It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to the pioneer of our beloved Penny Auction industry: Swoopo.com (and related sub-sites and whatnot).

As many of you probably know, we have at one point in time or another run “Beezid Pro” like products for Swoopo, Beezid and Quibids. That is to say, we have been running software in which we have effectively tracked the majority of auctions, bidders and bids for these sites. This puts us in a unique position to get an insight into the way these sites run; insight which is probably only available within the walls of the companies themselves.

I am going to spend some time today taking this “inside information” and diving into the decline of Swoopo in the last few months – and believe me, it was quite a decline. Let this be a lesson to those of you considering running a penny auction site, or those that already are.

Active Bidders

A really really really (I cannot emphasize this enough) key number for Penny Auction sites is the number of active users they have. Without active users, you simply have no competition on your site and you will go out of business… quickly. If you look at the graph below, you will see that anybody could have guessed that Swoopo was in trouble way back in the spring of 2010.

By the numbers:

• The peak day for Swoopo was 12/9/2009 at 5,335 unique active bidders. This is a LOT of bidders.
• The decline starts right at Feb. of 2010. I’m not going to speculate as to why the decline came (that is for another post), but I have heard some say that when Swoopo removed “buy it now” users started to leave in droves.
• Over the next 464 days (the # of days from “peak day” until closed) they lost an average of 10.77 “active bidders” per day. While this number seems small, when you multiply it by 464 you end up with 5,000 less users per day.
• Swoopo bottomed out on… well the last day of business with 335 active users on 3/17/2011. The day before (the last FULL day) was 411 users on 3/16/2011

As you can see, Swoopo’s sharp drop in active bidders was a long-time clear sign of their lack of viability in the business. At their decline rate (of 10 users per day) we’d only be looking at about 30 days before nobody was left anyway.

Bids Per Day

The other obvious stat to look at for penny auctions is how many actual bids are placed in a day. Just as with the Active Bidder numbers, you can see an obvious decline that Swoopo was never able to recover from. Given the penny auction model, you should be able to directly correlate the decline in bids to the decline in revenues to the closing up of shop.

By the numbers:

• Swoopo’s number of bids per day peaked on 12/2/2009 at 244,602 bids. Again, that is a LOT of bids.
• Again, you can see traffic start to dip after about February 1^st 2010.
• Over the next 467 days (we will ignore the last day, as it was cut short) Swoopo lost an average of 470 bids per day (again, multiple it out.. and you get a lot of non-bids)
• Swoopo lowest day was around 24,000 bids on 3/14/2011 (a few days before closing). This is a decline of 90% from their peak.
• The last bid placed (that we were able to track) was a $39.01 bid for a “New iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G – 32GB” placed by bidder “Nootgeldmann” at 2011-03-17 3:16:46 PM. Side note: “Nootgeldmann” had been a Swoopo user since September of 2009 – way to be loyal!

New Users per Day

Rule number 1 for any business: To survive you must be constantly picking up new customers. This is particularly true of the Penny Auction business where customers have a lot of “other” similar sites to choose from (Beezid/Quibids/etc.). So let’s have a look at Swoopo’s new-users-per-day graph over time:

By the numbers:

• Swoopo’s peak day for new users was 12/9/2009, picking up 1,539 first-time bidders (this was also their peak active bidder say, as you may recall)
• Bottomed out at 29 new active bidders on the last day of operations. I feel especially bad for these 29 people who gave Swoopo money and bought bids hours before Swoopo went totally offline forever.

Bonus Numbers

• Biggest Bidder (most bids): Bidder audt bid a total of 195,178 bids between the dates of 2009-05-19 (when we started tracking bids) to 2011-03-14.  This user won 180 total auctions and lost 970 for a total of 1150 auctions with at least 1 bid.  That’s a 15% win rate.
• Biggest Winner (most wins): Bidder HH0812 placed 94,796 bids and won 314 total auctions while bidding in 3,993 auctions.  That’s a 7% win rate.
• Biggest Looser(s):
  Bidder Spot36 bid a total of 9,397 bids in 165 auctions and won… zero of them (most bids with zero wins).
  Bidder Canada1962 bid 2,578 times in 615 separate auctions and also won… zero (most auctions with zero wins).

