Swoopo on Multiple Devices
A Swoopo Manual owner noticed something about the Swoopo system that bears mentioning. I’ll let him tell the tale:
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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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.
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…
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!
Swoopo Telephone Bidders
The other day I received an email from John who asked:
I am wondering how you work with telephone bids? How are these placed? Do you have any information on it that may pertain to the psyche of that bidder?
I would love to hear your thoughts.
Here’s what I replied to John (with a little more editing since the original was written in a hurry 
Telephone bids are a relic of a by-gone Swoopo era when they were called Telebid and only took bids this way. They are no longer called Telebid, of course, but they continue to receive telephone bids into Swoopo auctions.
I would describe the phone in bidders just as I would the technique itself: relics of a by-gone era.
In my research VERY few auctions are won by phone in bids…and those folks are largely throwing money into the wind. I wouldn’t factor these people into your bidding strategy any more than I would a single bidder…and perhaps even discount their ability more. The real threat (and opportunity) on Swoopo lies with the BidButler and that will continue as long as the Internet works the way it does.
Hope that helps….and happy to hear you’re digging in!
So what are your thoughts? Have you had experience with phone in bids? Let me know in the forums…
On Swoopo Auction Data
When I first started helping Swoopo bidders to succeed on Swoopo, there were several other “Swoopo experts” doing the same thing. There were probably 3 or 4 of these gurus and I noticed an interesting phenomen among them: the data arms race.
When one Swoopo guide increased the number of auctions they analyzed (5,000! 10,000!), I would get emails from users saying:
“This guide has 10,000 auctions and yours has 3,000… why should I buy yours?”
The Auction Data Lie
Before I continue, I should note: Swoopo auction data is important. Analyzing auction data has been a powerful tool for the best Swoopo bidders and we’ve just now launched a whole new data set with a huge new amount of Swoopo auction history. But….
Having historical auction data in spreadsheets on your computer for you to reference is maybe 20% of the formula needed to win. It’s nice, it helps to understand which auctions to bid in and which to ignore…but there are two huge holes in historical data.
- Knowing when isn’t knowing how
- Auction data that isn’t real time isn’t real useful
The Data Peddlers Are Gone
Those Swoopo gurus selling false hope in the form of Excel spreadsheets have long since faded to the background. Their data-only approach was voted down by the market and they no longer show up in Google for important key terms. Their guides haven’t been updated in months and their websites are growing dusty and dated.
The Swoopo Manual + Swoopo Analytics live on and continue to thrive by teaching people what they really need to know in order to succeed on Swoopo. And in my next post, I’ll explain point #1 above: why knowing how is more than important than knowing when and where.
The Swoopo Christmas Story
Over the past few weeks I’ve started getting lots of emails that sound like this one from a reader named Abe:
I might hold off on it till after Christmas because I read somewhere that there’s more competition on Swoopo auctions during the holiday shopping season, which drives the prices up, so I think I might wait til after Christmas so there won’t be so much competition and I’ll have a better chance at it.
I don’t know where Abe read this, but I thought it was worth clarifying a few things about how Swoopo works and why things aren’t as cut & dried as some in the Swoopo world make them seem.
Swoopo Controls the Inventory
When you look at the upcoming auctions page and see the current and future auctions Swoopo is running, you’ll realize this: Swoopo controls those auctions. Swoopo decides when to have more new auctions and when to have fewer. They decide how many PS3′s to sell and how many Ginsu Knives to sell.
In this way, Swoopo auctions are a game of supply and demand, except Swoopo is the only thing controlling supply.
They’ve Done This Since the Beginning
Back when Swoopo first launched in the United States, they probably listed fewer auctions than they do today. There were fewer users back then and Swoopo hadn’t yet been written up in various national publications. If they had listed as many auctions as they do today, those auctions would only have a handful of bidders and would cause Swoopo to lose money. Not only that, but the bidding would be quite boring, too! (Yes, you can have fun and win too folks)
So Let’s Talk Christmas
If more bidders flock to Swoopo this holiday season to get great deals on popular gifts for their loved ones…it doesn’t necessarily mean higher prices for the winning bidder. If Swoopo notices the new group of bidders they can start launching more auctions on a daily basis. They increase the supply, which means lower prices for bidders and still amazing deals for the winners.
Just because it’s holiday season does NOT mean that you can’t get great deals on Swoopo.
If They Control the Inventory…
Smart readers are probably now thinking: If they control the inventory, what’s the point of knowing the best time of the day to bid? What’s the point in knowing the best days of the week? Isn’t all that data at the mercy of the Swoopo gods now?
The short answer is no. You can still study trends and learn more about Swoopo faster than they can implement supply/demand changes. I know this because I see in our data that some auctions have MUCH higher average savings than others. And the best Swoopo bidders only bid on certain auctions and at certain times of the day. They know the data too (or at least can SEE it in action) and act accordingly.
I’ll write more about the supply/demand vs. data issue in another post. For now, just know that you can treat the holiday season like any other on Swoopo as long as you follow the best practices of great Swoopo bidders and arm yourself with the latest data.
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Swoopo Auctions Off a Car
Breaking news from Swoopo headquarters…Swoopo has announced they’ll be auctioning a car off starting tomorrow. If you’ve always had your eye on the sporty Mini Cooper, now might be your chance to get it for an amazing price.
Just make sure you can afford the shipping cost
If you’re in the US, you can click the image below to learn more:
In Canada, click the image below here: