Placeholder Bids 102: What Are Placeholder Bids?
In my last post, I explained how closed auctions work and why Swoopo implemented them last year. I also explained why they are a mystery by necessity. Today, I’m going to explain what a Placeholder Bid is and how you can use it to get entry to these exclusive, closed auctions.
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.
Placeholder Bids 101: Closed Auctions
Today is the first part in a 4 part series discussing the strategy known as the Placeholder Bid. Over the next 4 posts, I’m going to discuss what a closed auction is, how a Placeholder Bid can help, how this relates to win percentages and why those scary bidders aren’t that scary.
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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