Are Swoopo Bids Created Equal?
I recently jumped into a discussion in the forums about Swoopo Free Bids. My forum friends were talking about how bids aren’t necessary worth the same amount to bidders or to Swoopo. If you pay $0.65 per bid upon sign-up, that’s probably the value you assign these bids initially. And that’s the last time you’ll be able to easily value your Swoopo bids.
If you win an auction and receive Free Bids as a result, you may value these bids differently. You didn’t pay for them after all, but more importantly, they cannot be used toward a Swoop It Now purchase.
Or what if you’re participating in an auction where you get “bids back.” These are infrequent Swoopo promotions where the winning bidder gets has all of the bids they cast returned to them at the end of the auction. What it does is essentially put the entire Swoopo model on steriods. Not only is it easy for users to ignore the concept of sunk costs, but now they’re financially incentivized to do so.
So How Much Is A Bid Worth?
I think a bid is still ultimately worth as much as you can consistently win with it. If you have a sound Swoopo strategy or a history of winning – a free bid will be just as valuable to you as a bid you paid for with cold hard cash. But knowing that Swoop It Now isn’t available for free bids, you’ll need to adjust your bid to price and understand that others may do the same.
Swoopo BidButler Changes
Swoopo recently made a change to how a BidButler Battle resets the auction clock. In the past, when two BidButlers were activated simultaneously, time was added to the clock instantaneously for every BidButler bid depleted. This often sent the clock soaring to 10 minutes or more.
Now, however, the auction clock will never increase beyond two minutes no matter how epic the BidButler Battle.
So What Does This Mean For You?
You can no longer set up a BidButler and leave the computer for a period of time. You’ll want to make sure you’re keeping close watch on every auction you’re participating in. On the other hand, however, auctions will now be MUCH shorter in total and you’ll be able to win more auctions in a shorter period of time.
Because the auction times are shorter, more auctions should be cycled through the Swoopo site in a 24 hour period. I haven’t verified this with the data yet, but I have Jason working on it as you read this. If this is indeed the case, now is a great time to bid on Swoopo. More auctions and the same number of participants means even better deals all around.
The BidButler math that I was so excited to share only a few days ago will no longer be valid for calculating how much BidButler activity has occurred in a given auction. As a result, Swoopo Analytics will need to be used now more than ever.
Overall, I think the rule change is a good one. It de-emphasizes the BidButler (granted, only in a small way) and it makes auctions more exciting and faster-paced. This is good for everyone.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments or in the continued discussion in our forums.
Winning X on Swoopo
I got a reader email the other day that was similar to ones I’ve gotten many times. Dan writes:
I am in the market for a new laptop. I came across Swoopo while researching discounted laptops. It obviously seemed too good to be true. After further evaluation it seems you can actually win a top of the line laptop for anywhere between $100-$300 (final price and bid cost).
Would you say this is true? Should I go down this route to buy a new laptop or save the aggravation and just buy it from Amazon or something.
If my chance of success is high I think I will buy your manual and give it a ago since I can get a great laptop for a fraction of the price.
Thanks.
Dan
I love getting reader email, but I love it even more when they have great punctuation and capitalization. So I responded to Dan as candidly as he wrote me and I hope it’s instructional:
Dan -
Great to hear from you!
I’ll tell you you’re at an advantage and a disadvantage in knowing specifically what you want.
The con is that you are limited to only the auctions for the laptop you want. That means you can’t fully scout all the auctions for the best bidding environment.
But on the pro side, you can invest heavily and use Swoop It Now if you’re not successful. The Swoop It Now feature, if you’re not aware, allows you to take all the money you invested in an auction and put it toward the purchase price.
So I would recommend you do this:
1) Compare the “retail price” on Swoopo vs the price you’d pay on Amazon or in the free market – it’ll likely be a few hundred dollars.
This is essentially your “gamble” on the auction – and you’ll only lose that in comparison to buying it retail.
Then
2) Get the Manual & Analytics…pick a good auction and the right time to bid and come into the auction at the best time you decide. When you come in – just come in HEAVY. Be prepared to spend up to the amount of the laptop retail price on Swoopo in bids….
