and double click on its icon. iTunes will open.

4. Select Apps option from Library drop-down in upper left corner of iTunes.

5. Select Bidclassic app and drag it with mouse to the right side of iTunes window.

6. Devices panel will arise. It lists all devices that are currently connected to your computer. Drop app into your device.

After these steps BidClassic demo app should be installed to your iPhone and you should be able to use it.

How to host an Easter auction successfully

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 03:38:00 PDT

Are you celebrating Easter?
Yes?
The question is not about you. It is about your penny auction website. Just to close the auction for four days is not the best solution. You should think about your customers first.

See below the description how to host an classic Easter auction successfully (from http://ministry-to-children.com/how-to-host-an-easter-auction) , It is not exactly our case, but very close.

Ask for volunteers to donate Easter goodies. My closest friend loves making wreaths. She makes a few Easter egg wreaths and other craft goodies she comes up with. (She’s so creative!) I place a few large wicker baskets in my kids’ church to collect Easter toys, jewelry, coloring books and even Bibles. I start collecting a month in advance.

Create flyers to advertise the Easter auction. I give clues about cool baskets and make sure people know why we hosting the Easter auction.
Post updates on your social networking pages. I show pictures of the baskets. I reserve the largest basket for the silent auction. That way, people everywhere can bid on the basket.
Set the baskets out on a decorated table. Place a descriptive sheet in front of each basket. This allows everyone to get a clue about the goodies inside.

Funny, isn't it?
Also, penny auctions are same good for fundraising, as classic auctions. Even better.
Happy Easter!

Create flyers to advertise the Easter auction. I give clues about cool baskets and make sure people know why we hosting the Easter auction.
Post updates on your social networking pages. I show pictures of the baskets. I reserve the largest basket for the silent auction. That way, people everywhere can bid on the basket.
Set the baskets out on a decorated table. Place a descriptive sheet in front of each basket. This allows everyone to get a clue about the goodies inside.

- See more at: http://ministry-to-children.com/how-to-host-an-easter-auction/#sthash.ZhPm4q97.dpuf

Here’s how to host an Easter auction successfully.
Ask for volunteers to donate Easter goodies. My closest friend loves making wreaths. She makes a few Easter egg wreaths and other craft goodies she comes up with. (She’s so creative!) I place a few large wicker baskets in my kids’ church to collect Easter toys, jewelry, coloring books and even Bibles. I start collecting a month in advance.

Create flyers to advertise the Easter auction. I give clues about cool baskets and make sure people know why we hosting the Easter auction.
Post updates on your social networking pages. I show pictures of the baskets. I reserve the largest basket for the silent auction. That way, people everywhere can bid on the basket.
Set the baskets out on a decorated table. Place a descriptive sheet in front of each basket. This allows everyone to get a clue about the goodies inside.

- See more at: http://ministry-to-children.com/how-to-host-an-easter-auction/#sthash.ZhPm4q97.dpuf

Iowa Calls Halt to "Penny Auctions" (A piece of history)

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 03:20:00 PDT

February 17, 1933. The Iowa state legislature has passed a foreclosure moratorium law that will keep banks from foreclosing on farms unable to cover their mortgages. The growing number of "penny auctions" and the threat of violence at farm auctions led to this measure.

In farm regions, an estimated 76 foreclosure sales were blocked by penny auctions in January and February alone.

What's a Penny Auction?

The Great Depression plus harsh drought conditions were hard on farmers in the 1920s and early 1930s. Many could not make enough money to pay the mortgage. As a result, banks would foreclose on the property. They would then sell the farms at public auctions.

Farmers resented the foreclosures. When they would hear about an upcoming auction, they would gather on the day of the auction and make it clear to officials and potential bidders that bids from outside the farm community were not welcome.

"When the bidding commenced, someone in the crowd would start it off at fifteen cents or so, and it rarely got beyond a few dollars before the bidding stopped and the auctioneer would close the sale. If anyone in the farmyard might be so ignorant of what was going on as to put in a serious bid, a suitably burly man would be likely to step up and put a hand on his shoulder with the words, 'That bid's a little high, ain't it?'"

