How to Save Money on Bids

Buying Bid Packages is Not Only Option

To get great deals on www.DealDash.com penny auctions, customers must obtain bids for the lowest cost possible and use the least amount of bids possible to win auctions.

Experienced bidders save bids two different ways:
1. By placing one bid early so they do not get locked out of the "no jumper" auction,  and then saving the rest of their bids until the auction gets down to the last two bidders;
2. By only placing a limited number of bids early in the auction, which means that bidder will always win at a low cost (whenever they win) and never waste too many bids by not getting involved in any long auctions.

In this blog, I will discuss how customers can save money on the overall cost of bids.

Unlike any other penny-auction site, DealDash offers customers four different ways to obtain bids:
1. Purchase bid packages;
2. Bid on and win bid packages;
3. Earn FREE bids for time on the clock as the highest bidder and
4. Post a photo of yourself with an auction item you won.

Let's take a look at each one of these areas.

Purchasing Bid Packages
The full cost of bids is 60 cents per bid. Experienced bidders, however, only purchase bids when they go on sale. Until the end of 2013, the lowest price DealDash will offer for the purchase of bid packages is 15 cents per bid. When the cost of bids goes down to 15 cents each, that is the best time to purchase your bids and load up your account, even if you do not  plan on doing any bidding until later. 

Bid On and Win Bid Packages
Once you have purchased a package of bids, you will have the opportunity to bid on and win additional bid packages. DealDash auctions off additional bid packages in a variety of sizes:
25, 40, 60, 70, 150, 300, 600, 800, 1,000, 2,000 and 5,000. Customers can bid on and win bid packages from 25 to 1,000 as many times as they like. Bid packages of 2,000 and 5,000, however, are limited to only one per household to give more customers a better chance of winning those larger packages.

I won this 1,000 bid package for $22.34.

Most customers, of course, go for the largest bid packages, but this could be a huge mistake. Why? Three reasons it might not a good idea to go for the largest bid packages are:
1. They usually have much more and stronger competition and, therefore, are much more difficult to win;
2. It usually requires you to invest a much large number of bids to win and
3. If you do not win, most customers cannot afford to do a BIN (Buy It Now) of $3,000 to get their bids back, especially when you could buy more bids on sale. Therefore, you can pretty much kiss those lost bids goodbye that you could have used to win other auctions.

That happened to me once. I ended up losing more than 5,000 bids in my effort to win 5,000 bids. I know, how stupid is that? ... But I am not the only one that did that. I saw other bidders do the same thing. It was the worst bidding mistake I ever made, but I learned a lot of important lessons from it. How could something like this happen to an intelligent person? Have you ever found yourself in too deep to stop. Yes, I think we all have. Once you have invested a large number of bids, you feel like you have no choice but to keep on going until you win. Often times, however, stopping is the smartest thing to do before losing an even greater number of bids. 

Some lessons I learned from that experience are:
1. The bigger the auction value, the more bids you could lose.
2. Instead of blowing 5,000 bids in an effort to win 5,000 bids, you might have a much better chance of winning the 5,000 bid package by investing 500 bids on 10 different 5,000 bid-package auctions, or even 100 bids in 50 different 5,000 bid auctions. That way, you increase your chances to strike it lucky in one of those auctions. For example, one lucky bidder won  the 5,000 bid package for only 77 cents. Why could that not have been me? It could have been if I would have implemented my new strategy plan above.
3. After the 5,000 bid package sells for an extra large amount of money, I noticed it usually sells for much less the next time it comes up for auction, so that might be the best time to bid on the 5,000 bid package. Looking for patterns could help.

Why bid on small bid packages?
1. It is usually a lot easier to win the smaller bid packages
2. If you win enough small bid packages, they will add up to be the same number of bids as a large bid package.
3. You could end up getting more bids for less money. One week, I won five small bid packages (2 packages of 60 and 3 packages of 70),

Earn Free Bids
Whenever you are the highest bidder, a green line moves on the bottom center or right of your screen.
For every second on the clock that you are the highest bidder, you start earning free bids. Once that line gets to the end, you get to collect your free bids, and you move to the next level up. The higher the level, the more bids you win.

One way to get more time on the clock (1 to 10 seconds) is to avoid bidding with Newbies, who do not yet know how to play. Often times, Newbies think DealDash is like eBay, so they cut our time on the clock, waste bids by bidding every other one, and do not even notice the green line at the bottom of the screen. Also, Newbies often bid from the home page and do not even know BidBuddy, the automated bidder, exists. Eventually, they learn how to double click on the auction item of their choice, and discover what's happening behind stage. The Newbies mainly show up during the early part of the auction, so if you wait until the Newbies go away, you might get more time on the clock.

You can also earn more free bids by taking advantage of DealDash specials when they give you double (2X) or triple (3X) time on the clock. Then the green line will get to the end faster and you will be able to collect more free bids.

Post Photos of Auction Items Won
To win more free bids, once a week customers have the opportunity to post a photo of themselves (or a family member) with an auction product they won on DealDash.
The number of free bids the customer receives for the photo posted depends on the retail value of the item won as follows:

• Items valued from $199 or more = 200 free bids
• Items valued from $99 to $198 = 75 free bids
• Items valued at $99 or less = 10 free bids

Link to guidelines for collection up to 200 free bids for submitting a photo: 

https://www.facebook.com/notes/dealdash/get-up-to-200-free-bids-for-posting-a-photo/399932523354753

Link to Best Photo of the Week Contest: 

https://www.facebook.com/notes/dealdash/win-a-500-gift-card-best-photo-of-the-week-contest/516698678344803

Not only do you get awarded free bids in exchange for your photo, but once a week the customer who posts the best photo of the week will win a $500 Amazon or Walmart gift card.

Photo taken by Ryan K. Harvey

I posted this photo of myself with the new Schwinn bicycle I won on DealDash and I received 200 free bids because this item retails for $279.00.  Not only that, but because this photo was judged to be the best photo of the week, I also won a $500 gift card.

Visit me here:  https://plus.google.com/111941944154930718258/about?rel=author Barbara Sellers