The Finer Points of Internet Auctions

WHAT IS A PENNY AUCTION?

Penny auctions have exploded in popularity with the massive growth of the internet. However, few people know the true origins of penny auctions.Beginnings actually stretch back to the Great Depression. Those were hard times for everyone, but even harder for farmers. Farmers struggled to bring in steady income because of droughts and crops not selling as well as they had previously. As a result, the banks would foreclose on the farmers who couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments.

The banks weren’t satisfied with just repossessing the house, they wanted to raise as much capital as possible, so they resorted to selling off the possessions of the owners of the repossessed houses. There was not much the farmers could do about it so they began bidding ridiculously low prices, pennies, on the items while threatening others who dared to bid higher than a few pennies.

The auctions of today hardly resemble their tremulous beginnings. Being part of a penny auction today is exhilarating, fun, and addictive. It combines the selling format of auctioning with a little bit of chance factored in.Auctions are a game of strategy but also a game of luck.

The premise behind penny auctions is giving people the chance to win an item at a drastically reduced price.Auctions make that possible by spreading out the cost of the product among multiple bidders. In order for a person to take part in an auction, they must pay a set price for each bid. For example, if a person wanted to bid on a fifty dollar Amazon gift card then he would spend a dollar for each time a bid placed. If he ended up winning the gift card, then he would only have spent a few dollars for a fifty dollar gift card. Usually penny auctions sell bids in packages.

HOW PENNY AUCTIONS WORK!

The main foundation of penny auctions is the pay-per-bid format. It is the key that allows bidders to win items at the fraction of their retail value and allows the auction owners to keep their site profitable. Most y auction sites run on the same premise: people pay a set amount for each bid, whenever a person places a bid within the closing seconds of the auction time will be added, the last person left with a unique bid after the clocks runs out will win the item. There are a large variety of items that can be won, but they tend to be popular electronics or gift cards to popular stores.

There are two types of auctions: lowest unique bid auction and highest unique bid auction. Lowest unique auction sounds confusing but it is actually quite simple. A unique bid is when only one person has a bid at a certain price. Bids usually start at one penny, a bidder can then place a bid at two pennies. Until another bidder places a higher bid, the most recent bidder will be the lowest unique bid because that was the only bid at two cents and nobody bid higher. However, penny auctions generally don’t stop at one penny. It is not uncommon to find auctions that end up at a couple hundred dollars based on the popularity of the item being auctioned. However, the same principles apply for those auctions. Highest unique bid auctions follow the more traditional auction format such as eBay. The person with the highest bid at the end of the auction wins the item.

Auction site owners turn a profit by selling bids. Say twenty people are bidding on a ten dollar gift card at one dollar per bid, at the end of the auction if there were twenty bids placed in total then the site owner would have made twenty dollars with a ten dollar profit.Auctions do seem like a win-win situation:The site owner makes money while the bidder gets an item for dirt cheap. However, not everyone wins in penny auctions. The people who paid one dollar each bid but left with nothing to show for their investments will not be so happy.

HOW TO WIN!

Penny auction has a lot of chance mixed into it, but one can incorporate strategy that will help raise the chances of winning. Playing smart can make all the difference between gambling and auctioning.

The first crucial tip to winning penny auctions is to know how to manage your bids. Your goal should be to win as much as possible without spending a ton of money buying bids. Managing your bids means that you should already know how much you are willing to risk in order to win an item. The amount of capital you are willing to risk will determine how many bids you can use. Once you know how many bids you have to spend on an item, then you will be better able to manage how and when you place a bid. That will keep you from blowing away all of your bids in the first few seconds of the auction.

The next tip is to practice time management. When fighting in the trenches of penny auctions, you have two enemies: other bidders and time. Knowing when to bid is a must if you want to have success. Placing a bid when there is a lot of time left on the clock is never a good idea. You have to remember that the key to winning a penny auction is being the last one standing when the clock runs out and that each bid increases the amount of time left. It would be a good practice to wait until the last few minutes of the auction before you begin to bid.

The final tip for successful auctioning is to keep your emotions under control.Auctions have a lot of similarities to gambling, and just like gambling, your spending can get out of control. If you keep your emotions level, it will keep you from making rash decisions and blowing loads of cash. Keep your mind clear so that you can gage the behavior of the other bidders and outsmart them.