:=)

Q and A on Penny Auction Software #32

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 07:06:00 PDT

Q. Where To Find The Best Penny Auction Software Reviews?

A. If you search in Google for best penny auction software review, you mostly can find a marketing blah-blah, like the following:

"...

It is for that reason crucial to search for a script that is composed in pure PHP template for your site’s functionality sake, and that you have the understanding on how to harness it.

On the internet penny auction internet sites attract hundreds of thousands of folks around the world as it helps make purchasing a good deal much easier in which you can obtain items at a portion of their fees, which has been designed attainable by the penny auction script that has a pre-integrated panel admin panel that makes it possible for web page directors to management its internet content material. Penny auction script absolutely free training guarantees that you will be equipped to connect very well with your finish end users and that you can take care of all the data of the transactions for one hundred% client retention.

..." (from the website www.scribd.com).

The only purpose of these senseless long texts is a rating in Google organic search list. You can find dozens of such websites, near every producer of weak, or even fake, penny auction software keeps 1-2 such websites.

So, what to do, if there are no reliable PA software reviews in Internet?
Nothing to do, you should review the software by yourself.

How?

Our recommendation is to take a look at a Portfolio - examples of the PA websites made by particular provider.
Ask from yourself at least the following questions:

Has this particular provider the portfolio at his website?
Are all websites presented really working as a penny auctions?
Do these websites have any mention or reference to that particular producer. In another words, can you be sure that the producer is the author of these websites?
If clients' testimonials a presented, is it clearly understandable which penny auction websites these clients own?
Etc.

Do not be in rush, take your time. This helps you to find the Best Penny Auction Software.

Women in penny auction industry

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 09:41:00 PST

Celebrating International Women's Day we would like to shed some light to the topic brought in the title.
To answer to the question: are there anything sex-specific what penny auction owners should take in consideration?

The answer is Yes. We know some interesting facts. For example, among penny auction customers there are more women than men.

The difference is nor radical. But big enough for operating several women-oriented penny auctions.

Like, for example, Penny Purses. It is a niche penny auction site dedicated to what women love most – purses. "Designer bags can be yours for only a few bucks, if you can bid smarter than the competition" - Penny Purses declares.

Unfortunately, Oohilove.com, backed by Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt's venture firm, Tomorrow Ventures, a penny auction site specializing in women's luxury items, was closed pretty fast. Maybe the reason is simple - the money ran out.

Our conclusion is the following: do not forget about women. Not only on March 8th. The link to another positive experience is here:
http://www.brw.com.au/p/tech-gadgets/one_cent_flights_zeroes_in_on_its_COpb4MQ84Vg5ifLODDiyJN

.

3 ISSUES THAT CAST A SHADOW OVER PENNY AUCTION INDUSTRY. Part 3.

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 05:54:00 PST

PART III. Big money is not always big happiness.

The first penny auction we got to know was Telebid. It was launched in Germany in 2006. Successfully combining e-commerce, entertainment and even crowdfunding, new ‘pay-per-click’ model became popular very fast.

Such a great idea couldn’t remain unnoticed by venture capitalists. Already in 2008 Telebid received $4 M funding (wow!!) from Wellington Partners (pan-European venture capital firm with some € 800 million under management and offices in London, Munich and Zurich).

Telebid changed its name to Swoopo, hired stuff in Munich (according to our estimation there was approximately 20-25 developers. Developers are not cheap labor in Germany) and expanded to the global market.

Swoopo’s increasing reputation attracted even more venture capitalists and in the beginning of 2009 the company received $10 M (jeez!!) from August Capital, an information technology venture capital firm based in California. So in total Swoopo got $14M of funding.

In 2009 Swoopo became the most popular penny auction website in the world. It had 5 offices all over the world and gained a staff of over 100 employees. The number of new users was measured by thousands per day, and the staff had to invent more and more restrictions to cope with the flow of complaints from existing customers.