Final Thoughts

So obviously the writing was on the wall for Swoopo for a very long time. They had at least 1 full year where they were in obvious trouble, and management was simply not able to figure out a way to pull them out of the weeds.

By contrast, Beezid and Quibids have grown in many ways over the last 12 months. The management of these two sites has not only scaled up bidders/bids, but they have also managed to keep bidders happy by having more auctions and better customer service. I would not hesitate to bid on either of these sites out of fear of them “Swoopo’ing you” out of your money. In fact, I am active on both of these sites still and at the moment, do not see any reason to worry about their long-term viability.

Of course, I would not recommend you touch either of these sites without using either Beezid Pro or BidProApp for Quibids… but I am biased about that.

What other details do you want to see here? Feel free to contact us at our support site if you want more details or are interested in purchasing the entire Swoopo data set.

Jason here; Just wanted to drop you a quick note about a new feature we have here with our at Beezid Pro product: “Note to self”.  This feature allows you to make a note about other bidders that you see bidding.

For example: You might decide that you want to make a note about a particularly tough-to-beat bidder saying: “Note to self: this guy will bid 1,000 bids if he has to — avoid him” and Beezid Pro will save and display the note right next to the bidder any time you see them in any auction.

Check out the screenshot of it:

Click to Enlarge

Yet another Beezid Pro exclusive tool to help you win more often!

Learning how to bid on Beezid demands that you learn some rules before you begin. Mastering these rules can allow you to exploit them and even break them successfully from time to time. The following are some on the basic rules of Beezid which should form an integral part of your basic Beezid strategy.

Waiting Until the Last Second
When bidding on Penny auctions, always wait until the timer has one second remaining before you place your bid. Other bidders will try and do the same but that’s not a problem. Waiting until the very last second is the best Beezid strategy because other bidders will occasionally bid with even up to 15 seconds remaining. By bidding at the very last possible second, you ultimately use up fewer bids; the price may increase several times without you needing to cast a single bid provided the clock does not go below one second. However, the lag time on the server may prevent you from waiting until the last second in which case you would have to increase to 2 seconds or three seconds. The point here is that this tactic is more of a way to prevent spending too much on bidding rather than as a way to win every auction.

Begin Bidding when Beezid Auctions approach the Average Selling Price
In this Beezid strategy, you will have noted the average selling prices of items on Beezid. This can be a time consuming process thus, the best way to get this information at the click of a button is to use Beezid Pro. With Beezid Pro you will be able to know the average price that an Apple IPad has historically been auctioned off at. The actual tab is labeled “Item Close Prices” and basically provides you with a good gut feeling as to when the item is approaching a good time to bid.

Begin Bidding when there is Little Competition
This may sound like common sense but you will be surprised how many bidders fail to adhere to this rule. As a general rule of thumb, you should begin bidding when there are only about 4-6 bidders remaining in the auction. This Beezid strategy will save you precious bidding dollars. Combining this tactic with the earlier strategy of getting in when the item hits its average selling price can greatly enhance your winnings.

Avoid Bidding against AutoBeezid and Beezid Sniper
AutoBeezid and Snipers are great tools for bidders who know how to use them correctly. However, it is a bad Beezid strategy to be a single bidder bidding against AutoBeezid. If you realize someone is using AutoBeezid in an auction, you will have to wait it out. You can also use Beezid Pro to obtain intelligence about that particular bidder and make an educated guess on what his or her overall strategy may be.

Sticking to these few Beezid strategies religiously can result in a big improvement in your overall performance; resulting in fewer bids spent and increasing your winning odds.

You have probably noticed that sometimes when you visit the Beezid site, the bid timer occasionally lags. You have probably suspected that this could be a way Beezid owners keep you from winning as many bids as you would like. However, the truth of the matter is that such lags are usually as a result of software and hardware issues brought on by the fact that the Beezid website is a highly ingenious piece of programming technology. In a good number of time lag cases, older software and equipment simply may not be able to keep up. The following tips will help you to greatly enhance your Beezid user experience and get the most out of Beezid.

