Two Major Swoopo Changes
Swoopo has made two fairly large changes to the way auctions work on the site. The first applies to the way time is added to the clock after a BidButler Battle. The second deals with how used bids are applied to the Swoop It Now price.
I’m going to let Swoopo’s words take the lead here in explaining these changes:
BidButler Battle Change
All auctions will count down from 24 hours with no time added to the counter for bids placed before the timer has reached 2 minutes. Once the timer has reached below 2 minutes the counter will extend to a maximum of 20 seconds per bid placed and will not increase the timer beyond 2 minutes regardless of how many bids are placed. This means that once an auction has gone below 2 minutes, further bids placed will never increase the counter over 2 minutes.
Swoop It Now Change
Your Swoop it Now price will vary according to the percentage discount rate that is set on each auction, purchased bids will reduce the Swoop it Now price by 60c for each bid placed until the maximum discount for the auction has been reached.
The Swoop it Now price is only reduced by bidding with ‘Compensation Bids’ or ‘Purchased Bids’ obtained using the ‘Buy Bids’ section of your account. Bid bundles attached to an auctioned item, ‘FreeBids’, auctioned bid bundles or bids placed by telephone do not reduce the Swoop it Now price.
What Do These Changes Mean?
I bolded the important phrase in the Swoop It Now change. That is, there is now a maximum Swoop It Now discount for many items. So you can’t get items for 100% off regardless of how many bids you place.
At face value, this change may seem to be a negative for Swoopo bidders, but I don’t think it was meant that way. Having a Swoop It Now discount of 100% had unintended consequences for Swoopo auctions. The Swoopo Pros were able to come into an auction with a ton of bids and use BidButler with abandon. Now, they cannot bully an auction and win. They’ll be forced to use more finesse and fewer bids.
The BidButler Battle change should result in more exciting auctions for everyone involved, because you will no longer see the auction clock soar to 15 or 20 minutes after a Battle. Unfortunately, as someone in the forums pointed out, this makes bathroom trips and food breaks more difficult. However, since the auctions won’t last as long…this may not become an issue.
Will I Get Better Discounts?
I can’t say yet how these changes will affect the discounts on Swoopo, but I’m going to start evaluating the data and update soon with an answer.
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.
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!
Updated Swoopo Manual
Last week I quietly released an update to the Manual that includes new strategies to deal with recent Swoopo changes:
- Swoop It Now
- No concurrent BidButlers
- Auction price adjustments
- Bid price adjustments
When Swoopo zigs we’ll just have to continue to zag. As usual, you’ll find the updated Swoopo Manual here. And thanks to an excellent forum suggestion from one of our Swoopers members, I’ve now added “Published On” dates to the Manual so you know how current the information is.
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.