In 2009 Swoopo’s turnover was $28 M, the profit was not reported (source: Wikipedia). But the success was not long: already in March 2011 the website stopped to respond and the company filed for bankruptcy.

In 2012 the domain Swoopo.com was bought by DealDash, US penny auction who closed a $1 M (only!!) investment from venture capital firms and angel investors in the last days of December 2011.

From our point of view this example shows how important it is for the beginning companies to get the profit using their own efforts, and not to survive on the doping from venture funds. As we know, all the leaders of the market (the only exception is MadBid) never received significant investments, but have very impressive numbers of turnover and profit even now, in times of economic hardship.

As to MadBid, it was registered in the UK in 2008. The company received £4 M in funding from Skype founders in 2010. Skype founders are, as it seems, serious and demanding investors, their money helped MadBid to become the leader of the market in 5 European countries including UK, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Germany.

However, despite this positive experience, investors, after the story of Swoopo, are afraid of penny auction industry and prefer to invest in gaming, despite the fact that Google Trends graphs of visitors’ interest to "penny auction" and "online games" are near the same.

3 ISSUES THAT CAST A SHADOW OVER PENNY AUCTION INDUSTRY. Part 2.

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 05:52:00 PST

We continue our discussion about the factors that cast a shadow over penny auction industry.

PART II. How crashing software may crash the dreams

Young penny auction business may fail not only because of the fraudulent owners. Let´s imagine you are going to open your penny auction website soon and being an honest person, you have only good intentions to do a fair business. You come to the case thoroughly – you carefully study the experience of other penny auctions, plan the concept of your own and determine the budget. The most significant part goes to promotions, as you don´t have traffic and you understand how important it is to attract as many visitors as possible.

And then you buy the software. There are many penny auction software offers with several price ranges, the fee starts approximately from $100. But you decide to stay at a reasonable sum of $1000. Everything seems to be OK while you test the system alone or together with your partner. You successfully launch and receive several hundreds of registered customers, who purchase their first bid packs.

But then everything goes wrong - the system suddenly crashes under the high load to the server. Your provider ignores all your emails and the phone line appears to be not working. And it means that you lose not only the money what you have invested into the software, but also money spent on promotions and initial operations.

And now the real disappointment comes – the money is gone and the customer service line is being torn apart from the calls - you have to calm down all raging clients. Their feelings are understandable - they just spent their money and immediately lost it. Hardly will they trust you again. Beautiful start is hopelessly flawed, and your nice penny auction turns into a headache both for you and your customers.

What is your reaction? Of course, you will get angry. And due to fact that there are many fake penny auction software providers on the market, this scenario is, unfortunately, not rare. As it is difficult for the buyer to distinguish qualified software from its poor imitation, incompetent providers offer inoperative product that works only as a demo – with 1-5 simultaneous visitors. There are many fantastic packages being offered, with tens of additional options, free support, hosting and even traffic, just for several hundreds of dollars. Versed customer understands that it is nothing more than just a marketing trick.

Beware of such offers. Penny auction software is a complex real-time application that loads the server much more than any other e-commerce software. The only way to protect yourself is to choose penny auction software very carefully. You may read how to choose penny auction provider here: www.softmedia.biz/penny-auction-software-how-to-choose. In order not to be disappointed, be wise and invest in the software that will return your money fast and will help you to earn more.

Part 3 of this article will be published in our next post. Welcome back.

3 ISSUES THAT CAST A SHADOW OVER PENNY AUCTION INDUSTRY

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:27:00 PST

Being young and instantly developing, penny auction industry nowadays encounters three main problems that have negative impact on this industry. Let’s try to understand these three issues and find the ways to avoid them.

PART I. What may cost fraud for a penny auction owner

It is very sad to see how fraudulent penny auction websites undermine the credibility of penny auctions in general. Such factors as dishonesty of the owner, fair to lose initial investment or lack of understanding of how to make your PA website successful cause unpleasant stories of scamming people.