Close Down all Applications except Your Browser

For Beezid to run smoothly, close down all the applications on your computer except your browser and other absolutely necessary applications. Resource intensive programs such as iTunes, Windows media center, Photoshop and even email programs such as Outlook hog random access memory (RAM). Running these programs at the same time you are bidding on Beezid will dampen your experience.

Keep Away from Internet Intensive Programs

Avoid opening numerous tabs on your browser as this would have the same effect. If possible, focus on the job at hand which is bidding and resume other activities after you are done with Beezid. Internet intensive programs include applications such as Windows Live Messenger, GTalk, Skype, Torrents, Video streaming programs and websites. Avoid these programs while bidding on Beezid. If your computer is set to run these programs at start up, make sure you close down the programs from the system tray.

Use the Correct and Updated Browser as Well as Correct Operating Systems

Using an old and outdated browser or an operating system that has not been tested on Beezid will lead to an adverse user experience. For optimum results, use the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher
• Firefox 2.0 or higher
• Safari 2.0 or higher
• Opera 8.0 or higher

The following operating systems have been tested for Beezid and are recommended:

• Microsoft Windows Vista / Windows XP / Windows 2000
• Mac OS X 10.3 or higher
• Linux

Furthermore, it is recommended that you use a 512k DSL Internet connection or faster for optimal bidding experience.

A final Note about Beezid’s Lag time

On a number of occasions, Beezid users report a lag time in the auction clock. It appears as though the clock paused at a particular time and then suddenly resumed at a lower time, say 3 seconds. This lag is annoying and the guys at Beezid try their best to prevent such occurrences. However, even the best techies cannot provide a 100% guarantee that it will not happen. This is because the goings-on behind the scenes are highly complicated. Consider this, within a fraction of a second, Beezid has to process your bid, calculate new totals and auction times and send this information to multiple users. Web programming doesn’t get more complicated than this. The best way to avoid losing due to this lag is to use automated tools such as Beezid Sniper. Beezid Pro helps you use Beezid Sniper effectively and avoid instances where you loose out on bids due to lag times.

This is big.  Really big!

I’ve just pushed the latest release of our Beezid Pro software up to the servers.   This time we’ve added Histogram support for the closing pricing of all items for all auctions.  What does this mean?

In a nutshell, our histograms basically divide up the closing price of the product into “buckets” and then graph it so you can easily see what price range(s) the item usually close in.  You have always been able to look at the history data that Beezid Pro provides and “get a feeling for this”, but now we explicitly show you a graph to help speed up the decision making!

Here is an example:

Beezid Pro's Histogram Support

Notice the graph at the top (BTW, you get to the graph by clicking on the Product’s name in the Beezid Pro frame.)  What this graph is saying is that most of the time, this $50 Mastercard gift card goes for between $0.01 and $1.76.    As the price of this item increases, the changes of it closing “soon” go up (because the price is deviating from the “norm”, which is low).  So what I would do is set a Beezid Pro Alert for a $50 master card that has goes over $5.00 (notice that most fall in less-than $5.17 range).  In the rare case that a $50 card gets this high there is a good chance you can win this with minimal bidding.

You can also use it on high-end items (laptops and iPad, for example) to determine when it is too early to start bidding.  I don’t want to give away the farm here, but those are the types of items where bidding in the less-than $5 range is a suckers bet.  There is a “minimum price before a likely win” that the histogram will likely help you determine.  You will have to sign up to find out which ones.

This is exactly what Beezid Pro is best at!  Helping you save bids by knowing when to start bidding.

As always, feedback is welcome!

One of our great customers emailed me a few days ago suggesting we stop including the 100 Bid Pack and 50 Bid Pack wins in the “Number of  Wins” statistic we display about all the bidders on the main screen(s).