HOW TO AVOID SCAM SITES!

Penny auctions are a great addition to the web whether you want to win an item that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to afford or if you simply enjoy the thrill that comes with bidding in auctions. Unfortunately, scam sites have tarnished the reputation of the legitimate penny auction sites. However, there are ways that you can protect yourself from scamers and enjoy your auctioning without having to worry about losing your money due to dishonesty.

Checking the reputation of the auction site before you start spending your hard earned money is always a good idea. Chances are other people have tried the site before you and some of them have left reviews. The reviews are your way to gage whether a auction site is trustworthy or not. If a site is getting overwhelmingly negative reviews, then that is a clear indication that you should steer your business elsewhere.

Another tool you can use to protect yourself is checking the Alexia ranks of the auction sites. Alexia rank will give a solid view of how much traffic the auction is getting. If you see a huge difference in the amount of traffic Alexia is projecting and the amount of active bidders on the site, then warning signals should be ringing in your head. Some auction sites have been known to set up robots that automatically bid on projects in order to keep the auction going and inflate the price. That is known as shill bidding. You can sniff out those sites by comparing the traffic the site should be getting to the amount of users using this site.

CONCLUSION!

New legislation may come out later down the road that will officially make penny auctions gambling, but until then, it is a fun, exciting auction that allows one to win the item they’ve always wanted but couldn’t afford.Auctions are also quite lucrative for the site owners because of the pay-per-bid strategy they’ve incorporated. Penny auctions had humble beginnings with farmers who just wanted to get back at the banks who kicked them out of their house. More recently, auctions have enjoyed an explosion in popularity with the rise of the internet.

There are two main formats fora auctions, lowest and highest unique auction, however they both run on the same premise where the last unique bid wins the item. Winning a penny auction will require a certain amount of mental tactic and a bit of luck. However, you can increase your odds of winning by practicing certain techniques such as managing your bids wisely, learning how to work with the time, and keeping a level head and your emotions under control. When you combine those three strategies to your bidding plan, you will find that you win a lot more often.

It is important that you do your due diligence to protect yourself when participating in auctions. Not every auction is run by honest and trustworthy people. There are people out there who just want to take your money. You can protect yourself by ensuring that you only bid on sites that already have a very positive reputation from real users.

Facebook Advertising – Targeting Like A Sniper

Facebook advertising is in full effect right now. Log in to your account and you will be startled at how accurate some of the ads are. If you don’t have a partner or if you look up certain things, Facebook advertising knows. This is great for advertisers as you can target by more specific criteria than ever before and split test until you have the perfect campaign.

How Do I Know If Facebook Advertising Is For Me?

Facebook advertising PPC is incredibly powerful, and there are many ways you can approach it. There are the paid ads and then there is the free method. Just like in Google, you have the paid results (AdWords) and the organic results (Search Engine Results Pages).

Organic Facebook Advertising

Organic basically means that you don’t pay for your traffic directly. Obviously there is no such thing as completely free so you will still have to pay for it in some way, however, you don’t pay a certain price per click or per impression. Here is an overview of organic Facebook advertising.

1. Setting Up a Fan Page or Profile. If you have a product or service you can set up a Facebook fan page for free. On this page you can put anything from videos to sales copy, product information, a link to your website, or sell straight off the page.

2. Get Traffic To Your Page. This is the tricky part that a lot of people new to the internet or to marketing forget. Once you have the page setup, somehow you have to get traffic to it to see your awesome page and Facebook advertising information. There are so many ways of getting traffic, but they all include putting a link somewhere on the internet that you hope people will click on to get to your page. Again, there are millions of places where you can put your links; however some places will help you more than others. This requires a lot of manual work; writing articles, blog comments, forum posts, messaging possible customers or other time consuming task, well worth it however, if you are looking for longevity in your business.

Paid Facebook Advertising

Paid Facebook advertising is where the serious players are and is where you should go if you have a budget for advertising. These can be the ads that pop up on the side or the ones that appear in the news feed. There are many reasons why this is such a good way to advertise, but it does cost. This is just another advertising platform like Google and Yahoo or any other ways of buying traffic, and using this method comes with many advantages.

1. Targeting Like A Sniper. With Facebook advertising, you can hone in on your exact customer, just like a sniper would hone in on his target. Facebook advertising PPC enables you to target by age, gender, likes, education, religion, ethnicity and a host of other variables. This is the type of targeting that most advertisers only dream of.

