I think much of their frustration resulted from their expectation of being able to win an auction with only a few bids.

How frustrating for them. And for me. I try my hardest to teach good Swoopo principles and in this case…I failed.

I wrote a very long reply in the forum. But for you my dear Swoopers, I spent some time editing. Here is the trimmed up version of my response:

Setting Bid Expectations

You should make sure to bid on items that are priced relative to the amount of bids you have or can afford. My usual rule of thumb is 10%. This means you should be willing to spend up to 10% of the item’s value in bids on that auction.

Say you’re bidding on a Macbook Pro and you have 200 bids. That item is much too large for your amount of bids on hand.

If you wait until your research shows the auction is nearing a close and decide to jump in…you’re playing it too safe. Your 200 bids will not get you to the finish.

This strategy of carefully researching auctions is one I recommend in the Manual, and it’s the most consistent, but it’s also expensive. If you plan to go into an auction in that way, you’d better go with guns ablazin’ and be ready to invest what you need to win.

If You Have Few Bids

If you’re low on bids (or only care to purchase 100 or fewer), you should do either of these:

1. Bid on smaller items like a small bid pack. Or a video game or household item. With a smaller item, you can take the research-based approach I describe above. It’s a cheaper item, so you now have enough bids to do it right.
2. Bid on the large item anyway, but take a BidButler Early approach. With a large item, you can’t wait until the auction is stocked with people, no matter how favorable the stats are and how close the auction is to previous end prices. You simply don’t have the funds to see it through. But you can go into the auction early and hope to catch other bidders off-guard. You just might get a deal like our forum member mentioned: a $600 gift card for 53 cents.

Which Strategy Should You Choose?

The second approach above will be a low percentage play, but might pay off in the end. And of course the top approach is higher percentage, but there’s a lower reward (you don’t win a $600 gift card, you win a video game).

Whichever approach you choose is up to you, but I think this better explains how you should set expectations based on your purse.

Today we updated the Swoopers! list. This new list reflects every active bidder who has won more than 25 auctions in the past six months.

We have recently been placing an emphasis on more current data to help make it more actionable for you. I also decided to list them in descending order by number of wins, rather than in alphabetical order.

If you want to find a specific username, use the search function in your browser (Control + F on PC, Command + F on Mac).

As always, Swoopo Analytics will always be the best source of real-time data on any given Swoopo auction, including the top bidders and the pros. The Swoopers! list is provided in addition to that powerful tool to be used as a quick reference.

In this final installment, I’d like to discuss why those scary auctions smattered with “pinkies” aren’t as scary as they seem.

What Are “Pinkies”

In the Swoopo Strategy Forum, someone lovingly dubbed Swoopo Pros “Pinkies” – named after the color we use in Swoopo Analytics to mark bidders who’ve won several previous auctions. These bidders are the dangerous “Swoopo Pros” and knowing how to avoid them (or be them) is what the Swoopo Manual + Swoopo Analytics is all about.

So Why Shouldn’t I Be Scared?

Sometimes I’ll log into an auction and see that dozens of bidders are participating who are “Pinkies.” But upon further inspection, I realize that many are simply using Placeholder Bids to mark their spot in the auction. So what on the surface seems like a scary auction I should avoid…might actually be a good auction to start bidding in.

Now that you know all there is to know about Placeholder Bids, you’ll be armed to conquer closed Swoopo auctions. If you haven’t yet purchased the Swoopo Manual and started using Swoopo Analytics – get on it!

A Placeholder Bid is simply a single bid cast in an auction. If you see an auction that you think you’d like to bid on, but based on your Swoopo knowledge decide that you should wait, you can cast a single placeholder bid. You can then continue to follow this auction, and if and when Swoopo closes it, you can return and begin bidding when the time is right.

Because the auction is closed, you no longer need to worry about new bidders Swooping in and outbidding you on the auction. And because no new bidders are welcome, the overall competition in that auction will steadily decline as the auction goes on. You’ll ultimately have a much greater chance of winning the auction and in a shorter amount of time.

Put simply, it’s a small fee to allow you access to the best, most profitable auctions.

Now you know the basics of Placeholder Bids and why you should use them. I explain this strategy much more in-depth in the Swoopo Manual. In the next post, I’m going to explain how Placeholder Bids are skewing our Swoopo Analytics statistics and why that matters to you.

So What Are Closed Auctions?

Last year Swoopo began “closing” auctions on occasion. When an auction is closed, no new bidders are allowed to participate for the remainder of the auction. This means that the competition in a closed auction is only those people who have already bid in that auction at least once.