Using this strategy, the most Dan can stand to lose is the difference between Swoopo’s retail price and Amazon’s retail price. And if Dan wins, he will likely get the laptop for 75% off or more.
I hope this helps if you too are looking for something specific on Swoopo.
Cheat Swoopo?
Interestingly enough, I get a fair amount of traffic to this site and to the Swoopo Manual site for Google searches related to “cheat Swoopo” or “cheating Swoopo.” Perhaps these searches are done using language common in video games, where you can use cheat codes to get super powers or skip levels… but I wonder too if people are genuinely looking for a way to cheat the system.
I’ve done the research, and can safely say there’s no way to cheat Swoopo. Programmers and opportunists have tried to create auto-bidding devices for Swoopo and none have succeeded. Swoopo hasn’t endured a high-profile “hack” since it launched in the United States. There aren’t any glitches or loopholes in the system that would allow you to win every single time. And there aren’t any set formulas for bidding that guarantee victory.
And after doing this for over a year, I can safely say that for those looking to win on Swoopo, there is no better resource than the 1-2 punch of Swoopo Manual + Swoopo Analytics. I know that’s shameless self-promotion…but it’s quite true.
So if you came to this article looking for a cheat, I hope you’re not disappointed. Instead, sign-up for the Swoopo Manual 5-day course (you can find it in the right-hand sidebar) and start learning how you can win the right way.
Calculating BidButler Activity
There’s a new blog written by Roy Melvin, a Swoopo pro. He’s been posting just for the past few weeks…but it’s started to generate some commotion in our Swoopers forum.
This particular piece from early January is probably Roy’s best article (in my opinion) and I thought it very worth sharing for our members. Roy calculated a formula to get a sense of past BidButler history for an auction. You can read his post for the math, but the short version of it is:
Take the auction start time and subtract 24 hours (24 being the initial clock time). Now take the remaining time and divide by the current auction price.
If your total is close to $2.50, the auction has been very active with BidButlers.
If however, the total is above $6 or $7, the auction has been relatively free of BidButlers.
It might be better understood with a formula:
T = Total auction time elapsed
C = Current auction price
DH = Dollars per hour
( T – 24 ) / C = DH
Thanks Roy for that great post. Keep ‘em coming!
Swoopo: Top 100 Startup in Europe
Swoopo was named to Techcrunch Europe’s list of the top 100 startups.
Their post included this bit about the company:
Germany $10,000,000 Revenue & Traction. Raised money from August Capital.
The most interesting part of the ranking was that Swoopo was listed in a category they basically invented: Entertainment Shopping. It’s wise of Swoopo to define the market they’re competing in…it makes success that much easier.
Email from a Winner
I get emails regularly from winners…but few take the time to share their process to help others learn.
The other day, though, I received an email from Al, who was kind enough to share his Swoopo journey from start to big victory. I’ll let Al take it from here.
Hi Matthew, A funny thing happened on the way to quitting swoopo. I kept logging onto swoopo, but not so much to bid, but to watch. I was really disgusted with swoopo bec it seemed like nothing really worked. I finally realized it was all about my attitude going in to the auctions. Let me explain.
About a month ago, I was doing really well, strategy wise, on a macbook auction, and then made a simple bid butler mistake (didn’t realize my BB ran out) and lost the auction. So I swooped it now, bec I already had $400 into it. Even though I got my computer, I was really upset. It seemed like no matter what I just couldn’t win that stinkin computer! As I was watching some auctions, I started seeing certain strategies that repeated, and I thought, maybe if I learned more about how certain successful bidders approached an auction I could give myself a better chance to win something. Well, I decided to become an expert on the macbook auctions, Not the macbookpro, the macbook. I learned avg bids to win, pricing, days, times, even the reds that frequented this particular computer auction. (Especially their strategies) I decided that if I ever got back into an auction, I was going into the auction to either win it, or swoop it now. No other attitude would suffice, and it would also help me stay the course.
I faced off against 7 different reds, 3 of which I was VERY familiar with having lost to them quite a number of times in the past. I used bid butlers exclusively, and really didn’t need swoopo analytics bec it simply didn’t matter. I was going to bid butler until the end, either way.