2. Pay For What You Want. If you are just starting a new product or website and you don’t have the deep pockets of Saatchi & Saatchi, you can buy as little traffic as you want. If you are just testing out a new product or website to see if you can make some money, Facebook advertising is a great way to go. You can buy some traffic for $20, track it and see how it performs, and then make a decision to either change your offer slightly or try something else.

3. Get In Your Customer’s Head. When a user is scrolling through their Facebook account, they are in a state of high concentration (although you might not believe it). This is something of an addiction for a lot of people and they are in a sort of trance, similar to television viewing. When your customer is in a altered state such as this, it is the perfect time to pitch your message to them. They will be online for a while and often don’t set a time limit for Facebook. You can see what your customer likes and set your campaign accordingly.

4. Make Instant Business Decisions. If you are planning on using SEO or organic Facebook methods, it can be months before you have any data or traffic to make decisions from. Using paid Face Book advertising gives you the ability to buy some traffic who are already hot prospects, send them to your offer and see what happens. In 20 minutes you could already have sent 100 people to your offer, have the data and either change your offer, move on, or if you are making money, scale it up and bank some serious profits.

Many people are afraid of paid advertising because it seems like wasting money. This is a narrow understanding of the process of investing in your business and is not valid in the marketing world. Every single thing you do toward your business costs you your time or your money. If you are out there writing articles, blog commenting and forum posting, you are spending your time. If your time is $25 per hour, you could have worked for one hour and then sent that $25 of traffic to your offer and you can have some instant feedback instead of waiting months to see if an offer converts.

Facebook Advertising PPC -Say Yes To 1 Billion Customers
Facebook PPC (Pay Per Click) is a truly effective marketing strategy that you should take the time to learn how to use correctly so you can get your business into profit quickly. With over 900 million users in all countries, it seems absurd not to use this platform to target your ideal customer. The staggering amount of information you can use to mark your demographics means that even a local builder in the nail polish industry can use Facebook advertising to attract customers.

The Key Here Is Learning To Use Facebook Marketing Correctly. If You Are Ready To Get Started With Your Advertising Efforts Then Let’s Get You Some Training That Will Turn You Into An EXPERT In Facebook Advertising Today!

Home Based Business For Women And Its Benefits

While the economy has started to even out, the need to earn a living outside the context of regular employment is still apparent. For women who want to earn cash, there are a number of possibilities to entertain, one of which is to venture into home based business.Benefits of Home Based Business for WomenMore Time with the FamilyStay-at-home mothers these days have the option of working while taking care of their children. Working from home certainly allows the flexibility in schedule that you cannot expect from a nine to five job. Home based jobs allow women to balance their time between managing the household and earning money, which can be used for improving the quality of life for the entire family.Being able to choose their own work hours is very important to many women, especially those who are not willing to sacrifice their home life in favor of a full-time job.Professional and Personal FulfilmentSuccess is no longer limited to the confines of the corporate structure since there are many other ventures that do not require an office. Women now have the chance to become professionally competitive without having to slave away trying to climb the corporate ladder. There are a number of home based businesses that do not only allow flexibility in work hours but also give a sense of accomplishment every day.Lucrative Earning PotentialWhile most people assume that home based jobs are for those who are looking to earn part-time, there are in fact a number of businesses that allow you to earn up to five or six figures a year. Many women have come to realize that they can actually earn more money working at home than having a full-time job.This reality is one of the things that attract women, especially stay home moms to explore the option of having a home based business.Wide Range of Jobs or Businesses to Choose FromAnother benefit of working at home is that you can decide what type of job or business venture you want to take up. Since there are about a thousand different things you can do online, the possibilities are virtually endless. Some women choose marketing or sales, while others are more inclined to provide services, i.e. writing, SEO, advertising, etc.Home Based Business for WomenThe internet is the best place to scout for home based earning opportunities, regardless of whether you want to go into sales or provide services. Online based businesses have become the norm these days, especially since they do not require any background in business or a large start-up capital.Internet marketing is one of the most popular ventures today, mainly because it holds the promise of abundant cash. While it takes work and dedication, internet based marketing has proven to be one of the best choices for women.In order to find the best earning opportunities on the internet, you must be willing to search for facts and ascertain the legitimacy of every business venture you come across.