It’s hard to say for sure why Swoopo began closing auctions, but most Swoopers would agree they were trying to improve the auction experience. Some auctions stretched far too long and involved too many bidders. The press and others who don’t understand Swoopo would pounce on these skewed auction results and use them as an example of why Swoopo is a bad deal.

Closing auctions allows Swoopo to ensure that it will end in a reasonable amount of time, that the winner will get a good bargain and that those who’ve spent bids already are rewarded with a greater chance of winning.

Closing Is A Mystery

Swoopo doesn’t reveal if and when an auction will be closed. This mystery around closed auctions can sometimes be frustrating to bidders, but it’s necessary. You see, if bidders knew when an auction was going to close, it would have opposite the desired effect. Bidders would flood into the auction hoping to get in before it closed (much like a dance club 30 minutes before last call).

This would be true regardless of whether they closed auctions based on time, bids, competition or any other metric. If Swoopo decided to close auctions based on a metric that other bidders could measure and track, it would result in too much competition and it would defeat the purpose of the closed auction.

Therefore, Swoopo closes auctions arbitrarily. Or if they do have an algorithm in place for when an auction closes, I haven’t been able to crack it. I also haven’t read anyone else who has learned with any certainty when an auction will close.

If you can’t predict closed auctions, can you still use them to your advantage to win more Swoopo Auctions? The answer, of course, is yes.

In the next post (Placeholder Bids 102) I’m going to explain how you can use Placeholder Bids to get access to closed auctions and win more auctions.

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Atomico Ventures, an investment group started by Skype cofounders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, has invested £4 million, or more than $6 million, in a first round of institutional funding for pay-to-bid auction site MadBid.com. As with sites such as Swoopo and Fluttero, which have been growing in popularity, MadBid.com is part of a move to bring the feel of a Las Vegas casino to e-commerce.

My goal is to be able to keep the site up 100% of the time. When that doesn’t happen, I’m pretty bummed about it. I know many of you rely on it on a regular basis – and I’m sorry it hasn’t been there for you.

The reason we’ve had issues this past week is because we’re moving everything to a new server. We had so many issues in the past that we decided it was time for an upgrade. Our new server will be faster, more reliable and definitely more secure. Our hope is that the downtime we suffered this week will be made up for with reliable performance in the future.

Thanks for being cool while we work through this transition. And thanks for your emails of concern as well as support. Don’t worry folks, we’re not going anywhere!

Hi Matt,

Thanks so much for the information, which is very helpful. I’ve encountered one weird problem twice when bidding on an auction from both my laptop and my iPhone at the same time. Attached please see a screenshot of the weird error message. “Sorry – Swoopo has had a problem. We’re letting our techies know right now, who’ll work on getting this fixed”. At this point, I couldn’t even log on to my account or purchase any bids.

Is this because I bid from two different IPs? The reason I’m use both laptop and iPhone is that sometimes our wireless network connection is not very stable. Would this be a trigger that Swoopo blocks my account temporarily for a review or something? Have any other members ever got this error message? Please let me know your thoughts on this.

Thanks so much,

[name redacted]

I tried to replicate this user’s experience but wasn’t able to. However, I think it might not cause problems unless you’re casting bids from one or both devices. It’s also unclear at this point if Swoopo’s system genuinely has technical issues with multiple sign-ins or if they’re preventing them intentionally in a passive agressive manner.

If you’re bidding on Swoopo and need to switch computers, or if you have a secondary device you’re using to track other auctions, I’d suggest you sign in to only one at a time to avoid any possible IP address conflicts.

Note: This advice pertains only to signing into Swoopo’s website. This does not affect your ability to sign-in or use Swoopo Analytics.

If you have any more information on this issue, let us hear about it in the comments.

Update (5.17.10): This same user writes in again to note that this is not an issue of IP address conflict. Swoopo will block simultaneous log-ins from bidding even on the same device. Just stick to a single log-in and you’ll be fine!

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Along with this marketing campaign, they rolled out a short guide on their site titled “The Swoopo Guide.” The Swoopo Guide is essentially a watered down version of the Swoopo Manual with most of the useful bits left out. They even went so far as to borrow concepts and terms that I created and have been using for over a year, such as BidButler Layering. (For those who haven’t yet read the Manual, that’s a method of placing BidButler bids that reduces the chances of losing big).

They’ve also created a new section on the site titled “Meet the Swoopers.” This is the first time I’ve ever seen Swoopo use the term Swoopers. It should be obvious, of course, that this site is named Swoopers dot org and has existed for nearly a year now.

Of course I’m not upset with Swoopo for seeking inspiration in my work – it just reinforces the impact our community has made. I just wish Swoopo would start paying me a proper consulting fee for all the groundwork we’ve done on their behalf!