This makes a lot of sense because the 50 and 100 Bid Pack auctions are always “Bid for Free” which means it really does not accurately reflect the quality of the bidder in question.

This also makes all of the statistics look much more realistic.  Before you might have bidders with 50 wins — which made them look like a real professional.  When you exclude the 100/50 Bid Packs, they now show 1-2 wins.  This will probably scare off a lot less bidders from jumping into the auction!

Thanks again to our great members for their suggestions.  It is this type of input that keeps us all real Pros on Beezid!

That’s right — Beezid Pro members now have access to view which bidders are using the sniper and which bids are sniper bids!

This is yet another KILLER BeeZid Pro EXCLUSIVE feature.

Starting on June 17th, 2010, Beezid officially stopped displaying which bids were “Sniper” bids. Instead of showing up as “Sniper” bids, they now show up as “Regular” bids just like actual regular single bids.

• That’s right — Beezid wanted to take this information away from you, but Beezid Pro members still have access!
• HOWEVER, as a Beezid Pro member, you still have access to this information!
• How do we do it? We take all the data we collect about the auctions and derive an “estimated” sniper value based on historical data, user bidding habits and information about the timing of the bid.
• What does that mean? It means that we do our very best to “guess” which bids are sniper bids and which ones are actual regular bids. We do all the heavy lifting in tracking everything you might be doing in your head to determine which bidders are using the sniper and which ones are not.

Again: This is an exclusive feature for Beezid Pro members. Nobody else — not even Beezid themselves — will provide you with this information in any way shape or form!

If you are not already a Beezid Pro member, you are truly missing out.

Introducing the Beezid Pro Firefox Plugin!

This plugin allows you to directly insert Beezid Pro‘s user interface into Beezid’s website.  This means no more  ”drag and drop”‘ing the auction links into the change auction box! Simply install the plugin, and browse the site like you normally would.  When you land on an auction’s details page, the Beezid Pro Firefox Plugin will detect this and automatically insert Beezid Pro’s interface into Beezid‘s site!

I’ve used this for quite a while in “private beta mode” and can tell you it is a dream.  I would encourage all of our current and future users to give it a spin.  As always, feedback is welcome!

AutoBeezid and Beezid Sniper are usually the most confusing part of Beezid to the new user. Even relatively experienced users still have a problem understanding exactly how these two operate. In this article, I attempt to demystify these two powerful tools and explain in straightforward language how to use them to your maximum advantage.

What Is Autobeezid And How Do You Set It Up?

Think of AutoBeezid as your butler. In a nutshell, AutoBeezid bids on your behalf. However, it goes further than that by allowing you to set the price range at which you want to place bids. Let’s take the following example:

• Item: Apple iPad 16 GB up for sale.
• Assume you decide you want to buy the item at a price of between $30 and $40
• Activate AutoBeezid and set the minimum ($30) and maximum price ($40) you are willing to pay. Just click on the auction title to navigate to the details and then look for the AutoBeezid box on the right of your screen
• The difference in your minimum and maximum prices has to be at least one dollar
• Set the number of bids you want to use within your price range e.g. 25. You can apply as many bids as you like.

The effect of the above will be:

• Once the auction hits your minimum price range of $30, AutoBeezid will outbid any bidder to ensure you are always the highest bidder. Being a penny auction, AutoBeezid will outbid the most recent bidder by a penny
• So long as you remain the highest bidder, AutoBeezid will not attempt to bid again
• Provided you have loaded AutoBeezid with enough bids, there is a very good chance that you could win the auction at the price range you have set
• If the item hits your maximum price of $40, AutoBeezid will stop bidding and you will have to reset it or abandon the auction if you feel you are unwilling to pay a higher price

How about Beezid Sniper?