My stats showed that in the last two months there were 25 auctions for apple macbooks. Avg bids to win 421. It took me 422 bids to win.. How’s that for statistical accuracy! I’m not delusional, it also takes some luck in that the people I was bidding against didn’t have the same commitment to winning this particular auction on this particluar day. But at least, I now know I can win on swoopo. Oh, I HAVE won 3 different bid auctions, but that doesn ‘t compare to winning an actual item like a computer.
Thanks for your help. If you want to copy and post this somewhere on your forum to give others the incentive to keep trying, that’s fine with me. Have a good night.
–
Al S.
Thanks Al for sharing…
Swoopo Shill Bidders
On Shill Bidders
I’ve handled a few emails from skeptical Swoopo bidders in the past few days. They are interested in Swoopo, but ask “Can you prove there aren’t shill bidders on Swoopo?”
Bad news: I can’t
No, I can’t prove their aren’t shill bidders on Swoopo. And I cannot prove that UFOs aren’t real and that aliens haven’t secretly been walking the earth for years.
Here’s what I can tell you…
Swoopo has existed for a few years now. They’ve had employees come in and out of the company and currently employ no fewer than a few dozen employees. They have offices in California as well as Germany. They received venture funding in 2006 in Germany and again in 2009 by a major venture capital firm in the United States.
With Swoopo Analytics, we track almost every single auction on Swoopo. We can see the bidding history of every single bidder. We’ve haven’t noticed a single thing in all this data that would suggest shill bidders.
I’ve read every single article and study written about Swoopo I can possibly find. They all have interesting conclusions regarding the Swoopo business model. But none has ever suggested with any proof that Swoopo does anything other than run auctions exactly as they describe.
I’ve won items on Swoopo’s site and received them exactly as described and in short order.
A healthy dose of skepticism is good for everyone. But at the end of the day, you need to rely on facts.
Is Swoopo Profitable?
This question would seem to be a no-brainer for the casual Swoopo observer. After all, they auction off items at a 65% discount on average, which nets them typically 300-400% in bids over the retail price. It would seem they do quite well, no?
Excluding a Major Cost
One thing that these folks are not factoring into Swoopo’s profitability is the cost of acquiring an auction bidder. Think back to how you first discovered Swoopo. Did you discover it through a Google advertisement?
Swoopo probably spends in the tens of thousands of dollars per day attracting potential bidders to it’s site. That’s a lot of scratch…
How Does It Look Now?
So let’s say Swoopo is spending $0.50 for every potential customer that clicks a Swoopo ad. And let’s say 1 in 10 of those buys Swoopo bids. Your cost for every single customer is now $5.
Some auctions can have 50, 100 or even 200 bidders participating. See how those customer acquisition costs add up fast!
What Does This Mean for Bidders?
The reason I’m discussing Swoopo profitability is to make a very important point. The Swoopo cynics are quick to point out that Swoopo makes a killing on every auction and needs only to continue to churn customers in and out to make a buck. Fortunately for us (and unfortunately for Swoopo) that’s not the case. If Swoopo is paying $5 for every bidder upfront (and that’s probably low) then they must focus not on an endless churn of new bidders…but a business model that makes sense and leaves many bidders happy and wanting to come back.
The Swoop It Now feature was a step in the right direction. It allows anyone who’s invested a lot in an auction to recoup that investment and still get the product. No, they won’t get it for bargain basement prices…but they don’t leave empty-handed either. And the winner still gets their often amazing deal.
I don’t know what Swoopo has planned for the next iteration of their site, but you can bet they will take steps (or even a dramatic leap) in the direction of a better user experience. Their very success depends upon it.
Basic Swoopo Video
This isn’t a new video…but I keep coming back to it as a very simple intro to explain Swoopo to those who don’t know. Since I keep showing others, I decided it was time to share it with everyone so you can do the same!
Learn the powerful secrets used by top Swoopo Bidders to win BIG and get a sneak peak at the Swoopo Manual - the best guide available on how to win Swoopo auctions.