It is not a secret that it is easy to cheat customers. One can ask friends to create accounts and bid with real customers in order to make the price higher. Another slippy method is to create “empty” accounts and to make them bid automatically or to use special programs, who create “bot”, “shill” or “ghost” bidders.

But the golden rule is simple – be honest. It’s naive to think that customers are fools. Probably some of them even have more experience in penny auctions than novice owners. No doubt people realize very fast that the website is a scam and will never be back.

And losing customers is not the only problem. Two cases, happened lately, show, that authorities started to apply measures against unfair penny auction owners. It comes to thousands of dollars that have to be paid back. More can be read here:
www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/jan/20/bbb-tip-of-the-week/
www.dailyfinance.com/2010/09/30/penny-auction-site-busted-using-software-designed-to-cheat/

An advice for those who still plan to make fast money at the expense of customers – think about your reputation - it is something what is easy to lose and impossible to return. Instead of trying to cheat, it is better to pay attention to the advertising and to stimulate your customers to bid more and to come back to your website. Think about promotions, loyalty programs, competitive cost of bids and shipping, products, rewards, etc.

Parts 2 and 3 of this article will be published in our next posts. Welcome back.

Q and A on Penny Auction Software #31

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 11:46:00 PST

Q. I want to start a penny auction website. Is it better to start locally or internationally?

A. Everything depends on your budget.
Take in consideration that in case of operating your website in different countries you need:

The software that handles not only different countries and languages, but also currencies, time zones, etc.
Local customer service staff, speaking target languages.
To allocate several times more money for the advertising, as it should reach different markets.

If you are planning to start on a grand scale – then you may start internationally. In case of fixed and conservative budget it is better to start step by step and to expand your business when you are the leader on your local market.

Q and A on Penny Auction Software #30

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 06:57:00 PST

Q. I want to auction cars / real estate. What can you recommend me?

A. Auctioning big prizes a is always very tempting, so if you have the opportunity to offer such serious prizes like cars or real estate, it can be your key of success and wonderful opportunity for advertising.

At the same time you need to think carefully about your business logic: in the auction the final price is unpredictable, so you can incur heavy losses.

In penny auction model the idea is that the final price of the prize is relatively low and profit comes from selling bid packages. So to cover your expenses you need incredibly big number of persistent participants, who don’t give up and continue bidding even with great competition. Of course you may try, but sounds not very realistic..

More suitable auction model could be “The Price is Right". This auction got his name from popular TV show, where contestants should guess the price of a prize (usually the car). The winner of the auction is the bidder with the closest unique bid to the retail price of the prize, which is not higher than the retail price.

In order to protect his investment the auctioneer can set up the period of time when the auction is live (usually long period, several weeks or even months) and also the minimum amount of bids that should be placed to make the auction accomplished.

Q and A on Penny Auction Software #29

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:54:00 PST

Q. Is it smart to outsource production of penny auction website from developing country?

A. Quite a lot of developing countries are known in connection with the production of software.
There are such countries like India, China, Pakistan, Vietnam, also Russia, Ukraine, Belarus.

Some very big companies, such as Microsoft, have their development centers in these countries.
Project managers from head office direct the work in these development plots.
This provides a culture of production, quality of the final product, compliance with standards and deadlines.

If it is not possible to send a project manager for a permanent presence at such location, then usually the culture of order fulfillment falls.

In a recent article in Forbes the problems of the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner was analyzed. The author, Steve Denning, concludes that Boeing lost control of outsourcing. Read this article here.

Penny Auction Software, of course, is not a Boeing. But also not a usual website. In our opinion, a good penny auction is at least 10 times more complex software than usual dynamic website.

Therefore, we recommend to select the provider of the software very carefully, to pay attention to all the details of it. And be sure to ask - who is engaged in the development of the software, where, how many engineers, where these people have IT education, can the provider to prove it with the documents, etc?