Beezid Sniper complements AutoBeezid in the sense that the auction may end before hitting your AutoBeezid price ranges. This would mean you loose out. However, when enabled, the Beezid Sniper works as follows:

• It waits until the final second of an ending auction and places a single bid to prevent that auction from ending
• The effect of prolonging the timer ensures you win the auction or the auction hits the minimum AutoBeezid price in which Autobeezid will take over the bidding
• AutoBeezid allows you to set aside a maximum of 20 bids in your Beezid Sniper account
• If the auction price hits your AutoBeezid price range, you can no longer use the Beezid Sniper

Benefits of Using AutoBeezid and Beezid Sniper

Apart from the obvious benefit or being able to bid while not physically staring at the Beezid website, the other major advantage is the “server side” effect. When bidding manually, there is always the risk of lag time due to hardware and/or software not being able to keep up. Using AutoBeezid and Beezid Sniper eliminates lag time completely because these tools are hosted on the same server as the Beezid website. When AutoBeezid or Sniper places a bid, there is no delay, the bid is placed instantly. The secret to using AutoBeezid and Beezid Sniper effectively is to combine them with the intelligence of Beezid Pro. With Beezidpro, you will avoid setting your Autobeezid price range unreasonably high and in the process waste 20 Beezid Sniper bids. At the end of the day when you combine the market intelligence of Beezid Pro with AutoBeezid and Beezid Sniper you will easily outsmart your opponents.

Here’s a big obvious tip for you Beezid’ers out there:  Save your bids!  Or, more specifically, don’t waste your bids!  Time and time again I’ve heard about people bidding a lot on an auction and coming up empty handed.   Not only empty handed… but feeling really bad about how they did on the auction.  They started bidding when it seemed “too good to be true” and lost a lot of bids in the process.

The main reason this happens is because these bidders simply don’t know when to bid and when not to bid.  They leave it up to pure gut instinct! That might work at the poker tables, where you can see your opponents’ faces, but frankly there is no way that can effectively carry over to Beezid.

And, to be honest, if you are bidding on Beezid and not using BeeZid Pro, you are at quite the disadvantage to other user that might be using it.  Here are a few tactics that BeeZid Pro users can use when bidding to save bids on Beezid by simply being better informed.

• Understand the competition.  BeeZid Pro users are given access to a lot of metrics about all the bidders on the auction.  What does this mean?  It means they know if any user has won many, many auctions (these are the real professionals, so avoid them!)  They know at what point a given bidder is likely to give up!   There is so much to know, each bit is worth a full blog post… perhaps some other day.
• Avoid Bad Auctions.  Using BeeZid Pro, you can understand when it is not worth even entering the game!  If you jump into an auction with 5 professional bidders (those that have won just tons of auctions), then you are wasting your bids.   There is no sense in jumping into an auction that is full of people that have won 20+ auctions in recent weeks/months, as they are probably committed to winning.  If you see this, save your bids and move on to another auction.
• When to Jump In. When BeeZid Pro, you’ll have a much better idea of when it is smart to start bidding.  Most of the time “right now, because I’m looking at the auction” is not a good time to start.  You typically want to look at historic price stats (or details) and determine a price point at which it starts to make sense to bid.  Don’t start at $2 for that Mac Book… wait to start until it is over $60 (seriously, I’ve looked into this one.  Most Macs go for over $60).
• Be alerted when it is time to Jump In.  This relates to the above point — once you have determined that it is not worth bidding on an auction until the price hits $60 (or whatever number), then you can set a Beezid Pro Alert to send you a text message and/or email when the auction gets there!  No more watching the auction for hours on end waiting for it to get to the point you want… just set it and forget it!
• Be aware of Snipers.  Snipers are designed by Beezid to just be a pain in the butt! They only fire off when the auction would have otherwise ended!  This means that if a sniper fires right after your bid, then you would have won that auction!  BeeZid Pro tells you what Sniper bids have been placed by whom and at what points in the auction.  These are details about their past snipes, but you can use this information to determine when snipers are likely to strike again from this user.  Remember: Any given user can only snipe 20 times in a single auction! It gives you a big advantage to know when they have hit that limit!

There is nothing quite as satisfying as watching an auction and avoiding making bids that obvious would have been wasted, because you see other Autobeezids or Snipers follow what would have been your bid.  A big key to success is to save your bids, my friends.  BeeZid Pro can help you accomplish just that.