Placeholder Bids 201: Skewed Win Statistics
In my previous two posts, I discussed what a closed auction is on Swoopo and how Placeholder Bids can help you get access to these exclusive auctions.
Today, I’m going to explain how the strategy of Placeholder Bids has an interesting effect on our Swoopo Analytics statistics…
Let’s Talk Win Percentages
With Swoopo Analytics, we track every single bidder and every single auction. We also know a bidder’s won/lost history and can therefore calculate a winning percentage over the history of their account.
A typical bidder (let’s call her Susan) may have 15 wins and 100 auctions participated in, meaning she has a win percentage of 15%.
This statistic alone isn’t helpful, however, because there are many other factors to consider. I won’t get into detail here, but I do want to explain what this has to do with Placeholder Bids.
The best bidders often use Placeholder Bids with regularity. So Susan has participated in 100 auctions, but let’s say in 40 of those auctions she simply placed a Placeholder Bid and then never returned to participate in the auction. (Maybe the auction remained too competitive, or she were bidding on another auction and didn’t want to be distracted or perhaps she simply had other things to do).
If Susan has 40 auctions in her history that were single bid auctions, then her win percentage would be more accurately described as 15 wins in 60 auctions. Or a win percentage of 25%.
So when considering win percentages, both for yourself and others, don’t forget to factor in Placeholder Bids. In the final post of my Placeholder Bids series, I’ll explain why you shouldn’t run from all those “pinkies” you see in Swoopo auctions.