Q and A on Penny Auction Software #28

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 13:51:00 PST

Q. Is penny auction business profitable?

A. We have seen many articles, where authors analyzed profitability of penny auctions.

First such articles were published in 2009, and we remember, that average profitability of penny auctions was calculated at the level of 30-35%.

We in Softmedia analyzed financial results of Bouncybids.com - penny auction in USA, active in 2010-2011, closed in the end of 2011.

They had the same level of profitability - 30-35% from total revenue.

During 2012 several researchers published their works, where the same numbers were given.

For example:

http://cs.brown.edu/research/pubs/theses/ugrad/2012/estix.pdf

http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/ned/Penny_Auction.pdf

So, as a conclusion, we can say that penny auction is a profitable business model with remarkably higher profit level than many other businesses.

Q and A on Penny Auction Software #27

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 06:36:00 PST

Q. Are penny auctions any good business?

A. Having your own business gives freedom, independence, ability to constantly develop and enlarge your income. If you are searching for a nice business idea, there is an answer - penny auction. It is the most effective online business model so far and let's try to understand why.

When starting a new business, the most logical question is: how fast will I return my money? From the experience of successful penny auction websites it is seen that it is possible to return your initial investments with several months, weeks or even days.

Second important moment – there is low competition in comparison with similar types of e-commerce. It is easy to get lost in the variety of all kinds of e-shops and daily deal websites that exist on the market. But, in fact, the niche of penny auctions is not so full yet. Use your chance before others realize how perspective it is!

Many people ask if some licenses are needed to operate a penny auction websites. This question is reasonable. We have customers from Taiwan to Chile and we have never heard that somebody of them ever needed any licenses.

If it is a new business for you and you don’t have existing Internet traffic, you must carefully plan your marketing in order to provide a lot of visitors to your website. And penny auction “Pay per click” model helps you. As it combines both shopping and entertainment, your customer will get positive emotions from several aspects:

When winning – everyone likes to win, especially, an attractive desired product with huge discount.
When purchasing a product - it is always pleasant to buy new stuff, that’s why we are so shopping addicted, aren’t we?
When bidding - penny auctions are fun themselves. Participation is an enjoyable process and a great way of spending free time. It makes your target audience very wide and simplifies advertising planning.

It is right to mention that every business is connected with some risks. Even taking into consideration all benefits of penny auction business model, nobody can promise that you will become a millionaire. But there are no doubts that this business model has all the prerequisites for starting effective, interesting, dynamic, modern and profitable business. So, don’t waste your time. Invest your money wisely.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 00:46:00 PST

For all readers of our penny auction software blog and all penny auction fans - Merry Christmas and prosperous new 2013 year!

Softmedia team has a short winter vacations until 7th of January. Despite of this we welcome all your inquiries any time.

Have a good rest! For finding more information you may visit the following sources:

Softmedia.biz FAQ webpage;
PennyAuctionWatch blog;
Websites of the leaders of the industry, like for example Quibids.

Once again - happy holidays!

Q and A on Penny Auction Software #26

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 12:09:00 PST

Q. We have been hearing from our users that a couple of customers are getting together and helping each other out. For example we have been told that three customers will all place auto bids and after awhile 2 of the 3 customers at the same time drop out of the auction. Other customers expecting the auction to go longer don't expect this and the auction ends early. We are just wondering if you have any advice, from previous auction sites, of how to combat people teaming up or stopping this completely.

A. Quibids fights with this problem by the following way. They set a limit on the amount of Autobid you can place at one time. Here is an abstract from their Autobid rules:

Bid-O-Matic will bid whenever the timer drops below 20 seconds, though it's up to the Bid-O-Matic exactly when it will place that bid.
Bid-O-Matic can be set up with a minimum of 3 bids and a maximum of 25 bids at a time.
Bid-O-Matic will start to bid for you as soon as you click the 'Activate' button, unless there is less than 2 seconds remaining on the auction clock.
Bid-O-Matic may be deactivated at any point during the auction. Please keep in mind that the number of deactivations will be limited to minimize server load.
If an auction ends, all unused Bid-O-Matic bids will remain in your account.
You can only set one Bid-O-Matic at a time per auction.
Bid-O-matics cannot be activated on auctions with less than 2 seconds remaining on the auction clock.

Limitations in bold limit the possibility of abuse described above.

If you have a question about another fraud activity, don't hesitate to ask from us.

Q and A on Penny Auction Software #25

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 05:45:00 PST

Q. I think my website visitors can be interested in your product. What kind of co-operation can you offer?

A. As this blog haven't any special possibilities in co-operation with other websites, we answer by the example of Softmedia.biz - penny auction software provider.

Softmedia has a comprehensive partnership program for the webmasters, bloggers or even just private persons, affiliated with the company.
The idea of the program is the following - affiliates refer Softmedia to their friends or general public by using three types of tools:

banners;
links;
emails.

Every partner receives his personal referral link. This link drives visitors to Softmedia website. It should be sent in email, included in the banner, or just published on the website or in the blog or forum.

When somebody follow this link (click on the banner, or on the link in email), the program understands who was the referrer of this particular visitor.

Such client is tracked through whole sales process, and, in case of making a contract with him, referrer will get rewarded.

Click the link for more information about Softmedia penny auction affiliate program.

Q and A on Penny Auction Software #24

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 11:13:00 PST

Q. Could you please explain the difference between classic and penny auction business model?

A. From functional point of view there are the following differences:

1) Classic auction model (mostly used for selling/distributing goods):

bidding is usually for free;
increment of price with each bet is relatively high;
in some cases increment of price is the value defined by auctioneer; in other cases bidder can give his own new price;
every bid may extend auction time for some period;
auction ends when its time is over and there are no more bids; the last bidder has an obligation to pay final price and delivery/processing fee.

2) Penny auction model (mostly used as an online entertainment):

bidding is usually not for free (Pay-Per-Bid model);
increment of price is usually 1 cent (1 penny);
every bid extends auction time for short period (restarts timer);
auction ends when its time is over and there are no more bidders; the last bidder has an obligation to pay final price (relatively low)and delivery/processing fee, but auctioneer revenue are bids purchased and spent by all bidders also.

Casual gambling - a new name for gambling simulation

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 03:35:00 PST

Analytic company Morgan Stanley has published a report about social gambling describing their findings on the sector’s growth drivers, key uncertainties and what these could mean for the operators. The report expects the social gambling market to grow from $1.7 billion today to $2.5 billion by 2015.

“The 170 million social gambling player base is over triple that of online gambling and is opening up gambling to a new pool of customers,” Morgan Stanley stated.

“Conversion to online gambling would drive growth but the different motivations of social and real-money gamblers mean this is not guaranteed. Our optimistic scenario models market growth to $7 billion by 2015; our bearish scenario is a market of $1.8 billion with our central case at $2.5 billion.”

“Social gambling is unregulated and so thrives where online gambling is restricted,” read the statement from Morgan Stanley. “We examine how this might develop and the impact on operators.”

Finally, Morgan Stanley’s Blue Paper also found that consolidation in the online and social fields ‘looks likely’ as the two areas enjoy ‘complementary advantages’.

Above mentioned insists trust in bright future also for gaming software providers.

How To Launch A Successful Penny Auction Website

noreply@blogger.com (www.Softmedia.biz) — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 08:28:00 PST

Popular website Selfgrowth.com (Google page rank 6, Alexa rank 5179) published our colleague Steven's article about how to launch a successful penny auction.

Steven has deeply analyzed the reasons why some of our customers launch their penny auctions very successfully, whereas some others close their doors quickly.

He has brought the following 10 important factors:

Be prepared
Choose reliable software provider
Ship prizes and products fast
Think about international customers
Do not implement too much limitations
Have clear Terms and Conditions
Be honest - don't bid by yourself
Market your website
Keep customers' privacy
Don't be anonymous and communicate with your clients.

Full article can be accessed here:

www.selfgrowth.com/articles/how-to-launch-a-successful-penny-auction-website